6.17.20 1 Timothy 1:12-15
12 I give thanks to the one who empowered me, namely, Christ Jesus our Lord, that he treated me as trustworthy, appointing me into his ministry. 13 He did this even though formerly I was a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a violent man. But I was shown mercy, because I acted ignorantly in unbelief. 14 The grace of our Lord overflowed on me along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. 15 This saying is trustworthy and worthy of full acceptance: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” of whom I am the worst.
Jesus is a Real Savior Who Came for Real Sinners
In Acts 9 Jesus told Ananias that Paul was, “my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.” God ended up sending Paul on at least three missionary journeys through dangerous territory. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 11, “Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches.” Legend has it that he was beheaded outside of Rome at the end of his second imprisonment - perhaps during the persecutions of Nero. Who would apply for such a job? Nobody in their right mind would want such a calling.
Yet how did Paul look at his ministry? I give thanks to the one who empowered me, namely, Christ Jesus our Lord, that he treated me as trustworthy, appointing me into his ministry. He was thankful to be able to serve the Lord, no matter how much sacrifice and pain it involved. Paul was also thankful for the fact that Jesus was the One who EMPOWERED him to do such a ministry. He looked at it as an HONOR that God would choose to do His work THROUGH him.
Would that God put this attitude in the hearts of all people: in the mother who has given up a career for her children: in the husband who has rejected a promotion so he could spend more time with his family: in the member who has been asked to serve on a committee at church that will take time and effort: “This is a privilege! I’m thankful for the opportunity!” All too often we complain about how much work WE have to do, and we forget about the God who works THROUGH us and IN us. Paul told the Philippians in chapter 2, “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.”
Paul knew that God had chosen him to do difficult and sacrificial things, and he was honored that God chose to do such things through HIM of all people. It was an honor. No matter how dirty or difficult a calling you have in life: service is to be an HONOR and a PRIVILEGE. A police officer was recently interviewed, talking about how he and his fellow officers were having rocks, bricks and urine thrown at them: how they were being called every name in the book: yet he considered it an HONOR to be able to serve with his fellow police officers. You have to believe that you have a HIGHER calling to have such an attitude in the midst of such pressure. That’s how Paul felt, and that’s how God wants us to feel too. Yet HOW OFTEN do we look at it as the exact opposite? We think God should feel privileged to serve US - and do all the work for US! We get angry and frustrated when life isn’t easy. We give up when we are called on to do the dirty and the difficult things! We’d rather get divorced or quit our callings, because we believe that it just isn’t fair.
Paul’s thankfulness for his ministry came from his view of HIMSELF and his view of God. His thankfulness came from a low sense of self worth. Why did God choose HIM to reach out to the Gentiles? It didn’t have anything to do with Paul’s worthiness. Paul says, “He did this even though formerly I was a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a violent man. Violent, in the Greek, seems to refer to insulting someone in an arrogant manner. So Paul seems to have been arrogant and absolutely convinced that Jesus and his followers were completely heretical. The book of Acts even describes how Paul was there at the stoning of Stephen. Now, Paul does say that he acted in IGNORANCE. He truly thought Jesus and his disciples were leading people astray. Nonetheless, he doesn’t excuse himself for that. He still looked back on how he had done these things and referred to himself as “the WORST” of sinners. He felt awful about what he had done. He knew he deserved to be damned for his sins.
Some would look at this as unhealthy. How do you look at yourself? Do you constantly bring up your sins in your mind, maybe something you did in high school or college? Do you call yourself an “idiot?” Do you yell at yourself and refer to yourself as a “wimp” or a “coward?” Do you feel a constant guilt because maybe you gave up on a relationship and ran away from someone that you should have helped?
Sometimes that looking back can be unhealthy, especially when we end up punishing ourselves when we mentally beat ourselves over our failures. Sometimes people are locked up in fear and shame. Those with failed marriages might always think of themselves as “divorced” and “failures.” Maybe it was their fault they were divorced. So they say to themselves, “There’s no way that God could ever love me. God hates divorce.” Maybe they also say, “Nobody could ever love me.”
Maybe, also, you knew EXACTLY what you were doing when you were doing it. Maybe it wasn’t just a sin of weakness or unbelief where you didn’t know any better. Maybe you DID know better and you decided in stubbornness, “I’m going to do it anyway!” Now here you sit in your guilt, and all you can do is wallow in it. “I deserve much worse!” Maybe it’s true.
What is the remedy? You can pay a counselor smile at you and say, “That’s not true! You’re special! Don’t beat yourself up over it. Think of all the GOOD you do in the world. But your conscience keeps saying, “Guilty. Sinner.”
How did Paul get out of his own sin and guilt? But I was shown mercy, because I acted ignorantly in unbelief. What does this mean? Would Paul not have been given mercy if he DIDN’T act in unbelief? Remember, that Paul was speaking primarily of his calling to reach out to the Gentiles. God called him to be one of the greatest missionaries the world has ever seen - to reach out to the Gentiles. This calling to serve in the public ministry: that was an act of mercy, which was partly due to the fact that Paul acted in ignorance when he was formerly persecuting Christians. You think also of Moses in our Old Testament lesson, who murdered an Egyptian slave master. He thought he was acting in justice by taking the law into his own hands. He wasn’t murdering just for murder’s sake. Both times they could have been disqualified for a public ministry. But the LORD had mercy and called him and Paul to a special and sacrificial service and ministry.
