Why Jesus Came 1 Timothy 1:12-17
I received this story by email this week:
A Priest was being honoured at his retirement dinner after 25 years in the parish. A leading local politician and member of the congregation was chosen to make the presentation and to give a little speech at the dinner. However, he was delayed, so the Priest decided to say his own few words while they waited:
'I got my first impression of the parish from the first confession I heard here. I thought I had been assigned to a terrible place. The very first person who entered my confessional told me he had stolen a television set and, when questioned by the police, was able to lie his way out of it. He had stolen money from his parents, embezzled from his employer, had an affair with his boss's wife, taken illegal drugs . . . I was appalled. But as the days went on I learned that my people were not all like that and I had, indeed, come to a fine parish full of good and loving people.'... Just as the Priest finished his talk, the politician arrived full of apologies at being late.
He immediately began to make the presentation and gave his talk: 'I'll never forget the first day our parish Priest arrived,' said the politician. 'In fact, I had the honour of being the first person to go to him for confession.'
In the email the moral to the story is “never, never, never be late”.
The Apostle Paul may feel somewhat like that politician, in fact, he seems to indicate he, indeed, feels like a horrible sinner in the opening paragraphs of his letter to his beloved fellow minister, Timothy.
Paul may have felt akin to another sinner:
Two or three years before the death of John Newton (former slave ship captain and eventual author of the song, "Amazing Grace"), when his sight was so dim that he was no longer able to read, a friend and brother in the ministry called to have breakfast with him. Newton said, "I am not what I ought to be! How imperfect and deficient I am! I am not what I wish to be, although I abhor that which is evil and would cleave to what is good! I am not what I hope to be, but soon I shall be out of mortality, and with it all sin and imperfection. "Though I am not what I ought to be, nor what I wish to be, nor yet what I hope to be, I can truly say I am not what I once was: a slave to sin and Satan. I can heartily join with the apostle and acknowledge that by the grace of God I am what I am!" (From a sermon by Steve Shepherd, The Grace of God, 11/1/2011)
1 Timothy 1:12-17
12 I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength, that he considered me faithful, appointing me to his service. 13 Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. 14 The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
15 Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. 16 But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life. 17 Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.
One pastor said
Grace goes beyond mercy. Mercy is the Governor giving a guilty man a pardon. Grace is the Governor giving the man a pardon and then taking him home to live with him.
Tomas Phillips CEO, Raytheon had a friend, Charles Coleson, over for dinner.
Coleson was Chief Counsel to the President of the United States at that time, Richard Nixon.
He gave Coleson a book C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, in which Lewis argued that the Great Sin is Pride. “He’s writing about me”. Tom told him how he had gone forward in a Billy Graham crusade and given his life to Christ and asked to pray with him. He said no. He had never prayed except in church, so Tom prayed for him.
That night for the first time in my life I was sure there was a God, and I was sure he was here.
He left their home and sat down in his car, and began to leave. As he drove out the driveway he began to weep. He wept so much he had to pull the car over.
With my face cupped in my hands, head leaning forward against he wheel, I forgot about machismo, about pretenses, about fears of being weak. And as I did, I began to experience a wonderful feeling of being released. Then came the strange sensation that water was not only running down my cheeks, but surging through my whole body as well, cleansing and cooling as it went. They weren’t tears of sadness and remorse, nor of joy—but somehow, tears of relief.
And then I prayed my first real prayer. “God, I don’t know how to find You, but I’m going to try! I’m not much the way I am now, but somehow I want to give myself to You”. I didn’t know how to say more, so I repeated over and over the words: Take me. . . I stayed there in the car, wet-eyed, praying, thinking, for perhaps half and hour, perhaps longer, alone in the quiet of the dark night. Yet for the first time in my life I was not alone at all. (Born Again)
A few days later on the coast of Maine He took the next step.
And so early that Friday morning, while I sat alone staring at the sea I love, words I had not been certain I could understand or say fell naturally from my lips: “Lord Jesus, I believe You. I accept You. Please come into my life. I commit to You”.
With these few words that morning while the briny sea churned, came a sureness of mind that matched the depth of feeling in my heart. There came something more: strength and serenity, a wonderful new assurance about life, a fresh perception of myself and the world around me. In the process, I felt old fears, tensions and animosities draining away. I was coming alive to things I’d never seen before; as if God was filling the barren void I’d known for so many months, filling it to its brim with a whole new kind of awareness. (142-3)
35 years later, in a speech given to a group of students and professors at Cornell University, Chuck Coleson said “Nothing about my life has been the same since, nothing about my life can be the same again”. . . I am more convinced of the reality of Jesus Christ than I am of my one reality.”
Read from Mere Christianity
If individuals live only seventy years, then a state, or a nation, o r a civilization, which may last for a thousand years, is more important than an individual. But if Christianity is true, then the individual is not only more important but incomparably more important, for he is everlasting and the life of the state or a civilization, compared with his, is only a moment.
Doug Coe
Gave a Bible in which he wrote “it is better to fail in a cause that will ultimately succeed than to succeed in a cause that will ultimately fail”.
He spent 7 months in prison for his part in the Watergate Scandal in 1974. This was another turning point in his life. Moved by his experience in prison he committed himself to helping prison families and reforming the prison system worldwide. Since that time Prison Fellowship has grown to have an impact throughout the world. In the US Prison Fellowship has established 10 model prisons based on the principle of restoration, and faith, from which the recidivism rate (inmates returning to crime after returning to society) is about 8 percent, compared to more than 60 percent in government-run programs. Prison Fellowship has outreaches to prisoners in more than 150 countries, including India. This ministry reaches hundreds of thousands of prisoners every year with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He also has written more than twenty books on Christian themes, including one of my favorite books about the role of the church, The Body.
Chuck Coleson died April 21, 2012
Samuel Rodriguez of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference tweeted, "Chuck Colson's journey speaks [of] a man who fell into grace rather than falling from [grace]."
Imagine if Tom Phillips had not had the courage to share his faith with Chuck Coleson.
The Challenge I challenge each person in this room to share Jesus with someone this week. You never know the impact you may have on that person’s life, or the impact that person will have on the world.
G. K. Chesterton was another man who experienced a radical transformation through the Gospel of Jesus. He was one of the most influential writers of the early 20th Century. As one commentator wrote “he wrote something about everything. And he wrote it better than anyone else”. After he had a radical conversion to Jesus he committed his pen to tell people about Jesus.
The Convert
BY G. K. CHESTERTON
After one moment when I bowed my head
And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white.
I walked the ways and heard what all men said,
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
Being not unlovable but strange and light;
Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
But softly, as men smile about the dead
The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.
Jesus came to save sinners—to turn them from death to life. As He was sent into the world, He sends us. Like Paul, we all may feel that we are the ‘chiefest of sinners’, and, thereby, disqualified to this great and noble and wonderful task. Yet God has counted us worthy to be His witnesses in the world. He will take our weak, feeble attempts at evangelism and use them to bring a dead and dying world to the life and light of Jesus Christ.
Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.
