Straight to the Heart

Unless you have been living in a hermetically sealed lunchbox for the past few weeks, you know that the Football World Cup is well underway in South Africa. At Queens Road Church, we showed England vs USA on the big screens as part of a massive barbecue-braai. Everything was brilliant except for the one thing we couldn’t organise ourselves: the England goalkeeper.

If you are not a football fan, then please don’t glaze over. This isn’t a post about football, it’s a post about redemption. In the first half of the game, the England goalkeeper Robert Green let in harmless shot on goal that my mother could have saved without letting go of her handbag, and suddenly the football commentators started talking about redemption.

These aren’t believers. I once met Gary Lineker at the train station and tried to encourage him to find out more about Jesus. He wasn’t interested. But here’s the funny thing: they referred to Rob Green’s mistake as a sin and they talked about how he needed to redeem himself if he was ever going to play for England again. Now that’s interesting. People who are irreligious all year round started using religious language in the face of crass misbehaviour. Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 3:11 that “God has set eternity in the hearts of men.”

In the second half of the game, Rob Green had his chance. The USA had a brilliant chance on goal and he somehow managed to claw it onto the post and away from danger. The commentators started talking about how he had redeemed himself. Until the following morning, that is.

I hope Robert Green did not read the British newspapers in his South African hotel room on Sunday morning, but for the rest of us they preached one of the best Gospel sermons anyone delivered that Sunday morning. It turns out that good performance in the second half was not enough to redeem his sin in the first half. Soccer pundits suggested it might have been, and the majority of people live their lives as if good works today can atone for sins tomorrow, but in the cold light of day Robert Green reminded us that God doesn’t play along:

“Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law,” writes Paul in Romans 3, reminding us that we are all Robert Greens. “There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”

Don’t try to redeem your own gaffes and blunders this week. It simply doesn’t work. Take them to the cross of Jesus instead, the only place where our blunders can truly be redeemed, forgiven and forgotten. We have sinned but praise God that, unlike Robert Green, Jesus always saves.