Painful Truth

Painful Truth

Read: Acts 9:1-6

“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”

Acts 9:5

“It is often the offensive side of Jesus that we need most.”

—John Piper

IN WORD Can you imagine the shame Saul must have felt when the risen and ascended Jesus met him on the road to Damascus? His whole life had been given to pursuing the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to understanding the law of Moses. He had been a Pharisee par excellence by his own reckoning, confident in his righteous standing before God. Unfortunately, he had also zealously persecuted the very same God he sought to serve. In a moment, he went from thinking he was one of God’s greatest friends to knowing that he had helped put God incarnate—and some of His followers—to death. The blow to the ego is staggering.

And yet it is the epitome of grace. The God Paul thought he knew would have stricken such a rebel down immediately. The God Paul came to know revealed his sin and showed him the way to salvation. What mercy! In the harshest, most emotionally painful moment of Paul’s life, he received grace.

IN DEED Grace begins with a crisis. It cannot be understood apart from a clear recognition that we need it desperately. Perhaps we have not sinned as grievously as Paul. But when we hear the truth about ourselves, we should be no less humbled. The revelation of our true nature and the fact that we were all once enemies of God (Romans 5:10) would be psychologically devastating if not for the grace that follows. Contrary to the popular image of Jesus as thoroughly benign and accommodating, He speaks the painful truth. And sometimes that truth is incredibly humbling.

God means for us to walk in this kind of humility. No redeemed persons are spared from the knowledge of their offenses before God, because it is only in that knowledge that we can stand in His grace. It is harsh, yes, but behind the harshness is the love that brings us to Him. Is there any pride in the way we Christians relate to God or to one another? Let it be undone by the severity of truth and the comfort of grace.