“If anyone does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense – Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sin, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” 1 John 2:1-2

Jed Mottley played varsity football in the 1990s at Chaparral High School in Scottsdale, Arizona. At the time, nothing screamed ultimate pride in your sport and school like a letterman jacket. So Jed went to the store to pick out his very own varsity letter jacket. His name was to be embroidered on it as well as his number and his sport. Everything was to his liking. The jacket was ordered and completed, but Jed never saw the final product. When it came time to pick it up, Mottley’s mother told him they didn’t have the money to buy it.  

Jed and his brother were raised by a single mom who did the best she could. She kept a roof over their heads and food on the table, but sometimes that was it. For Christmas one year, she gave them IOUs. So when it came time to buy a $300 letterman jacket, the money wasn’t there. Jed had to inform the local store that he would not be able to purchase the jacket.

John, the apostle, the friend of Jesus, knew what it was like to want something but not be able to pay for it. He worked as a fisherman. If you didn’t catch anything, you didn’t eat (talk about living hand to mouth). And this was not new to him, he grew up this way. His father was a fisherman. There were days he’d come home from work with food, and other days he would not. There were days John and his brother would go to bed full and other times hungry.

John knew what this was like from a spiritual hunger as well. Growing up Jewish, he’d go to the Synagogue and hear of a perfect God, and he’d feel the inadequacy in his own life. He’d live each day with the knowledge of his own sin and his distance from a perfect God. He’d work out in the boats and wonder if it was his own sin that kept God from answering his prayers for a daily catch. 

But then he met Jesus. 

Though Jesus was a homeless itinerant carpenter, Jesus never seemed to worry about food. Jesus fed thousands of people from one boy’s sack lunch. Jesus prayed for daily bread and then lived with the confidence that God would provide. 

Beyond this, Jesus seemed to satisfy a deeper longing that fish and bread could never satisfy. He gave forgiveness to those who thought their life was over. He gave meaning and purpose to those who felt society had overlooked them. And after Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection, John soon discovered that Jesus had paid his way back to God.

So when John writes to his church and tells them about Jesus, he reminds them: “If anyone does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense – Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sin, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” 1 John 2:1-2

John says, let me tell you about my friend. He pays for things we can’t afford. The word atonement has had volumes written about it. It involves Jesus paying a price we could never pay. It involves him satisfying a debt we had with his father. It involves him being the perfect sacrifice for us. But put simply, he bought something for us we could never afford. 

Like a letterman jacket. 

Twenty-eight years after Jed couldn’t afford the letterman jacket, his brother Josh happened to be walking through a thrift store in a small town in Arizona. And there on the rack was the letterman jacket. The exact same one that Jed had designed and never purchased. 

Apparently, the company sold it to someone after Jed couldn’t buy it… and now, nearly three decades later, it had found its way to a secondhand store 180 miles away from where they had gone to high school. Josh bought it. And for Christmas that year, Jed got more than an IOU. He got what he’d always wanted.

Today’s Prayer:

“Jesus, thank you for paying the price I could not afford.”