#DailyDevotion Chief Of Sinners! Is That You?
1 Tim. 1:15-17 15This is a statement that can be trusted and deserves complete acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. I am the worst of them, 16 but God was merciful to me so that Jesus Christ would first show in me all His long-suffering and make me an example to those who are going to believe in Him and live forever. 17To the everlasting King, the immortal, invisible, and only God, be honor and glory forever. Amen.
There is a meme out there in social media. It is a picture of a guy and the meme says, “You’re insults don’t hurt me. I sings songs in Church that say worse things about me.” Paul tells us this statement about himself can be trusted and deserves complete acceptance: “ Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. I am the worst of them…” The first thing that should be trusted and accepted is Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. If you are a sinner, someone who breaks God’s laws, doesn’t fear, love or trust God, you’re just the person Jesus came to save. He saved you by humbling himself to become human, taking your sin onto himself, and in his flesh experience the full brunt of God’s wrath against your sins so you would not have to.
Was Paul the worst of sinners? Well Paul knew the Torah, the Law, of the LORD forwards and back. He knew the writings and the prophets. Yet he did not at first believe the testimony of those who followed Christ Jesus. Instead of believing them, he rounded them up, persecuted them and had them put to death for blasphemy when it was he himself, by not believing the testimony of eyewitnesses was blaspheming God. I’m certain Paul thought of himself as the chief of sinners.
But was Paul saying he wanted us to accept he was the chief of sinners? Was he perhaps being rhetorical in that we should accept that Christ Jesus came into the world and I am the worst of them? Well William McComb thought Paul meant we should apply those words to ourselves when he penned, “Chief of sinners though I be, Jesus shed his blood for me, died that I might live on high, lives that I might never die. As the branch is to the vine, I am his and he is mine!” He also wrote, “Chief of sinners though I be, Christ is all in all to me; all my wants to him are known, all my sorrows are his own. Safe with him in earthly strife, I await the heavenly life.”
I think first and foremost Paul wanted us to look at him though for he writes, “God was merciful to me so that Jesus Christ would first show in me all His long-suffering and make me an example to those who are going to believe in Him and live forever.” If Christ Jesus could be patient with Paul and ultimately convert him to the faith and make him an object of God’s mercy, kindness, love and grace, then there is hope for you as well, no matter how far down the ladder you have fallen, or if you have fallen off the ladder completely. Jesus saved and called such a one as Paul to be his ambassador. If Jesus saved and called Paul, he also saves and calls you to believe in him and follow him and in believing in Jesus have everlasting life in the world to come. So McComb also penned these words, “Only Jesus can impart comfort to a wounded heart, peace that flows from sin forgiven, joy that lifts the soul to heaven, faith and hope to walk with God in the way that Enoch trod.”
To the everlasting King, the immortal, invisible, and only God, be honor and glory forever. For you have sent your only begotten Son to be the sacrifice for sinful men and give salvation to all who believe in him. Amen.