A Far, Far Better Thing

In Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, Sydney Carton is a man who has wasted his life. Brilliant but broken, he drinks too much, cares too little, and tells the woman he loves that he knows he is beyond saving. He is, by his own admission, "a disappointed drudge."

But in the novel's final act, Carton does something no one — least of all himself — would have predicted. When Charles Darnay, the husband of the woman Carton loves, is sentenced to the guillotine during the French Revolution, Carton slips into the prison, drugs Darnay, switches clothes with him, and takes his place. He goes to the scaffold voluntarily, so that the man his beloved chose instead of him might live.

His final thought, as Dickens imagines it, has echoed through two centuries of readers: "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

What makes Carton's sacrifice so piercing is that he gave his life for someone who had everything he wanted — and could never have. He didn't die for a friend. He died for a rival.

That is a faint but unmistakable echo of the Gospel. Christ did not die for people who deserved it. He gave Himself for us "while we were still sinners" (Romans 5:8). The grace of true sacrifice is that it flows toward the undeserving — and transforms both the giver and the one set free.