Seven Pounds and the Gospel of Christ

We recently watched the movie ‘Seven Pounds’ starring Will Smith. A powerful and thought-provoking movie. If you are considering watching it, consider this your *spoiler alert* and read no further, because I am definitely about to spoil it for you.

In the movie, Will Smith caused a car crash that killed his own wife as well as six other people. His guilt torments him, and he devotes the next three years of his life in search of seven noble people in desperate circumstances whom he can redeem and personally provide with a new lease on life. His brother gets lung cancer, so he donates one of his lungs to save his brother’s life. He gives a woman a portion of his liver. He donates bone marrow without anaesthetic. He signs away the ownership of his secluded beach house to a battered woman and her two children. He dedicates his days to good deeds, driven by guilt and remorse.

Throughout the movie, he watches each of his beneficiaries from a distance to determine how they live their lives, to see whether or not they are ‘good people.’ He wants to make sure that his sacrifices will not be in vain, but will be received with gratitude and put to good use.

The story culminates when he falls in love with one of his beneficiaries, a woman who has congenital heart failure. In the final scenes, the woman is told that she has a few weeks to live unless they find a donor with a rare blood type to perform a heart transplant. Will Smith sees this as the grand finale he has been searching for -- his last and greatest act of compensating for the loss of lives he caused. He himself gives his life, providing a new heart to the woman he loves and donating his eyes to a blind man who has proven himself kind and slow to anger in the process.

Clearly there is much that can be gleaned from such a dramatic story, particularly one with so many correlations to the gospel message.

If Will Smith’s character had known the Lord, he would’ve known that none of his good works would be good enough to compensate for what had happened in the past. No amount of good that he did could ever take away his guilt, shame and regret. Only Jesus can do that.

At first glance, the main character’s sacrificial giving seems noble and genuine, and indeed, we too should love our brothers in such a fashion. But it falls flat when he demonstrates that he is only willing to sacrifice and bless those whom he thinks are deserving -- those who have proven themselves to be ‘good people.’

And that’s precisely what makes the sacrificial love of Christ so precious:

“Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” - Romans 5:7-8