19 Jack’s story - The Leveller

Jack is an elderly grazier with a large property up north. He has been badly treated by the Government and its public servants. He has also been wronged by other landowners. Jack is resigned to the fact that he will never be compensated for his losses. But he would like to see justice applied to those who have wronged him.

When Jack told me the stories of his problems with the Government and difficulties with other land-owners, he took some comfort in what he described as “the Leveller”. He said “the Leveller will get them”. It is true that however you live your life, you will end up in the same situation; death happens to everybody, it levels us all up in the end.

But for Jack there was more to it than the end of life. Jack was also worried that the Leveller would have a score to settle with him. He suspected that after he died, he would have to give an account to the Leveller for all the things done in his life. He took comfort from the levelling that might happen to his persecutors but he was worried that he might also be on the wrong side of the Leveller. He might have his own debt to repay.

I was able to give Jack some really good news, but I’m not sure whether he was willing to take advantage of it. I told him that God was the Leveller and that every living human being was on His wrong side. Our relationship with God was broken because we have all sinned.

And God took that personally. If we cheat on the tax department, if we kick the cat, if we have bad thoughts about somebody, we actually wrong God. We have all sinned. We are all alienated from God.

You may ask 'How can alienation from God be Good News?' It is not; until you hear that God has done something about it. We couldn’t do anything about righting the wrongs we have done against God, because it would be like trying to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, and that is impossible.

God is love, so in theory He could just forgive our sins, but that wouldn’t be fair. Imagine how Jack would feel if the people who wronged him were let off scot free. As well as love, God is also absolutely fair; He is the source of both love and justice. So how did God deal with our sins and meet the requirements of His love and of His justice?

Here is the Good News that I gave Jack, God did the most amazing thing. He paid the penalty for our sins Himself by sending Jesus to die on the Cross for us. Jesus’ coming to this earth and His death on a Roman cross outside Jerusalem is a real historic event.

But Jesus’ death is only half the story. After he lay in a tomb from Friday till Sunday morning, God brought Jesus back from the dead. And that is good news because it proves God has power over death. Death is no longer the final enemy. Death is not the Leveller, God is. God determines where we go after death, those who are His followers to live with Him forever, the rest to eternally lonely and painful isolation.

What do you need to do to be on the right side of the Leveller?

Admit your sinfulness. Accept God’s offer of forgiveness and decide to become Jesus’ disciple, his obedient follower.

This is both the easiest and the hardest thing to do. Easy because He is God and surely God can be trusted to do what He has promised and look after you. But hard because it involves humbling yourself and letting God control your life.