San Francisco police officer and devoted father, Frank Conner searched frantically for a compatible bone marrow donor for his son Matt, who had leukemia. He searched country-wide, but came up empty each time. No suitable match could be found.
In desperation, he breaks into the FBI headquarters and looking through the files of all the convicted felons for their blood type, he found a perfect match. Unfortunately, it was Peter McCabe, a vicious murderer serving life in prison. He has attempted to escape on several occasions, killing several guards and fellow prisoners over the years. He had to be kept in multiple restraints whenever he was out of his isolation cell.
At first McCabe showed little or no interest in helping Officer Conner, but later decided he would help his son Matt, by donating his bone marrow. Meanwhile, McCabe saw this as the perfect opportunity to turn the situation to his advantage. So he devised a scheme to escape.
And so, Conner, along with Police Captain Cassidy and Matt’s doctor, Dr. Hawkins, carefully transferred McCabe to the hospital for the transplant. At the hospital, McCabe is given a sedative. But with the aid of a counteracting drug, which he had obtained from a fellow inmate, he quickly administered it to himself, slipped out of his restraints, and attacked the guards, as he escaped into the hallway and headed for outside.
Officer Conner found him and puts his own life in jeopardy by shielding him with his own body, when the SWAT Team moved in to try and recapture him. Officer Conner was wounded in the process.
After hearing Dr. Hawkins warning the police not to harm Mc Cabe, because if he dies, his bone marrow would become useless; McCabe agreed to the transplant, having seen the self-sacrificing action of Matt’s father. The procedure was a success, and Matt’s life was saved.
And even though his career as a police officer was now clearly over because of his action in trying to obstruct the capture of a notorious felon, Conner is relieved. When asked about what he had done, Conner replied, “Desperate situations call for desperate measures.”
Have you ever been in a state of desperation? Have you ever done something so desperate that when it was over you couldn’t believe that you had done it? Connor’s act of shielding McCabe from the bullets was a desperate one. It was a self-sacrificing act. But it was prompted by the love he had for his son.
Father God has an even greater love for His children. He saw our hopeless state but he was never in a state of desperation. He had the solution well in hand. He had a plan to save us before the foundation of the world.
So Jesus coming to earth to save us wasn’t a desperate measure by the Father. It was a plan prompted by love. He put His Son in harms way, in order to save us all.
The Scriptures tell us In Galatians 4:4-7:
But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir (Galatians 4:4-7).
This wasn’t Plan-B on God’s part. Because of the foreknowledge of God, nothing ever takes him by surprise. So, Jesus coming to earth to save us, wasn’t out of desperation but out of a plan, which God devised based on love. This plan is so beautifully portrayed in the Gospel of John;
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Just as leukemia infects the blood and takes its victims on the road to death, so sin had infected all of mankind and set us on the road to death. But out of His great love for us, God made His Son a Donor for us, shedding His own blood to purify ours. It was Plan-A, all the way. Not a desperate measure, but a deliberate act of love.
So you could imagine the excitement and joy when Jesus came to those who believed and accepted Him. There was a sense that desperate people who had long been marginalized, ostracized, and were at the lowest level on the social and religious scale; those who had been considered outcasts, could now be brought into the centre of God’s redeeming love.
That’s why when Jesus faced the possibility of coming to earth to save us, the thought of going to the cross did not deter Him. Instead, with reckless abandonment, he gave up his heavenly position, humbled himself, taking upon himself, our form and our sin, in order that he might present us before the Father, whole and complete.
Yes, desperate situations call for desperate measures. But Jesus going to the Cross wasn’t a desperate measure. It was a deliberate plan devised by God’s love for you and for me. No, the cross wasn’t a desperate measure, but a demonstration of God’s love.
