Johnny Gaudreau’s widow gives birth 7 months after his death

Meredith Gaudreau gave birth to her third baby, son Carter Michael Gaudreau, on Tuesday, April 1. He was just one of approximately 368,000 babies born that day, but here’s what made his birth so newsworthy: it came seven months after his father, Johnny Gaudreau, was killed while biking alongside his NHL star brother Matthew. Their sister was to be married the next day.

Three months ago, Madeline Gaudreau welcomed her first baby boy, Tripp Matthew, four months after his father Matthew’s death.

It is difficult to imagine a more horrific story. The two brothers were killed when a driver suspected to be under the influence of alcohol attempted to pass another car and fatally struck them. The driver was charged with two counts of death by auto and arrested; police say the investigation is ongoing.

Stories like these always raise the hardest of faith questions.

Where my thoughts default in the face of suffering

As you know, Christians believe that:

• God is all-knowing.
• God is all-powerful.
• God is all-loving.

And yet innocent suffering exists.

If you believe what the Bible says about God’s omniscient ability to see the future (cf. Isaiah 46:8–10), you therefore believe that he saw the Gaudreaus’ death before it happened. If you believe what the Bible says about his omnipotent ability to intervene in our world miraculously (cf. Psalm 77:14), you therefore believe that he had the power to prevent the collision that killed the brothers.

So we are left with the third condition for such an intervention—that “God is love” (1 John 4:8) and must always want what is best for us. Any time someone is aware of a calamity and has the ability to prevent it but does not, all we can do is assume they chose not to.

This was where my thoughts defaulted when my father died of a heart attack at the age of fifty-five, when our older son was diagnosed with cancer some years ago, and when our youngest grandson was diagnosed with leukemia. I didn’t think that God was surprised, or that he had lost the ability to prevent disaster or heal bodies. All I was left to wonder, therefore, was what our family’s suffering said about his love.

I assume you have struggled with the same question along the way, perhaps even today.

How many sins have humans committed?

We can speculate about God’s divine character, but he reminds us, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9). Rather than using our finite minds to try to comprehend his infinite nature, let’s turn from speculation to facts.

During this Easter season, it’s customary to remember the events that led to Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday. We know the facts of the story and the motive behind them: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

It was not just that Jesus was sinless and therefore completely innocent of the charges against him, a fact even Pontius Pilate acknowledged (cf. Luke 23:4, 14–15; John 18:38). It’s not just that Jesus died for your sins and mine.

It’s that he died for every sin of every sinner across all of human history: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21, my emphasis). He died for every sin you have ever committed. The same is true for me, and for every one of the 117 billion people who have ever lived.

Let’s assume that each person commits an average of ten sins a day. For some, that would be a bad day; for others, it would be a good day. Then let’s estimate the average life span across human history at around thirty-five years (it was thirty-two in 1900, lower in the centuries before but much higher in the century since). Let’s further assume that the typical person commits their first sin around the age of five, leaving thirty years of active sinning.

Now let’s do the math:

• 10 x 365 days a year = 3,650 sins per person per year.
• 30 years per person = 109,500 sins per person per lifetime.
• Multiplying this by 117 billion people in history = 12,811,500,000,000,000 sins.

I have no idea whether this math is accurate or not, but perhaps it illustrates the enormity of the sin burden Jesus bore at Calvary for us.

When the Father forsook the Son

But it’s even worse: Jesus died for every sin humans have yet to commit. Since we don’t know how long he will wait before returning to end human history, I wouldn’t know how to begin estimating that number.

And it’s still worse: When this unfathomably large number of sins was placed on Jesus’ sinless soul, for the first time in all of eternity the holy Father was forced to separate from his now-sinful Son. In that moment, Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). This was the only time in all the Gospels that Jesus referred to his Father not as “Father” but as “God.”

Not only can finite minds not comprehend the number of sins for which Jesus died—fallen souls cannot begin to comprehend the horror he felt when they were placed on his sinless soul and separated him from his sinless Father.

I have no analogies to illustrate this. All I can do is pause in wonder before such love.

“You are my righteousness, I am your sin”

The next time suffering causes you to question whether God loves you, remember all that the grace of the cross cost our Savior. The next time you are tempted to sin, remember all that your next sin cost him. The next time you have an opportunity to share your faith but hesitate because of the perceived risk to yourself, remember the cross and what was done there for you. Then respond in gratitude for such inestimable grace.

Martin Luther exhorted us:

Learn to know Christ and him crucified. Learn to sing to him and say, “Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness, I am your sin. You have taken upon yourself what is mine and given me what is yours. You have become what you were not so that I might become what I was not.”

Will you make this prayer yours today?

Quote for the day:

“Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God’s grace.” —Jerry Bridges

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