Sinners Bowed Down With Care

The guilty pair, bowed down with care,

God gave His Son to win

Like many of you, my faith allows me to accept that Jesus’ Blood is sufficient, complete and most acceptable to God for the payment of the sins of the world. I have no problem in seeing that Jesus bore the sins of those who were crucified with Him. However, I still am not settled with the meaning of, bowed down with care. Then it comes to me as readily, easily and as simply as this.

All sinners are bowed down with care. I’m promptly brought to remember Jesus’ words in the parable He told about the Sower. For those who have been like me, wondering about what cares had those two malefactors bowed down, I quote some of the parable. In His explanation of the parable, Jesus used the word, cares. Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word and he becomes unfruitful. Matthew 13: 22. Those two sinners, described as two thieves in other translations, on their crosses, were both people who were bowed down with taking on the cares of this evil world. One such care would be the reason for them being thieves. If persons have what they need, or are satisfied with the little they have and live thankful, trusting, praying lives, then would there be the need to care to steal? One would rather hear the person saying, “I care not to steal.”

The stirring point before us is this. Since these two sinners represent the two kinds of people in this world of darkness and evil, and we each fit into one or the other kind of sinner, then here are some fixed, unmovable and inerasable human facts. Those unalterable adjectives used – fixed, unmovable, inerasable – state facts that do not depend on whether they are believed or not believed, to be true. In other words, my not believing a fact does not in any way make it fiction. My stubborn or silent denial of a truth, does not make it an untruth. Because one sinner refused to accept Jesus as his Saviour, did not make Jesus not his Saviour. Subsequently, because he, that sinner, did not accept that Jesus’ Blood was being shed for his sins, did not mean that Jesus’ Blood was ineffective to wash away sins.

I say this to say that some of us may not see ourselves in the light of those thieves, bowed down with care, but whether we believe it or not, does not in any way change the fact that we are. As stated previously, it is because we are all bowed down with this world’s cares that we can know resurrection from them. We all can know, in flesh and bones receiving, a rising, a lifting, new life from the crippling, suffocating, stifling cares, which will choke and continue to choke out every bit of faith we have in God’s heard Word.

Remember, in the parable of the Sower, Jesus said that the people who were bowed down or bound by cares, were people who had received the Living Word, the Gospel Word. To receive God’s Living Word is to receive Jesus. I can assure you that those two sinners on their crosses had, at some point in time, received the Living Word. I honestly believe that those two sinners heard the Word and knew about Jesus, but the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches, choked the Living Word and sadly, they became unfruitful.

This is the true picture of every single one of us, sinners, bowed down with care. It is precisely because we all are bowed down with care that the Love of God was so rich and free, as to give His One and Only Son, to come into this dark, sin-riddled world, to win us back to God. This is a resurrection fact, for Jesus can only win back to the Father, what was His in the first place. Jesus can only win back the sinner, not the saint.

It cannot be emphasized too strongly, repeated too frequently or spoken of too passionately, this resurrection fact. God’s Love, greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell, sent His Precious, Innocent, Immaculate, Blameless, Unblemished, Sinless Son, to win ALL sinners. Jesus, God’s Beloved Son, in whom He is well pleased, knew Love beyond any measure of sin, even sins of the deepest dye. He knew this in order to win us back to a Heavenly Father, whose unfailing Love for us did not want to see us die for our sins. Jesus died for all sinners, the entire worldly population of right and left dwellers. He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again. 2 Corinthians 5: 15.

Jesus died for all.