Intention, however, doesn’t make people less sinful or less guilty when it comes to their status before God. Paul wasn’t excused from his sins by doing missionary work either. God doesn’t say, “I’ll forgive you if you give more money to church. I’ll forget about your adultery if you end up getting married and remaining faithful for the rest of your life.” Some people try to assuage their guilt in this way. They use their former sins as a “learning process” that they don’t regret because they wouldn’t have LEARNED how to be who they are today. It’s like they take pride in their past sins. No, that doesn’t work. You can’t use your PRESENT life as a way of erasing your FORMER life and validating who you are or what you do today.
I had a neighbor back in Topeka who was a nice guy, but a troubled guy too. He had alcohol problems, and when he drank he would cuss people out and just be filled with anger. Come to find out, his parents were angry with him because he killed people in a war. They looked at him as a murderer. No matter what he did afterwards, they would never let him forget that he was a murderer in his eyes, and it killed him to have them think that way about him. He just couldn’t win their approval. I had to be blunt with him, “It doesn’t matter what you’re doing with your life now. It won’t change what your parents think of you. If they think you’re a murderer, then you can’t undo that with a good life now. You’ll always be a murderer in their eyes.” We have similar issues that we put ourselves through.
So what relieved Paul of his guilt over what he’d done? Instead of denying who he was or what he had done and instead of trying to excuse it, Paul confessed it. Notice also, he said, “I AM the worst of sinners.” No talk of how he was trying to improve himself or how he had bettered his life. He just confessed, “I am the worst of sinners.” This is what he was, and this is what he still IS.
Sometimes people say things about themselves because they want to be affirmed. “I’m terrible. I’m a loser.” They want people to say, “Oh! Stop it! You’re not that bad! You’re a good person!” You know what God says, “You’re right! You are terrible! You are the worst of sinners!” You can’t talk yourself out of it. But you don’t have to either, because Jesus died your way out of it. This saying is trustworthy and worthy of full acceptance: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” of whom I am the worst.” It’s such a beautiful thing what Paul writes here. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. He doesn’t say good sinners or bad sinners. He doesn’t say the ones that are nice or the ones that are mean. He just says that Jesus came into the world to save sinners. There is no adjective. It’s just a beautifully generic noun - a plural noun - which then by a lack of definition means all of them - even the worst of them. And if Paul, indeed, declared himself to be the worst of sinners by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, then maybe the lesser sinners could be saved too.
And here’s another neat thing, Jesus came here specifically to save sinners. He didn’t come here to help them save themselves. And He didn’t come here to damn them. He came into this world to save them, all of them, by dying for all of their sins. That means that Jesus came to save you too, with all of your rotten and embarrassing sins.
You don’t have to cover them up. You don’t have to make excuses for them. Jesus came to die for them. He came to save you. Instead of hiding them, confess them. Let Him take care of them. Stop trying to be Jesus Christ. You don’t have to punish yourself. You don’t have to try to shame yourself into heaven. He was already punished and shamed for you. You don’t have to pretend to be better than you are. You are a sinner: good, bad and ugly: who has been saved by His death and resurrection. What is the standard to being saved? Be the sinner that you are, and believe that Jesus came to die for YOU - yes YOU the rotten sinner too!
This saying is trustworthy and worthy of full acceptance. It’s trustworthy. God wouldn’t lie to you. It deserves FULL acceptance, not half. Rely on it! Trust it! He came to COMPLETELY save you from beginning to end, head to toe.
This is what enabled Paul to be happy with who he was, the worst of sinners saved by the greatest of Saviors. The only way he could know that and believe that was by the grace of God working on his heart. The grace of our Lord overflowed on me along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. God’s grace broke through his heart and comforted him with forgiveness. And NOT ONLY did Jesus die for his sins, but He also COMMISSIONED him to go and spread the Gospel to the Gentile world. Even if it involved shipwrecks, rejection from his fellow Jews, suffering and death, it was an HONOR to be on such a mission from God: to save souls with the wonderful message of Christ crucified.
It’s been interesting and somewhat sad to see the tug of war that is going on over George Floyd. His family claims he was a gentle giant who was reforming his life. It seems he is being painted a martyr. Al Sharpton compared him to Jesus, the rejected stone who will become the cornerstone of a new movement. But then you look at his past and see a man who was arrested nine times. The video of his arrest shows him dropping a little white bag. I don’t want to be mean, but I don’t exactly see a reformed man there. In the end, does he need to be a hero for his death to mean any more or less? The way he was killed is what it is, no matter what kind of a life he was living. It can speak for itself, no matter what kind of a man he was.
I have to think about this whenever I do a funeral. I don’t want to paint a false light of those who die and pretend they were something they weren’t. As Christians, we don’t have to paint everyone who gets a Christian funeral as a super saint. We’re all sinners. We all deserve hell. When we die we aren’t some sort of martyrs. We are getting the wages of what we deserved. Some have more exemplary lives than others. There’s no denying it or trying to paint a false picture of it. Most people know who you’re burying, and no matter what you say it’s not going to change God’s mind. But the neat thing is that we can be honest about who we all are, the worst of sinners who deserve nothing. Then we can all the more paint the beauty of what it means to have a true Savior who came to pay for real sinners with the ugliest death of all. The beauty of it is that we get heaven by God’s grace GIVEN to us in Christ, through faith. This is what made Paul rejoice. After all of his sins, Jesus still WANTED him, and Jesus still DIED for him. He even gave him a difficult ministry to fulfill. What grace! What mercy! For you too! What an honor we have to serve such a gracious and merciful Savior. Amen.
