But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. ESV

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. NIV

When self-driving cars first began merging onto the roads, programmers ran into a dilemma: what do you do if a crash is unavoidable? Crashes were no longer purely “accidents” but eerily premeditated.

Curious about what the car should do, the design teams asked the public for their opinion. Sacrifice the passenger or the pedestrian? The elderly person or the child? The doctor or the criminal? If someone is bound to get hurt, who should it be?

The world responded. People generally said, “Save the passenger!” “Save the innocent child!” “Save the doctor!”

Reading that, you probably have thoughts, feelings, and opinions too. Boiling down to “whose life has more worth?” The sinner or the “saint”?

These questions can reveal something deeply wrong with our definition of worth and value. It exposes something ugly in us. We instinctively reach for certain categories: usefulness, youthfulness, innocence, status, potential. But that’s not the math of Heaven.

Luke 5:32 in The New Living Translation says, “I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners and need to repent.” Here’s the deal: there is no one righteous. There are some who think they are righteous, but no one is actually righteous. There are only sinners who know it and sinners who don’t yet know it.

The math of Heaven saves those who know they are sinners. Not cleaned up. Not useful. Active sinners. Not curing cancer but desperately grasping a stolen bag of cash. Not at our best, but at our worst, Christ died for us. God looked at the lineup and chose to let the Innocent one die so the guilty could live.

The self-driving car dilemma never really got solved. Companies eventually decided their cars shouldn't be in the business of judging human worth at all. Doctor or criminal, baby or grandma. They couldn't get the math right, so they stopped trying. But God who is rich in wisdom, didn’t rank some of us as especially undeserving and others as entitled heirs. He knew we were all categorically unworthy, undeserving, sinners–and made us worthy, and died for us.

God did not leave the question unresolved. In love, He settled it at the cross. Sinners are worth dying for. They are worth bankrupting Heaven for.

While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Written by Rainer Erani