
Every so often, Scripture taps us on the shoulder and whispers a truth we’d rather not admit out loud—especially not in front of the church council. It’s this: if there’s a polished saint on one side of the room and a repentant rascal on the other, the Lord tends to wander over to the rascal. And He does it with a kind of divine twinkle that says, “Watch what grace can do.”
This is not a minor theme. It’s practically the Bible’s greatest hits album.
Take Jacob. If your church had a background-check policy, Jacob wouldn’t even get to hand out bulletins. He lies, cheats, manipulates, and still God says, “That one. I’ll build a nation from that one.” Esau is out there doing CrossFit and being responsible. Jacob is stirring soup and plotting. And God chooses him anyway.
Or Rahab—whose résumé would not get her anywhere near the nursery sign-up sheet. Yet she becomes the hero of Jericho and ends up in Jesus’ family tree. God seems to delight in saying, “Your past doesn’t disqualify you. It’s the very place My grace shines brightest.”
And then there’s David. A man after God’s own heart… and also the star of several episodes that would make Dateline blush. Yet God keeps restoring him, using him, singing over him. Meanwhile, Saul—tall, impressive, polished—gets sidelined for trying too hard to look holy.
Peter is the apostle who could derail a committee meeting in under thirty seconds. He denies Jesus, misunderstands half the parables, and once cut off a man’s ear. Jesus hands him the keys to the kingdom anyway.
Zacchaeus? A professional cheat. A man who would overcharge you for your own tithe envelope. Jesus sees him and says, “Lunch at your place.” The crowd is scandalized. Jesus is delighted.
And the woman at the well—five husbands, a complicated story, and a reputation that made her the talk of the town. Jesus chooses her as the first evangelist of Samaria. The disciples are baffled. Jesus is not.
God consistently gravitates toward: the messy over the manicured, the repentant over the respectable, the hungry over the holy-looking, and the honest sinner over the polished saint
Why? Because saints tend to bring their résumé. Scoundrels bring their need.
Saints say, “Look what I’ve done for You.”
Scoundrels say, “Lord, have mercy.”
And God has always been drawn to the sound of mercy being asked for.
If you feel like a spiritual overachiever, God loves you—but He may ask you to scoot over so a tax collector can sit down.
If you feel like a spiritual disaster, God loves you—and He’s probably already pulling up a chair.
The gospel is not “God helps those who help themselves.”
The gospel is “God helps those who can’t even pretend to help themselves.”
And thank the Lord for that, because most of us are one bad day away from enrolling in Jacob’s School of Holy Mischief.
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