Third Sunday of Lent—Romans 5:1-2, 5-8

Who would you die for? Would you die for someone who doesn’t care about you, doesn’t acknowledge you, someone who doesn’t even like you or may even hate you? Would you not simply tolerate dying for them but actively choose it? Now that we’re into the heart of Lent, the Holy Spirit opens the heart of God to us in our second reading.

“While we were still helpless […] while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” Sin is always putting myself before God. To be a sinner is to be in open rebellion against God who has every right to demand my submission. He is, after all, God. But instead of demanding our submission, God becomes man. And as man, he submits to us, to the worst humanity can offer: betrayal, mocking, torture, and death. This is how God proves his love for us. He didn’t wait until we were more obedient, more understanding of what he was doing for us. He died for us when many of us didn’t even care.

Our reading calls that the appointed time. In Greek, Saint Paul calls it the "kairos time," the correct time. Correct for what? For showing us the heart of God. God isn’t loving. He is love itself. It’s as if God couldn’t help himself, as if he was compelled by his own nature to die for us. How many of us would die for a good person? Yet God died for a bunch of not so good people, for you and for me, before we even knew him. There are no conditions on God’s love. You can’t earn it because he gave it before you started trying. You can’t be good enough for it because he gave it before you even started trying to be good enough.

God has every right to demand our submission by the very fact that he is God. After dying for us, he has even more right to demand that we get with his program. And yet God does not force himself upon us. Rather, as Saint Paul says, we have been justified by faith. By its very nature, faith is a free act. Faith is always proposed but never imposed. It invites but never demands. Faith in Jesus Christ, which is at once personal acceptance of him and actively living as he commands, makes us right with God. It justifies us. Justification is not just legal acquittal for our sins. It’s also the grace of God renewing our inner selves. My inner rebellion against God melts away the more I allow God’s heart to beat within my own.