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Your Stunt Double
Batman in A Dark Knight Rises, climbs 200ft to the top of the Manhattan Bridge, and they film him up there at sunset. It's a pretty cool shot.
Romans 5:18-19
Batman in A Dark Knight Rises, climbs 200ft to the top of the Manhattan Bridge, and they film him up there at sunset. It’s a pretty cool shot. If I were to ask you, who was the person who did that? You might guess, well, it was Christian Bale the lead actor in the film. The guy who played Batman, right? That would have been my guess anyway. But that’s wrong. It wasn’t him, it was the same guy who jumped about 24ft from one balcony to another in the middle of the night for the bond movie, A Quantum of Solace. And if you watch that film, it looks a lot like it’s Daniel Craig, the main actor in the film. But it’s not him. It was a guy by the name of Bobby Hanton. I didn’t even know his name. I had to look it up. He’s a stunt double.
Now stunt doubles, they do all of the risky acts that the main actor can’t do, and then the actor gets all of the credit. I want you to keep that in mind as I read Romans five verses 18 through 19, where it says this.
Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:18-19 NKJV)
So Adam in the Garden of Eden was the first man whose act of disobedience brought sin into the world, and we all followed suit. So we’re not only in a sinful world where sin is polluting and corrupting the environment around us, but by dint of being born from sinful parents. We are sinful by nature. It’s a part of us. And we fight this every day of our lives. We fail at things. We miserably hurt the people in our lives. We hurt our loved ones, and our loved ones hurt us. It’s like a negative spiral of sin, hate and jealousy and revenge. We are unable to present ourselves as righteous before God because of that.
God knowing this, he lovingly and mercifully provides us a Savior, a stunt double, as it were. Someone who can accomplish the act that we can’t. Jesus Christ is the man whose act of obedience accomplishes righteousness before God. He was incarnate by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, a sinless man, and his his perfect act of obedience to God’s law in his perfect life. And then his death that paid the penalty for our sin that we deserved. He was our substitute in that. That is what accomplished salvation for us.
So just like the actor who doesn’t do any of the harrowing feats, he gets the credit for what the stunt guy did. Just like that, we are credited with Christ’s righteousness. We wear his white robes of righteousness, his garments. It’s this act, this gift of love that God gives us that enables us to love both God and one another, and we turn away from sin. We don’t do this perfectly in this life, but we turn away from sin, loving one another because he has accomplished our salvation. Thanks be to God.
