And so you’ve got him “dead to rights,” as old books used to say. You’ve caught him in the lie, the theft, with poison pills he slipped into the office water cooler. There’s no way he can wriggle free from how he injured you and hurt your reputation. Now all your moral juices seethe because—for once—you have the power.
This is the crucible where what we understand of grace is really seen and known. If grace has found a home in us, it pries our fingers off the iron mace of moral superiority, of glorying in punishments we can exact. Grace places us just where our enemy now stands. He has done wrong—just as we do. He has told lies—as we have done. He has betrayed a confidence—and which of us has not?
Grace always has a claim on justice, but chooses not to push that claim. The Bible says, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And He gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation” (2 Cor 519). If God, whom we supremely injured, sees us with such rich love that He accepts the death of Christ in place of what we fully earned, grace can be learned—by us, in us, through us, for others.
Grace lets us first unclench our fists so we may offer enemies our open hands.
So stay in grace.
—Bill Knott