The Story of Us All

Life and Books and Everything — Clearly Reformed

00:00

The Story of Us All

April 15, 2022

Life and Books and EverythingClearly Reformed

The fundamental story of the world is not the story of good guys and bad guys, or of oppressors and the oppressed, but of sinners and a Savior.

In this episode of Life and Books and Everything, Kevin reads from the article he wrote for WORLD Opinions for Holy Week, examining how we are all sinners in need of a Savior.

Transcript

Life and Books and Everything is a podcast. Welcome back to Life and Books and Everything. This is Kevin DeYoung and I'm reading this article that just came out.

I wrote on the WORLD Opinion's page. Be sure to check WORLD Opinion's for articles that I write about every other week and a lot of other good stuff there as well. This is a piece of special.

This is a piece especially for this Holy Week entitled The Story of Us All. We are sinners in need of a Savior. The Story of Holy Week reminds us of the Story of the World, and as the Passion of Christ tells the Story of the World, it reminds us of our story as well.

We are sinners in need of a Savior, not theoretical sinners, not nobody's perfect sinners, not we all make mistakes, sinners. Real sinners inside and out. Dead in our sins and trespasses, desperately sick, enslaved by passions and pleasures being hated and hating one another, that kind of sinner.

In need of a real Savior, not a myth or a metaphor, not a better version of ourselves, not a hero of our own making, we need a man like us and we need a God utterly unlike us. We need a genuinely historical person who transcends history, an eternal son born in the fullness of time, a dying sacrifice who does not stay dead. That's the Story of Holy Week.

That's the Story of the World. That's our story, yours and mine. At the bottom, the Gospel is a simple story, which is why so many simply reject it.

We like the hope and joy of the resurrection, but before we get there, we have to look squarely at the betrayal, the denial, the abandonment, the jealousy, the hatred, the jeering and the unbelief that culminated in the crucifixion of Jesus the Christ. Behind the veil of our self-aggrandizement and our self-regard, we are sinners, capable of inventing a thousand academic ideas and a million personal excuses, so as not to admit, we are sinners in need of a Savior. Ye who think of sin but lightly nor suppose the evil great, here may view its nature rightly, here its guilt may estimate, mark the sacrifice appointed, see who bears the awful load, tis the word, the Lord's anointed, son of man and son of God.

If we want to make much of the cross, we must never make light of our sin. You may proudly wave the rainbow flag, you may protest racial injustice and gender inequality, you may see yourself on the right side of history, and be an advocate for all the right causes. But what will you do with your sin? You may decry the intolerance of fundamentalism and lament the conservative church of your youth.

You may be proud of your deconstruction and new found-in-lightness, and you may be proud of your death. You may be proud of your sin and new found enlightenment, but what will you do with your sin? You may stand opposed to the ways of the woke. You may reject Marxism, socialism, and liberal cancel culture.

You may know for certain that a man is a man and a woman is a woman. But what will you do with your sin? You may embrace middle-class values and sing the national anthem with a lump in your throat. You may work hard to provide for your family.

You may be happily religious, even a member of a church. But what will you do with your sin? Who was the guilty who brought this upon thee? Alas my treason, Jesus hath undone thee. Twas I, Lord Jesus.

I, it was denied thee. I, crucified thee. The tough pill to swallow is that those words should be on our lips.

The God-denying treason, the ashamed of Jesus' denial and the Christ-hating crucifixion. We can't keep them safely in the first century. They exist in every human civilization and reside in every human heart.

The story of your life and my life is irreducibly a story of sin and rebellion. But that doesn't have to be the end of the story. Faith is believing that we were born one way but can be born again another way.

Anyone can be found if only he will admit that he's lost. Christianity is the hope of the world for those who have no hope in themselves. The fundamental story of the world is not the story of good guys and bad guys or of oppressors and the oppressed, but of sinners and a Savior.

That's the story we must tell to ourselves and tell to the world because that's the song of the redeemed and the song of the ages. Bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned he stood, sealed my pardon with his blood, hallelujah. What a Savior.

[Music]

[buzzing]