Romans 8:32 The Choice

The Choice (Romans 8:32) 

Anyone who has lived near well-traveled bodies of water for any length of time has seen a drawbridge. Have you? It’s one of those over-sized mechanical devices designed with gears that allow the bridge to be raised when a boat is passing on the water underneath and lowered when the boat is beyond the channel.

A man was operating a drawbridge. At that drawbridge, when the drawbridge operator raised the bridge to allow a boat to pass, he had to make sure he could close it fast enough to allow a passenger train to cross the lowered bridge several minutes later. One day, the man’s young son was visiting his father at work and decided to go down below to get a better look at the boat as it passed. Fascinated by the sight of the sails, he wasn’t careful, he slipped, and his foot became caught in the giant gears that controlled the drawbridge. Because his foot was caught, the boy was helpless to free himself. The father saw what happened but he also knew that the passenger train was coming in several minutes. Now, the father had a choice.

If he took the time to free his son, the train would plunge into the river and the impact of that fall would certainly kill its passengers. If he lowered the bridge to save the train, the passengers would be spared certain death but his only son would be crushed in the gears.

What would you do? Would you save the son and let the train plunge into the river below allowing its passengers to die or would you save the train and allow your son, your only son, to be killed?

When that drawbridge operator heard the train’s whistle in the distance, he knew what he had to do. Even though he loved his son very much and even though the people on that train were total strangers, he lowered the bridge and, sparing not his own son, he saved the train.

This incident sounds kind of grizzly, doesn’t it? It is. Yet, at Calvary, what did God our Father do for you? In a situation that cost God the life of His uniquely begotten Son, yet spared a world of sinners, Paul wrote in Romans 8:32, “That He Who spared not His own Son, delivered Him up for us all that we might receive His adoption as sons” (Galatians 4.5). The prophet added in Isaiah 53.5, “That He being Jesus was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities that the punishment of our peace might be on Him.” 

How much do you appreciate the sacrifice and suffering of Jesus Christ at Calvary for you?  Have you traveled that bridge of grace that can take your soul from the pathway of destruction onto the road of life to heaven? Salvation is a choice. God’s. So too is obedience. It is our response to first receive God’s Son as Savior and then to choose to live for the One Who sacrificed everything for you.