One of my favorite lines from the movie, The Count of Monte Cristo, is when Jacopo reminds the Count of the oath he took to protect him with the rest of his life. In a dramatic moment he says, “I will protect you. Even if it means I must protect you from yourself.” The point is clear – often we need to be saved from ourselves. I was reminded of this as I watched a recent msnbc.com video about a mother who had decided to follow her own dreams even when it meant abandoning her husband and two small boys. You can watch the video here:
Before we all go searching for this woman to give her a piece of our mind. We need to be reminded of a few things.
You Need to be Saved from Yourself
All of us have an idea of what our lives should be like, whether its my six-year-old who says, “I hate doing school,” and wishes he could have a life spent playing all day long, or the 40-year-old husband who thinks life would be better with the woman from work because “she’s beautiful, likes me, and accepts me for who I am.”
There are moments every day when we are thinking and dreaming about plans for our lives that if they came true would ruin and destroy us. Jesus Christ came to save us, not only from sin and death, but from ourselves. As our Savior, Jesus is committed to protecting us, even if it means he has to protect us from ourselves.
God Wrote a Better Script than You Ever Could
The Gospel is the craziest story. No one would ever have come up with a weak and suffering King who conquers sin and death and his arch enemy, Satan, by dying naked on a bloody Roman cross. Yet God “chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (1 Cor. 27-29).
Not only is the Gospel so ironic and amazing, and nothing like we would have ever written, but the Gospel is significant because it reveals that we also have a personal narrative that was written which is far better than anything we could have ever devised ourselves. God’s story of our transformation often involves hard roads, defeats, trials, humiliation, attack, and difficulty, but it is the greatest story that could ever be written because it brings us to the most glorious ending that we could ever experience.
Had our own story been allowed to unfold, we would have ended up as those who gain their life here but ultimately lose it (Mark 8:35). God in his grace wrote a better script for our lives. And through Christ, He’s made it a reality. As believers, no matter what we are presently experiencing or not experiencing, there is nothing that could be better.
We often believe the lie that the story we’ve written for ourselves would bring the greatest happiness. But remember, it’s a lie. The Gospel ensures that God’s story for your life is the best because every day and in the end, the Gospel saves you from yourself.
