This piece originally appeared on my blog in July 2008. It’s an illustration I’ve used many, many times in trying to convey the severity of the gospel to people, our need for salvation, and the right response to the grace of the Lord. -AR
Imagine one day you and I go to lunch. We have a good meal together and you generously pick up the tab for both of us. I’d be appreciative. I’d say “thanks” and think that was a really nice gesture on your part. And truthfully, not long after–a few days maybe–I would probably forget about it and go on with life; maybe picking up yours next time, but that’s about it.
Now imagine if, during lunch, I started choking violently. The blockage of my air passageway causes my eyes to grow wide with panic as my chest starts to heave trying to ingest air it cannot get. My life is flashing before my eyes and all I see are the fearful faces in the restaurant staring back at me helplessly as terror overwhelms me inside and my face turns sickenly red-blue outside. Quiet airless agony grips me.
Suddenly you come around the table and position yourself behind me. You make a fist with one hand and wedge it in my abdomen. With the other hand you cover your fist. With all your strength you constrict your grip and force your fist inward and upward in a jolting thrust. Nothing. Again. Nothing. By now I feel my life slipping away–much younger and more ghastly than ever I had expected. With another attempt what feels like a baseball is jettisoned out of my wind pipe as my body reacts by inhaling a torrent of air. Over and over, quick successions of inhalation and exhalation spasmatically take place as I cough spittle and natural color begins to take over my face as I realize…
…I’m going to live.
…I’M GOING TO LIVE!!!
I’m going to live and I have YOU to thank! YOU saved my life! I was as good as dead and you SAVED ME!! THANK YOU! Thank you!! I’m forever indebted to you! You could never ask anything “too much” of me because I am so grateful for that time you saved my life! I would tell everyone who would listen about how you saved me!
Now…think about this: Has God merely bought your lunch? Have you just kinda winked, given Him the thumbs-up and said, “Thanks God, I’ll getcha next time! <wink><wink>” and gone on on your merry way?
If that is your view of Christianity, let me strongly suggest to you that you may not be saved at all.
Until we embrace the Lord as one who has ransomed us from death–undeservedly so, mnd you–we hold God as simply having bought our lunch. Do not be deceived. The gospel of Jesus Christ, His passion, His cross, is not about God’s free lunch generosity that gets forgotten shortly after we say some quick prayer with sing-songy music playing behind us. Unless we have all-surrendering awe of Him who saved us, we have no part in Him. Only when we understand the gospel rightly are we willing to do whatever He asks of us. Not to try to pay back, but because of our profound love and gratitude toward Him for rescuing us.
So…did God buy your lunch or save you from choking to death?
Thought a little Thursday morning reminder of the weight of the gospel of Jesus Christ might bless others like it did me!
I really like the analogy Anthony, it will probably get even more use now. I will be sure and give you credit for it. It is another way of illustrating Jesus’ statement, “he who is forgiven much, loves much,” and reminds us how great our salvation really is.
It reminds me a little of one of Ray Comfort’s illustrations in “Hell’s Best Kept Secret.” The one about the parachute.
There’s a really good chance this will show up in a sermon at my church without anyone hearing that Anthony Russo exists!! (Sorry)
Thanks, Jeff….and only Jeff. 🙂
Well, I personally would use an entirely different analogy, methinks.
God didn’t buy my lunch. He didn’t save me from choking to death.
I was stone cold dead on a slab in the morgue. Quincy was just about to make the first inscision for my autopsy. Jesus came in the room and said “Arise and follow me” and suddenly I came back to life. Sam stood there with his jaw on the floor and all Quincy could get out was “Wha, wha, what just happened? He was DEAD!!!”
I like the popcorn analogy but Joe, you are spot on, that’s what happened. Good words in both the OP and Mr. Blackmon’s comment.
Actually, Joe, you are correct. We were definitely *dead* in sin. Any illustration is an insufficient one really. I thought of it over lunch with someone a few years back and really hit home there in the restaurant. Since then it has been helpful when I’ve tried to illustrate to people the gravity and urgency of our situation before God, and a picture of His gracious intervention that they (and I) so desperately need.
On a lighter note, nice Quincy reference 🙂
I figure it was the dead guy getting up that made the cops faint before Quincy turned around. Haa
I caught an episode of Quincy on RetroTV the last time we were visiting at my parents and marveled at the fact that they could do a meaningful autopsy scene without resorting to showing a gruesome corpse. CSI and NCIS people, please take notes.
David Platt has an illustration in Radical about how a professor of his made the students go to a graveyard and preach to the tombstones. They obviously had no power to convert the dead, but God by His grace can make us born again, saving us from our sin. I don’t know if choking to death goes far enough to explain our condition. We were DEAD. God has made us alive!
Now that’s a great illustration too.
Bill, you are correct in that we are not merely choking, but quite dead.
The illustration is not meant to focus on our state before salvation but rather the urgency of our need of salvation, the uncoverted’s and nominal Christian’s low view of God, and the gratitude-as-motivation in our lives once converted.
It’s wonderful to see so many theologically astute comments.
Illustrations are meant to communicate a point.
Yes, we are truly and completely dead in sin. But the illustration which was given (which will find its way into a local sermon!) makes a very good point.
We do not appreciate our salvation because we don’t understand the depths of our lostness.
I have a book in my library titled, Therapeutic Paradox. It is a series of articles on the use of paradoxes in counseling by professional counselors. Our doctrine of the deadness of man can be preached as a therapuetic paradox designed by God to restore life to dead sinners. Paradoxical interventions are one of the methods used in counseling, and, at one time, the Christian Faith was noted for its focus on paradoxes. That Sovereign Grace Theology was evangelistic is beyond doubt. I have a tract written originally in the 1700s which was reprinted around 1800. It was the property… Read more »