HOME / PROCLAMATION! MAGAZINE / 2015 / SUMMER / THE LIFE AFTER WITH CHRIS LEE

Chris Lee lives in Lincoln, Nebraska with his wife, Carmen, and daughters, Ashlyn and Alyssa. They attend the Lincoln Berean Church. Chris is a self-described "theology junkie" whose mission is to proclaim the unfathomable grace of Christ in a clear, understandable, and Biblical way. Chris is the editor of the Proclamation! Blog at ProclamationMagazine.com. You may contact Chris by email at ambulater@gmail.com.

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Nebraska’s unicameral legislature recently voted to repeal the death penalty. The Republican-dominated body then voted to override the Republican governor’s veto. It was a surprising turn of events in a solidly red state. Naturally, this legislative coup has engendered a good deal of debate here. I’m not going to join that debate in this column, but I would like to draw a few parallels that have been on my mind recently.

Entwined in the debate of the death penalty has been much discussion of the ten men on Nebraska’s death row. If you can stomach that kind of thing, do a Google search. It’s not hard to find summaries of the crimes for which they were convicted. All are heinous in the extreme. Reading these accounts engenders horror that heats to anger before simmering into melancholia as one contemplates the utter depravity of mankind. By the time you reach the tenth account, you will be heart sick and will feel a deep longing for justice.

I would argue that what we experience as we read these accounts is a product of the Imago Dei, the image of God reflected in His creation. We feel horror, anger, sadness, and the need for justice because our creator made us to reflect some of His attributes. The difference between us and God is that we tend to experience wrath against sin only in the most extreme, shocking cases, and then only for a little while. Our outrage fades as the news cycle moves on to the next story.

God, on the other hand, is absolutely perfect in His righteousness, holiness, justice, and wrath against sin—all sin. The wrath that flares so briefly in us when we hear of some depraved crime is only a dim reflection of what God feels, all the time, against everything that falls short of His perfect standard. As a God who is absolutely perfect in all His attributes, He cannot wink at any sin, and He cannot simply wave justice aside. As a result, in our natural states, we all are under the wrath of God and under a sentence of death. Let me make that more personal: I deserve the ultimate death penalty, and so do you.

In my previous life, I didn’t fully appreciate the staggering reality of God’s wrath. As a result, I didn’t grasp the depth of my own depravity. I tended to think that if I just cleaned my act up, maybe everything would work out okay. But that way of thinking underestimated God’s wrath against all sin. Even if I could have magically lived a perfect life from then on, I had already blown it. Nothing I could do would ever close the gap between me and a perfect God. The only thing I would ever deserve, no matter what I did, was an eternal stint in the ultimate death row.

Fortunately for us, God is also absolutely perfect in His love, mercy, and grace. Because He loves us, He took His natural wrath against our sin and poured it all back on Himself in the person of Jesus. The eternal weight of God’s wrath against every sin ever committed, large or small, was poured out on Him as He hung on the cross. Jesus came as a man, lived a perfect life, and credited His righteousness to our account. He paid the full debt of sin, dying in our place under the wrath of God. Jesus then rose from the dead to assure us of eternal life in Him and to make us joint heirs with Him.

One can’t fully appreciate how good the Good News is until one feels the depth of the bad news. The truth is, by God’s perfect standards, I’m a thief, a murderer, an adulterer, and a liar. I will never deserve anything other than death. In Christ, I am a son of God in good standing. Here’s to not getting what I deserve. Praise Jesus! †

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The life AFTER with Chris Lee