Daily Lesson for February 18, 2019

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from 1 Timothy chapter 1 verses 12 through 15:

12 I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, 13even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, 14and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. 15The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the foremost. 

We cannot lose forgiveness. 

In a world consumed with reprisal and vengeance, public condemnation and shaming, forgiveness is risky business. It always has been. For forgiveness opens us always to being accused of being cheap with grace.

Yet I wonder if a lot of people didn’t say the same thing about Paul.  Should such a one as even he be forgiven?  Is that what Christianity calls for — even the vilest offender?

And Jesus’ words from the cross make it clear.  “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

C.S. Lewis once said something to the effect that forgiveness is not only what Christians do but in fact what Christianity is. To be a Christian is to forgive even as we’ve been forgiven. And the measure we give will be the measure we get.

But hard questions remain. Should a person just get off scot-free?  What about public accountability? What about when there are victims?

The grace Paul received did not come cheap. He spent three years in the desert repenting — learning and unlearning, being transformed. And when he came back he came back a changed man. The “Hebrew of Hebrews” came back humbled and far gentler. He came back dedicated to dismantling the system he had once fought so hard to protect. It was “grace” by which he was saved he said, and he prayed that his life’s work was a testimony to the fact that the grace given him was “not in vain”.

I say we give someone some grace today. Someone who challenges us. Perhaps “a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence”.  That may very well be our neighbor across the street now. Perhaps it was once us. 

For it is by grace we are saved. 

And it’s only by grace — not cheap grace, but hard, sobering, demanding, redeeming grace — that this nation will be saved also.