As I was sitting in the Entebbe Uganda airport waiting to board our plane for the first leg of our journey home at about 11:30 PM, a woman, probably in her late 30s, walked by me. She was dressed very scantily, and she looked very worn and used up. For a few short seconds, my initial feelings and thoughts were to be offended with her. I briefly felt offended at the destructive life she was obviously living. Thankfully those initial thoughts and feelings didn’t hang around in me long enough to own them. Instead, my union with Christ took over, and His compassion became my compassion for her. Our heart was broken for her, and I began to think of what kind of pain and confusion she must have experienced in her life to bring her to a place where she was making the choices she was making. In those moments of holy sorrow, Jesus spoke so clearly and vividly in me – to me – saying, “People think I died on the cross because of her, but I didn’t die because of her; I died for her.” What I heard Him say wrecked me in the good way that we get wrecked when the mind of Christ is vocalized in us. Of course, Jesus died to pay for our sins, but the ultimate goal of His death was to set us free from the reign of sin and its horrible self-destructive consequences. Jesus came that we might have life and have it more abundantly. In John chapter 1, when John the Baptist first proclaimed who Jesus was before all the people, he said, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” He came to take away the evil virus called sin. He came to heal us of its control and consequences, for “by His stripes, we are healed.” In John 19, when Jesus on the cross cried out, “I thirst,” He was expressing the thirsting heart of God to heal and make whole fallen and broken humanity. Does God hate sin? Absolutely! He hates what sin has done to those He created to enjoy all that He is and all that He has, those he created to bear His image. Of course, God hates all forms of evil, but in the same way, you and I hate cancer when it’s consuming someone that you love, but God doesn’t hate people! God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, and Romans 5:9 says, “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Sitting in that airport, Jesus spoke one more thing in me – to me – after that lady had passed by. He said, “I did not come to satisfy an angry God. I came to satisfy a loving God,” who is brokenhearted and angry at what sin does to human beings. Jesus, battered and broken, hanging on the cross, was and is the living icon of both the broken and yet overcoming heart of God, for He did ultimately cry, “It is finished,” the reign of sin is over!
