stonegatestandard.com

           There are a few people in history that I would like to be, but Benedict Arnold isn’t one of them.  Despite the fact that he was a good general and strategist (he was arguably among the best military leaders in the Continental Army and the hero of the battle of Saratoga), his name has become synonymous with treachery, selfishness and cowardice.  Rather than standing up for what was right, when he was insulted personally he gave up, turned his coat inside out and switched sides.  Despite his good qualities and diligent work at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, Arnold has been alienated and rejected because he betrayed his country. 

            Our response to people like Arnold is that they should be punished for their crime. He betrayed those who depended on him, trusted him and supported him – including his friend George Washington. If the Continental Army had captured Arnold, he likely would have been tried and executed because of his treachery.  Accordingly, we have all but erased him from our nation’s history: there is a blank plaque at West Point for the time he was commandant; there is a blank space where his statue should be honoring the American generals from the battle of Saratoga.  As far the Revolution was concerned, he ceased to exist.  Nobody likes a traitor.

            We are traitors.  We are turncoats.  We are disloyal rebels who have left the One who loves us and cares for us.  Those are hard charges for us to swallow, but those are the historical facts of our treachery against God.  We are alienated from God because of the sins that we have committed.  We are at war with him in our minds, fighting to be the master over our lives rather than submitting to his will.  We do many things that are evil and harmful to his will for mankind (Colossians 1.21).   While we deserve the same punishment as Arnold, being effectively erased from existence, God doesn’t deal with us in the way we deserve.

            Rather than seeking to destroy us for crossing him, God sent his own son to die in our place.  Rather than seeking vengeance, God chose to be gracious.  Rather than forgetting us, God has chosen to remember us in our time of trouble.  He calls to us through the gospel of his Son, Jesus the Messiah, and offers us forgiveness and a chance to return: ‘Repent, therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out…’ (Acts 3.19). 

            It could be said that God is offering us the chance to un-turn our coats, but he does even more than that.  He doesn’t want us wearing our old coats at all since they have been tainted by the world and sin.  God wants us to wear something entirely different, something altogether more glorious and wonderful than we could ever find on our own.  God wants us to be clothed with his son, Jesus, by being baptized.  “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Galatians 3.27).  

            Nowhere else can such an offer of mercy and clemency be found.  Nowhere else can such forgiveness be obtained.  No one else has ever offered so much to an enemy.  No one else has ever loved like God.  ‘Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways…to him be glory forever.  Amen.’ (Romans 11.33,36b)