Celebrate the Gift of a God-Given Rescue Plan

If you have embraced the truth of the gospel, you are part of the celebration of God’s great rescue plan. Paul, chief of the apostles and "chief of sinners" put it succinctly when he wrote that God “did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all,” and then asked, “How will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32)

Having gone to such lengths already, what would God NOT do to win your heart and save your soul?

I’m convinced that the mothers of boys view the world and read the Bible through a unique lens. I’m thinking about a scriptural account of another rescue plan, the Luke 5 story of Jesus healing a paralyzed man. Without a single thing in the text to support my theory, I stubbornly cling to the idea that it was four brothers on the business ends of that stretcher, carrying a family friend (or a fifth brother?) who had been tragically paralyzed.

Jesus was inside the house, surrounded by so many listeners and critics that every door and every window was blocked. When “excuse me” and “pardon me” failed to clear the way to Jesus, things looked pretty hopeless. They were stuck outside, completely blocked off from healing and hope for their paralyzed friend, and if it were not for some creative problem-solving, that would have been the end of a sad story, lost to history and never recovered.

The Wonder of a Vertical Rescue

When horizontal measures were just not doing the job, this foursome thought vertically. Palestinian households utilized their rooftops as an extra room, so an external stairway and some teamwork facilitated the hoisting of their stretcher-bound friend to the tiled roof. Then, without so much as a conference or a committee meeting, the digging and dismantling began.

Tile fragments and falling dust would have alerted the non-omniscient occupants of the packed house that something strange was going on over their heads, but no one was prepared for the response of the only omniscient fellow in the room. As the four warriors lowered their friend’s bed into the room, Jesus said, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.”

Did the four stretcher bearers roll their eyes?
Did the most outspoken open his mouth to clarify the “real need” as he saw it?
“Um, Jesus… Well, we sort of had something else in mind.”

Scripture tells us Jesus’s words gave the Pharisees what they came for that day: evidence to initiate a blasphemy charge. For those who came with open hearts, however, it profoundly established Jesus’s identity as God the Son. And since restoring life to paralyzed limbs is a mere carnival stunt compared to forgiving sin, Jesus went on to heal the man, lifting in a flash his burden of helplessness and hopelessness.

High fives all around, and I’m sure the crowd parted for the guys this time as the newly healed man obediently picked up his bed and went home, followed by his four satisfied advocates. They had accomplished their mission by thinking vertically.

When God witnessed the helpless condition of humanity, he put a plan in place that cost him everything. There was no horizontal way out of our fallenness, so he thought vertically. Down he came, wearing a body that could bleed and die, because that was the only way to make things right again.

Have you opened your heart to God’s great rescue plan? It’s the first and best Christmas gift and it’s been given to you!

And if you have been rescued, having sat on the receiving end of such grace, having taken the “all things” of rescue and salvation from the God of the universe, how could we not also freely give?