For God’s Sake: Final destination is sure
My 5 p.m. departure from Pensacola had been pushed back 30 minutes, which would still enable me to make my connecting flight out of Atlanta to John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, but just barely. When the airline posted the new departure time, 7 p.m., my trip was suddenly thrown into shambles.
Seeing a very long line form at the airline desk, I called the airline’s 800 number instead and settled in for the 30-minute hold time. As I waited, I discovered that I could initiate an online chat with an agent, which I did. After a 40-minute exchange that ended only moments before takeoff, I learned that my only workable option was to spend the night in Atlanta and take an early flight to LAX.
My gracious wife made my hotel arrangements as I trekked through the vast Atlanta terminal toward ground transportation and the hotel’s shuttle. After a brief night of sleep, I caught the earliest shuttle back to the airport and joined thousands of fellow travelers in a zigzagging line proceeding slowly toward the TSA checkpoint. “I’m going to miss my flight,” I muttered to myself anxiously. Thankfully, I did not.
Pondering the frustrating uncertainty of my travel experience made me think about the certainty of my life’s final destination. With this life’s inherent unpredictability, the promise of an assured final destination is hard to imagine. People who believe in an afterlife adopt a “hope so” expectation of a better place, one reached by a sufficient portfolio of good works in this life, the measure of that sufficiency left undefined.
When a friend or family member dies, that standard of merit is quickly replaced by the assumption that everybody goes to heaven for it is unthinkable that someone we love did not. Certainly, a good God will accept them for who they were just as we did.
The scandal of God’s gospel is that what is thought to be a future judgment about a person’s final destination is made in the present. Surprisingly, it is not that a person is deemed worthy of heaven but that they are deemed totally unworthy, morally bankrupt before God, who is perfect in righteousness.
Their hope rests completely in the redeeming work of Christ on their behalf. Christ, though perfect in righteousness, died for our sins fully satisfying the penalty that was against those who would trust in him alone; His resurrection proved it. Christ’s perfect righteousness is credited to them, and heaven is assured.
This week’s flight was frustratingly uncertain; my return may be the same. One thing in my life is certain, because I trust in Christ, my final destination is sure.