"Father of a murdered son, husband of a murdered wife..."

"How dare you show your back to me! Slave!" Commodus looked at the gladiator, offended. "You will remove your helmet and tell me your name."

The gladiator looked down, his back still facing the offended caesar. Reluctantly, he removed his helmet, exposing his moist, matted hair. He turned around with a look of determination and fury. "My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the armies of the north, general of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true Emperor, Marcus Aurelius..."

He stepped slowly toward the befuddled emperor, not looking away for an instant. "...Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance in this life, or the next."

Gladiator is probably one of my all-time favorite movies. It is a classic example of good triumphing over evil, and the bad guy truly getting what he deserved. Recently when I was watching it, that particular scene really stuck out to me.

It made me think in many ways about God's broken relationship with man. He made man in His image, made woman in the man's image, both to glorify Him. Man then deliberately disobeyed Him and as a result, that man and all of us after that man became infected with sin.

As a result, our default ways are evil and we only do it because we want to be God. We think our rules are better than His, so we give Him the finger and do it ourselves. So God, over and over again, sends us prophets. We disown them, we beat them up, we even kill them.

If you were God, wouldn't you stop here? Wouldn't you just end it all by destroying all these people? They still won't listen!

But God doesn't do that. God instead looks at His Son, His only Son and says, "Son, please tell them to turn back to me." So His Son comes to earth as a man, and we laugh at Him, mock Him, spit on Him, nail metal spikes into His hands and feet and hang Him bleeding and naked on a wooden cross for six hours until He died.

Yes, we murdered God. We weren't there physically, but we are presently just as responsible for His death as Judas, as Pilate, as the Pharisees, and as the Roman guards.

This is offensive, isn't it? This is something we don't want to hear. This is something I don't even want to type! But in God's eyes, this is why justice through eternal damnation in Hell makes perfect sense. Just like how Maximus' declaration of vengeance makes sense. I cheered for him when I watched that movie, didn't you?

But here is something that's absolutely shocking. It's more than shocking! It's scandalous! Though Jesus Christ was murdered by mankind, that same death became the payment for the condemnation we deserve. Through believing that death did this, we go from being called enemies to being called sons.

There was silence in that Roman arena when Maximus looked with fury at Commodus. There was shock. There was disbelief. However, imagine the disbelief if the scene continued like this:

"...Father of a murdered son, husband of a murdered wife..." his eyes then became eyes of compassion. "I forgive you, Commodus. More than that, I want to adopt you. I want to call you my son."

People would be even more shocked, maybe a little angry too. Commodus himself would probably faint in disbelief!

This is what God offers us. Still, though we rebel through our thoughts and actions, He continues to show love and grace to us. He continues to pursue us. Though He should be infuriated, He is lovingly holding that fury back from us and offering us untold grace and love. He's offering us Himself.

That's God's love. We don't deserve it, but we get it. He offers it to all of mankind, no matter how bad we've been.

Isn't that amazing? It's funny how many of us will just stay with the condemnation. Even Christians. We stop at the condemnation and we get offended that it's even there, but we forget about the bigger love despite that! God offers us a bigger love.

Will you embrace that love?