In 1859, Charles Dickens wrote – in 32 weekly installments – A Tale of Two Cities. In the opening chapters, we’re introduced to Sydney Carton, an incredibly bright and promising attorney who is unfortunately also a self-indulgent drunk. Carton falls desperately in love with another man’s wife. That man – Charles Darnay – is everything Carton should have been. But he’s also a former aristocrat, and this is revolutionary France. Darnay is put on trial, and sentenced to be guillotined. Late that night, however, Carton – who looks shockingly similar to Darnay – sneaks into the prison, drugs Darnay, and trades places with him. Darnay escapes France with his wife the next day, and Carton is executed in Darnay’s place.
In the novel, Carton – who has wasted his life to this point – redeems himself by dying to save another man, a better man. But what if it had been the other way around? What if Darnay – the good man – had come up with a plan to trade places with the drunk, self-indulgent Carton?
This is the picture Paul paints in Romans 5:7-8
For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
If you saw (endured?) “The Passion of the Christ,” you saw the incredible pain involved in this redemption. I thought one of the best things Mel Gibson did in that movie was leave the audience with a question screaming to be answered: WHY?? Why did He do this? Why would the perfect Son of God die such a horrible death to save sinners?
Paul answers this question in Ephesians 1:7-10.
In Him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished on us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth.
Christ died to redeem you and me and unite all of Creation in Him. We’ll revisit this idea of unifying all things later in chapter 2, but for now notice that all of cosmic history is focused on Christ’s death on the Cross – the fullness of times – as the mystery of His will became clear: He died to fix the brokenness and pain of this fallen and dying world, to redeem it – to resurrect it and unite all things in Him.
“The Biblical view of things is resurrection – not a future that is just a consolation for the life we never had but a restoration of the life you always wanted…”
“Just after the climax of the trilogy The Lord of the Rings, Sam Gamgee discovers that his friend Gandalf was not dead (as he thought) but alive. He cries, ‘I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself! Is everything sad going to come untrue?’ The answer of Christianity to that question is – yes. Everything sad is going to come untrue and it will somehow be greater for having once been broken and lost.”
– Tim Keller, The Reason for God, p. 32-33
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