You might think Jesus and Tiger Woods have pretty much nothing in common. Hopefully by the end of this post you’ll see they their stories are intricately intertwined.
I’ve been thinking on the topic of why Jesus came – why He did what only He could do this week. It is Good Friday and all.
He came to offer Himself as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. Only He could do that. We can never be good enough. We can never do enough to earn the forgiveness and atonement that only His death provides. Ever. Without His death, and subsequent resurrection, we might as well all pack it in, because it’s game over – quite literally. Forever.
And yet He chose to come, knowing full well what awaited Him. Religious leaders hated Him. Sinners loved Him. He didn’t allow the status quo to stay the status quo. He was eccentric, to an extent. I mean, come on, who spits and makes mud and then proceeds to rub said mud into a blind man’s eye? That’s just weird. But it worked.
He wasn’t afraid to mix it up with the lowest of the low, the most unclean of the very most unclean. He met them right were they were and offered them something better – eternal life. All because of His sacrifice. All they had to do was accept the freely-offered gift.
Which takes me to Tiger Woods. When all is said and done, in my opinion, he will be hands down the greatest golfer of all time – whether you measure greatest by number of wins, dollars won on the PGA tour, Major wins, etc. I think he’ll have the complete resume to make his case.
That being said Tiger has made his fair share (and then some and then some) of mistakes in his personal life. Grave mistakes. He’s admitted as much publicly, even stating he though the rules didn’t apply to him. Hey, at least the guy was honest about it. He thought he could get away with his lifestyle because of who he was – the power he held. Well, sin always has a way of finding you out, no matter how powerful you are.
I’ve gotten into some heated discussions about Mr. Woods recently. The words scumbag, jerk, and so on are used quite often. Guess what? He’s a sinner, just like you and me. He just lives in the unfortunately reality of having his sins broadcast to the whole world. Perhaps before judging we should take a moment to be thankful all our dirty secrets aren’t on display for the entire world to critique. It’s funny how we rate sin on our own scale of what makes us the most uncomfortable. It’s a human tendency. We all do it. Certain sins are ranked “worse” in our minds than others. I don’t know how it all works, but sin is sin. Period.
Tiger fell. Hard. We all do. We all need the grace only Jesus can give. I can’t speak to whether Tiger has sought or accepted that grace. That’s between him and God.
However, Tiger is a perfect example of precisely why Jesus came. Why He endured the pain and agony of the cross – to make us right with God. He did what only He could ever do by becoming the sin sacrifice you and I could never hope to pay.
It is my hope that today you have either accepted that sacrifice or will do so ASAP.