Adam's podcast

October 12, 2008 - 1 Timothy 1:12-17 - Grace - from the series "Watch Your Step: A Study in First Timothy."

This idea - that some religions call karma - seems to be at the very center of human existence:

• Moses said “fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. As he has injured the other, so he is to be injured.” (Lev. 24:20)


• Jesus said, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” (Matt. 7:12)


• The Apostle Paul wrote, “A man reaps what he sows” (Galatians 6:7)


• Issac Newton’s Third Law of motion says, “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.”


• Justice demands that, “The guilty will not go unpunished.”


• Society says, “What goes around, comes around” or “You get what you deserve.”

So this idea of karma is at the very center of the human existence. And if we are honest, we all have those things that we have “put out” that we hope don’t come back to us. Those things that we have sown that we hope we don’t reap. Those wrongs we have done which deserve recompense

Ours is a world is desperately in need of grace, for we are a people desperately in need of grace.

We all need someone or something to interrupt the consequences of our actions lest we all reap the horror of what we have sown, lest we get what we really deserve, lest we - the guilty - bear the ultimate punishment for our sin.

We need grace.