We Need Scandalous Forgivenessናሙና

Living Out Your Forgiveness 

In Acts 9, scripture tells us how Saul of Tarshish encounters God’s radical forgiveness while he’s on his way to imprison, persecute, and perhaps even kill Christ followers in Damascus. 

Despite Saul’s past, post-resurrection Jesus speaks down from Heaven and calls Saul to repentance. Over time, Saul becomes better known for being Paul the Apostle - the church planter, missionary, and writer who played a huge role in the spread of Christianity and wrote the majority of the books in the New Testament.

While you may know this story, have you ever just stopped and thought about how crazy it seems?

This man made a career out of persecuting Christians, approving of executions and “ravaging the church”(Acts 8:1-3). This man, the “foremost” of sinners as he later calls himself, was forgiven by God. 

People often talk about how God forgave Paul, but think about the Christians of that time, too. This man attacked people like them and now they were just supposed forgive him and let him in? Wouldn’t that be dangerous and risky? 

What about Paul forgiving himself? He knew better than anyone all that he had done, all the pain he caused people. To move past it, he would have had to lean heavily on the grace of God, living in the new reality of his forgiveness.  

God calls us to live out our forgiveness. While there is wisdom in being cautious and guarding our hearts, we cannot allow those things to become excuses for neglecting our call to forgive.

Make no mistake.  This is a difficult task. Again, we can see the simplicity of forgiveness in theory but the complexity of it when practiced. We can only live it out when we fully rely on God’s grace in the same way Paul would have.

As you read the scriptures today, look at the different forgiveness narratives: God, Ananias, the people at the synagogue, and the disciples all had to forgive Saul. Think about how Saul would be feeling, and then, think about your own stories of forgiveness. Where has God shown you grace and forgiven you? What about other people? How can you go and model this grace to others?