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Mercy is staggering, and we should pray that we never grow numb to it. If you are a Christian, you are one because of divine mercy. You didn’t earn God’s favor, you didn’t secure his love, and you don’t hold yourself in eternal life. Mercy saves, secures, and keeps you in Christ.
Something I love about Paul’s letters is how he remained amazed at God’s mercy to him. When Paul wrote 1 Timothy, he had been a Christian for thirty years. And over the course of those decades, he didn’t become less aware of his sinful condition before conversion. He never forgot the snares of his self-deception and rebellion. His testimony was how divine mercy came to him while he engaged in blaspheming, conspiring, pursuing, and persecuting behavior against Christians.
Paul told Timothy that “formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent” (1 Tim. 1:13). Paul didn’t wax eloquently about mere misguided zeal. He evaluated his pre-Christian activities and labeled them blasphemy. He antagonized disciples. He was an arrogant opponent of the Lord Jesus.
There was a trustworthy saying, then, that Paul wanted Timothy to know and remember: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost” (1 Tim. 1:15). The first part of this verse is a doctrinal claim, and the second part is a personal realization. The Lord Jesus had a mission to rescue the perishing, to save sinners. Given Paul’s activities of persecuting the disciples of Jesus, he certainly qualified as a sinner!
But the gospel not only announced an objective fact; it shined a light upon Paul’s need. He became aware of his deep guilt and intractable transgressions. In fact, when Paul reflected on his pre-Jesus days, he was overwhelmed by his sinful state. He called himself the “foremost” of sinners—the chief. In order for the beauty of divine mercy to gleam and shine bright with hope and relief, Paul needed to remember what Jesus had saved him from. And he had saved Paul from the path of destruction, a path marked by blasphemy and rebellion.
Paul told Timothy, “But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life” (1 Tim. 1:16). Paul didn’t mind being an example. He actually said that divine mercy made him an example!
If sinners will think about the hostile and wicked life of the pre-Jesus Paul, they can have hope that divine mercy can save even them, because divine mercy saved him.
There is no one who is too far gone from the reach of divine mercy. There is no one too wicked whom mercy cannot transform. Paul is saying, “If Christ can save me, he can save anyone!”
In 1495 a man named Thomas Bilney was born. After he grew up, he studied law at Cambridge, but no matter what he studied, nothing brought him peace. One day, as he was reading a Latin translation of the New Testament, he came across Paul’s words in 1 Timothy 1:15, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.”
Bilney said, “I chanced upon this sentence of St. Paul (O most sweet and comfortable sentence to my soul!) in 1 Timothy 1….This one sentence, through God’s instruction and inward looking, which I did not then perceive, did so exhilarate my heart, being before wounded with the guilt of my sins, and being almost in despair, that even immediately I seemed unto myself inwardly to feel a marvelous comfort and quietness, insomuch that my bruised bones leaped for joy.”
Divine mercy can make hard hearts melt, despairing faces cheer, and bruised bones leap. What a wonderful, merciful Savior is Jesus our Lord.