Tuesday night, America let out a collective groan when Rachel Frederickson walked out onto the stage at The Biggest Loser finale sporting a 105-pound frame. I’ve watched TBL for years, and so, like everyone else, I’ve grown accustomed to seeing shocking changes at the finales. Every year, the winners lose a greater percentage of weight, but this year, there was just something different about Rachel. The change was so drastic, that even Bob and Jillian – 2 of the trainers at The Biggest Loser – couldn’t hide their shock. And while I could write this post about the dangerous trend that shows like TBL may be setting and about the possible steps that may need to be put in place to help prevent contestants from swinging from one extreme to the other, I’d rather tackle this from a different slant, and I’ll need you to hang with me.
I’m so glad she wasn’t the only one who went too far.
Of all the words that people may have used to describe Rachel – anorexic, unhealthy, anemic – one phrase that kept rocking me was “all in,” and when we get that committed to a goal, sometimes we can find ourselves going places that others think are crazy.
When I saw the look on Bob’s and Jillian’s faces, I thought about all the other people who become so passionate, so committed to something that others would call them crazy. Entrepreneurs who leverage everything they own on an idea, students who say no to a social life in order to pursue the dream of a diploma, young families who leave behind the comforts of the American dream to take hope to impoverished people in other cultures.
I thought about the athletes who will march in the opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics tonight in Sochi, athletes who have laid it all on the line for years in the hope of mere seconds of glory. My mind went to the passionate dreamers, the fearless veterans, the immovable leaders who fight for social justice and equality.
But ultimately, I thought about Jesus, because just like Rachel, he also went too far.
Without taking the time for a full-blown theology lesson, let’s remember that there was a day when a man and a woman lived sin-free on the earth. They had been created to display the image of God and to walk in a relationship with God. They didn’t know the pain of sharp words or the weight of sin on their soul. If there had been others with them, they could have watched those people standing off to the side of the garden whispering and never felt the paranoid dread that they were being talked about. Life was good, and then it wasn’t.
In one simple, awful act, the two who had been created to be friends with God became his enemies. They were banished from paradise, and ever since, mankind has wandered lost, at war with a God who isn’t even fighting.
And then, that God did something unexpected. He went too far.
He sent his Son to redeem us. Romans 5:7 tells us that it’s shocking when someone dies for a good person, but we weren’t good people. Romans 5:10 tells us that we were his enemies, and in a move that made the collective world gasp like Bob and Jillian, he still died for us.
Now, no one is likely to die for a good person, though someone might be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. (Romans 5:7-8)
Why would God go so far? Because it is his nature to do so. He is a God who is motivated by love (John 3:16) to give too much (1 John 3:1) to people who don’t deserve it (Ephesians 2:4). He is a God who runs to sinners (Luke 15:20) even when others would run away (Luke 15:16).
And so God gave the greatest Gift to the least deserving, and in the process caused the kind of shock that can only happen when someone goes too far. The soldiers mocked the Gift as he hung on the cross. They taunted him to pull the plug on the rescue mission (Mark 15:32), and yet Jesus stayed, willing to go too far in order to save us.
It was this outlandish waste, this scandalous mercy that opened the eyes of the soldiers to see who Jesus really was (Matthew 27:54), and now, it will be the people of God going too far who will have the same impact on the unbelieving world around us, because when God goes too far to save us, we will find ourselves going too far to see others saved, too.
Paul went too far. After living a life doing whatever it took to point people to Jesus (1 Corinthians 9:19-23), he summed it all up by saying he had poured out his life until there was nothing left (2 Timothy 4:6).
Peter went too far. Unwilling to be killed the same way Jesus was, he asked to be crucified upside-down.
And now, God calls us to go too far. He calls us to give in the same way that we’ve received (Matthew 10:8). To abandon the safety of Sunday School attendance pins for the danger of taking Jesus to the ends of the earth. It is unreasonable, unexplainable, and ultimately, it is too far.
But in the end, it is what reveals the undeniable nature of an unrelenting God.
A God who goes too far.
