Let’s turn to ‘The Message’, that remarkable solo translation of the Bible by Eugene Peterson. Here he is, translating – or paraphrasing – a section of Paul’s letter to the Roman Christians. ‘We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.’
Glib, Peterson is not. He does not dodge difficulties. His rendering of Romans 5.8 is characteristic. He follows Paul in emphasising the distance between the purposeful Creator and his weak creatures. If we believe that the universe is a random event, a sequence from the Big Bang to the digital age without meaning, so be it. If we believe that it is a happening with a beginning and an end that, as it goes along, throws up admirable but fleeting virtues that are ornamental rather than of the essence, we must rest there. Otherwise we have to delve below the surface of things to see if we can detect some aim, some scheme that makes sense of it all. And if we conclude there is a Creator but a Creator who is distant, unreachable – indeed, we might say, unnecessary – we have to be content with that.
Certainly distance is evident. Nearness is something else. And that something else is in the forefront of Paul’s mind as he grapples with the great scheme of things. Nearness is a life lived in obscurity, a life lived by a man born in a tribe that could never forget its history. They knew its ancestors were slaves who had fostered a distinctive life-style after the Exodus. They remembered they had later been beaten into submission by the harsh policies of an empire that faltered as it expanded to include most of the then known world. They also confronted the belief that this man was in fact nothing less than a visitation from the Creator. He met his end because the creatures could not comprehend what had come amongst them, This understanding took root. It deflected and inspired the development of human activity throughout the centuries that followed. The Great Idea that we call Christianity rapidly enrolled followers throughout the known world.
The distant Creator gained first-hand experience in Bethlehem and Jerusalem of what it meant to be human. Not only that, he paid a price for doing so.
When Paul said that Christ died for us, he was accepting the weakness called sin that meant that we humans as a whole are patently unlovable. ‘Amazing grace,’ said John Newton. It remains inexplicable. Even a modern translation of the New Testament does not find this easy. But here we are at the heart of Christianity. This is the Gospel. This gives us hope. Despite ourselves we are not beyond the reach of our distant Creator.
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