Who Can Be Saved?

This talk Bible verses on pieces of paper that had blanks spaces to fill in. Which looked like:

1 Timothy 1:15 This is a trustworthy saying, and everyone should accept it: “Christ Jesus came into the world to __________ _______________”—and I am the worst of them all. 16 But God had mercy on me so that Christ Jesus could use me as a prime example of his ________ ____________ with even the worst sinners. Then others will realize that they, too, can believe in him and receive eternal life.

Knowing Jesus Redefines who we think can be saved.

Try to see if you can fill in these blank spaces correctly because we will come back to those.

We are back in Paul’s letter to Timothy. Wherein he is addressing the problem of people teaching a false gospel. People who were taking the truth about Jesus and distorting it into lies about what it meant to be a follower of Jesus. Like people do today, they were taking God’s Word and twisting it to fit their own opinions. It was like they were treating the Bible like madlibs, they were filling in the truth with their own words. They were answering common questions that some of us often ask like: Can really anyone be loved by God? They were answering “No”, because they wanted to be an exclusive club, but that is not the true gospel. Not only can anyone be loved by God, God wants to love everyone. In fact, God is so focused on loving people that when Jesus came to earth he said “The whole law can be summed up in two sentences: Love God, love others”.

God’s law is important for many reasons including: it helps us know how we have messed up, it teaches us how to love others, and it shows us how awesome God is. However, the people in Timothy’s church were not only enforcing laws unnecessarily, they were also acting as though they were above God’s law of loving Him and loving others. Paul wanted to protect the church from this judgemental moralistic problem. Christians should not dismiss sin, we know that breaking God’s law hurts us and those around us. Paul tells Timothy that sins like the practice of homosexualality, looking at pornography, lying to others, and disrespecting parents all cause pain that make God’s heart hurt and make us guilty enough to die. But Paul explains that Jesus did not come to let you die, but to give you life. Jesus came to save sinners. 

 “I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength to do his work. He considered me trustworthy and appointed me to serve him, even though I used to blaspheme the name of Christ. In my insolence, I persecuted his people. But God had mercy on me because I did it in ignorance and unbelief. Oh, how generous and gracious our Lord was! He filled me with the faith and love that come from Christ Jesus.”

(1 Timothy 1:12-14)

What is something we know Paul was guilty of?

He was an accomplice for murder, he was proud, self-righteous, he used to go around saying that Jesus was a liar and a lunatic. Is there anything worse than calling Truth Himself a liar? Paul had been informed of God’s Truth his whole life through the Old Testament, but he conformed to the world of religious rules instead of to God’s law which was to love Him and love others. Paul was an ugly sinner, doing terrible things all the while thinking he was better than other people, he didn’t deserve Jesus’ love, right? Paul didn’t just wake up one day and decide he was going to change his heart either. It was God who changed him. God had mercy on him. He filled him with faith and love that came from knowing how much Christ Jesus loved him. It was when Paul met Jesus that his whole life was transformed. He met the Person of Truth and learned that Jesus came to save all sinners who will repent. 

15 year old Christine knew that she was a good kid in everything. In doing chores, in doing homework, in going to church, even in soccer practice when the coach told us how many laps to run I would each one without a complaint. There was a problem though, I didn’t like the girls on my team because they talked back to the coach and complained about running laps. They all went to a Christian school together, but none of them acted like Christians in my opinion. I remember telling my mentor, “Brynna, they are so mean. I heard them gossiping about a girl who was only a yard away from them! They say they are Christians, but there is no way that’s true.” Brynna listened to me as I vented and then she said something that changed my life, “Just because they don’t know Jesus the same way you do, doesn’t mean they don’t know him at all.” Brynna taught me at that moment that I am not the judge of who gets to go to heaven. It is not up to me to decide if someone knows Jesus based on their actions. I am not the judge of whether or not someone is worthy of Jesus’ love. God already made that decision when Jesus came into the world to save any lawbreakers who will repent. Jesus came to save sinners, knowing that even after we are saved we sometimes still sin. 

How did you fill in the blanks in verse 15 and 16?

‘This is a trustworthy saying, and everyone should accept it: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—and I am the worst of them all. But God had mercy on me so that Christ Jesus could use me as a prime example of his great patience with even the worst sinners. Then others will realize that they, too, can believe in him and receive eternal life. All honor and glory to God forever and ever! He is the eternal King, the unseen one who never dies; he alone is God. Amen.”

(1 Timothy 1:15-17)

I hate that Paul says he’s the worst sinner, because I know for a fact that I sin more than he did -on a daily basis. If I rip this piece of paper, it is ripped paper it doesn’t matter if I rip it once or a hundred times it can’t make itself unripped paper. If I sin one time or a hundred times in my life I am a sinner. A student once asked me ‘why we are judged for what Adam and Eve did?’, but the truth is that we aren’t judged by that: we are judged by what we do. We have sinned. If we were in their place, we would’ve sinned. We would’ve chosen to love ourselves over loving God and loving others. Everytime we sin, that’s the law we are breaking: we love ourselves more than we love God and more than we love others. But God wants to have mercy on us. 

Have any of you ever told your parents “I hate you” or maybe lashed out at your parents in a different way? When I would do that as a child, I was always shocked when my parents didn’t scream back “I hate you too”. Instead, they waited for me to calm down, to stop screaming and stomping, and they would hug me. They were showing me great patience. God’s patience for you every time you hurt someone, doubt Him, and break His law is great. Because Jesus came to save sinners, no matter how terrible.

I wish that when I saw my teammates again that I had wanted to share the grace that I had received from God, from my parents, and from Brynna. I wish I had told them that even though I thought I was a good kid, I knew in my heart that I was a sinner who was no better than any of them. I wish that I had shown them great patience and that, like Paul, I had told the story of the way Jesus was saving my life. I wish I could have explained to them that the moralistic judgemental person I was being wasn’t who Jesus wanted me to be. He wanted me to be loving to them because He loved them. Perhaps they knew Jesus too, perhaps they just struggled with different sins than I did. It didn’t matter if I thought they were good enough to follow Him, He had already given them an open invitation.

Anyone who wants to follow Jesus is welcome. If you think you are too bad for Jesus’ love, you are wrong. If you think you are too good for Jesus’ love, you are wrong. The truth is that we are all sinners and because God loves us Jesus came to save sinners. You have been informed of that truth. Now you have the choice to conform to it and be transformed by it, or to ignore it. The truth and goodness of God’s law still works in my life, it shows me my sin, it teaches me how to love others, and it shows me just how merciful and patient He is. There are times when I still act like 15 year old Christine. I still fight with my sin,

“But God had mercy on me so that Christ Jesus could use me as a prime example of his great patience with even the worst sinners. Then others will realize that they, too, can believe in him and receive eternal life. All honor and glory to God forever and ever! He is the eternal King, the unseen one who never dies; he alone is God. Amen.”

(1 Timothy 1:16-17)

Knowing this truth Redefines who we think can be saved.