“I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. 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 Timothy 1:12-16
(The following is an excerpt of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones book Spiritual Depression from his chapter “That One Sin,” based largely from the scripture above. Any underlining is added.)
…You notice what the Apostle says; what he claims here is that in a sense the Lord Jesus Christ saved him in order to set him up as a model… A model for those people who feel that their particular sin somehow or another passes the limit of grace and the mercy of God. The Apostle’s argument is that his case alone is sufficient proof, once and for ever, that we must never reason along that line. In other words, here are people who believe that sins can be graded and they draw distinctions between particular sins. They classify them saying that some are forgivable and some apparently are not. To these the Apostle says that his own case is more than sufficient to deal with the argument. ‘Whatever you may think,’ he says, ‘whatever you may have done, think of me, think of what I was, “a blasphemer, a persecutor and injurious”.’ Could anything be worse? He hated the very Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, he did his utmost to exterminate His followers, he went down to Damascus ‘breathing out threatenings and slaughter’ against them. He was in that condition, a blasphemer, a persecutor. ‘Now’, says the Apostle, ‘I am a test case, and whatever you may think about yourself, put it up against my case and see where you stand.’ That is the first argument. You think of his case and say to yourself: ‘If he obtained mercy, if he could be forgiven, I must think again of this sin in my life’. That is where you start.
But the Apostle does not stop at that, because in a sense we must not differentiate between sin and sin. On the surface the Apostle seems to be doing that. He says: ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the chief’, as if to say there are big sinners and lesser sinners and little sinners. He did not mean that, however: he cannot possibly mean that, for that would be to contradict his essential doctrine. What he does mean is that the nearer a man gets to God the greater he sees his sin. When a man sees the blackness of his own soul, he says: “I am the chief of sinners’; and it is only a Christian who can say that. The man of the world will never make such a statement. He is always proving what a good man he is. But Paul seems to be saying more than that, as I have just been saying. He does seem to suggest in one way that these sins against the person of Christ are the sin of sins. But he makes his meaning plain when he puts it like this, in other words: ‘I did it ignorantly, in unbelief.’ In putting it like this he demolishes these grades of sin. Looking at it from one angle his sin was the worst sin conceivable, but from another angle it is the sum of all sins because finally there is only one sin and that is the sin of unbelief.
That is the great New Testament doctrine on this matter; it is the thing that these people have to grasp above everything else, that we must not think in terms of particular sins but always in terms of our relationship to God. We all tend to go astray at that point. That is why we tend to think that some conversions are more remarkable than others. But they are not. It takes the same grace of God to save the most respectable person in the world as the most lawless person in the world. Nothing but the grace of God can save anybody, and it takes the same grace to save all. But we do not think like that. We think some conversions are more remarkable than other. Because we are wrong in our doctrine, we differentiate between sin and sin, and think some sins are worse than others. It all comes back to our relationship to God; it is all a matter of belief or unbelief.
…’My unbelief,’ says Paul, ‘that was the trouble’—not particular actions. It is indeed our relationship to God and His Law that matters.
I wish I could write out the whole chapter, here. Actually, I wish I could force every single person to read the whole book, because it is so full of truth and relevancy to all Christians. (I’m not even halfway through, so maybe I can’t speak for the whole book yet, but still…;) )
I am encouraged to not only see my own sin differently, but also the sins of others. It’s caused me to ask, “Do I see other people’s sins as ‘better’ or ‘worse’, or do I see it all as the same level as myself, a matter of unbelief– a matter of their relationship with God?”
(If you’re interested, here’s a link to the book here. Highly recommended!)
Write with a Purpose 