Read with Me
1 Timothy 1:15-17 (HCSB)
This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—and I am the worst of them. But I received mercy for this reason, so that in me, the worst of them, Christ Jesus might demonstrate His extraordinary patience as an example to those who would believe in Him for eternal life. Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.
Listen with Me
In these few short words, Paul clearly reveals the “secret” to his whole motive in doing the ministry that so consumed his whole life: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
We have heard these words or words like them so frequently that it is easy to miss their radical meaning. In the days of Jesus all the way into the time of Paul, the conventional wisdom was that the Messiah would come to save the righteous, and to deliver them from those who had invaded and conquered their land.
But when Jesus came, He did not conquer the Roman overlords of the land as so many expected. And He didn’t hang out with the Jewish leaders and the “good Church people” as the Messiah was widely expected to do. Instead, He spent his days among the poor of the land, the castoffs, the tax collectors and sinners. That was a key reason why He had been rejected as Messiah by the majority of the Jewish civic and religious leaders.
When asked specifically the reason for these choices, Jesus simply answered, “Those who are well don’t need a doctor, but the sick do. Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy and not sacrifice. For I didn’t come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:12-13)
Of course, Jesus well knew that there were no truly righteous people in the world. Those self-righteous Pharisees were as blackened by sin as the prostitutes and tax collectors He was ministering to. They were just unwilling to admit their sickness, so they refused to accept the cure that was being offered to them by Jesus.
Paul knew that he had been precisely that self-righteous before Jesus confronted him on the Damascus Road and changed his heart and his life. Before the glorious risen Savior, all Paul’s pretensions of righteousness before God fell away, and he saw himself as he truly was: a persecutor of God’s people, a wretched, sin-filled and violent man whose soul was doomed, the worst of sinners.
Paul realized that if the grace of God and the sacrifice of Jesus could save someone like him, as lost and sin-filled as he had been, if someone like that could be remade into a saint, then any one could be saved and transformed. His testimony became his best evangelistic tool, and he used it continually, because it so clearly demonstrated God’s unreasonable, miraculous love for those lost in sin, as well as clearly showing what His divine power could do to truly transform anyone who turned to Him in faith.
Pray with Me
Father, this reinforces an earlier insight You showed me: that far too often in our evangelistic efforts, we tend to resort to theological arguments and philosophical reasoning to persuade people to trust in Jesus. But it is our own testimony of transformation, our own first-hand experience with the risen Lord, that will be most persuasive. Lord, You have given me a wonderful testimony. Help me to share it boldly so that all can see Your grace, Your love, Your saving and transforming power, and turn to You for salvation. Amen.