Why We Forgive

If we took all our cues from culture and the wind, we would forgive another’s sin just to be rid of him and his unpleasantness.

“Executive forgiveness” assumes that we should benefit from the transaction—that moving past our bitterness is the chief reason we forgive the one who wounded us. “Get over toxic feelings keeping you imprisoned,” a hundred self-help books inform us. “Discover liberation in forgiving those who injured you.”

And like all harmful substitutes, there’s a gram of truth in what they say. One consequence of offering forgiveness is living forward—and not backward—for we find some joy in dropping all that baggage.

But forgiveness as Jesus loved and lived it doesn’t count how we will feel when we forgive. Forgiveness is redeeming someone broken; freeing them from guilt and shame; offering them the chance to live restored and reconciled. It’s love, not self-esteem or self-protection, that makes us lift the load that’s crushing them. “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you” (Eph 4:32).

Forgiveness moves us closer to the wounding ones, as Jesus always moves toward us when we are bitter, broken, acting out. It’s love that calls the prodigal back home, and grace that spreads a banquet of togetherness.

Forgive as you have been forgiven. And stay in grace.

—Bill Knott

Can't Help Ourselves

The ache in every life is change—change bitter, deadly attitudes; change toxic habits that destroy our health; change self-defeating fantasies of privilege and power. 

That ache has pushed uncounted millions to quick-fix themselves, clean up their act.  How do I tame my tongue?  When will I control unproductive—and unholy—thoughts?  Can I forgive my enemies? How will I pull myself from all the easy, sleazy ruts I traveled in for years?

And so we  buy the self-help books; we make our lists.  We scan the magazines and websites for ten tips to overcome our anger; six strategies to conquer lust; three things that will reduce our appetite for all things cheap and tawdry.  Whole industries today depend on our obsessive quest to fix ourselves.

Grace offers us a better way to change—a path so hopeful—yes, and joyful—we are deep-surprised at just how quick the progress comes in what we once thought unchangeable.  Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:4).

When we attach ourselves to Him—when we cease focusing on failures and start growing with the only One who fixes all our pasts and futures—wonderful, amazing change begins.  First sprouts, then flowers, then fruits appear: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Gal 5:22).

Connect to Christ.  And stay in grace.

—Bill Knott

Say 'Thank You'

The day we lose our gratitude is when we learn how tough life is.

Like three-year olds asserting self, we claim we don’t need help or guidance. “I’ll do it by myself,” we say, though what we are attempting is far harder than clean faces or shoelaces. 

And so we sally forth to fix what’s broken in our world and us. When friendships fray, we use our wits, and watch in sadness till they’re permanently lost. We climb the office steps, dismayed that we are out of breath from all the jockeying and gossip. Marriages creak forward toward gray photo anniversaries, remembering the days of laughter and of love.

The missing piece is gratitude, and Someone to be grateful to. We didn’t gift ourselves with healthy life, protect ourselves from many woes, or build the circles that bring joy. These are the Father’s kindnesses, unfolding from a heart of grace. God gives because it’s in His heart to give. His grace is love applied to pain.

“Lord, everything You have made will praise You. Those who belong to You will bless You” (Psa 145:10). Our gratitude is just the truth about the goodness of our God.

Begin this day with grace-anointed lips: say “Thank you” ten—a hundred—times.

And stay in grace.

—Bill Knott

Believably Good News

“That’s unbelievable,” we say, by which we mean “surprising.”

“Incredible,” we gasp, when we should say “amazing.”

 But the good news of the Father’s love for us was meant to be believed—trusted, taken in, absorbed—even when it runs against the grain of all the hard-edged stories some have told of Him.

While young in faith, our ears were sometimes filled with stories of an angry God, a frowning deity who took His vengeance out in hurricanes and settled scores with thunderstorms. By all accounts, this God was invariably upset with us—disappointed by the sadly predictable ways we failed to keep His law, reform our ways, and live to bring Him glory.

And when the gospel of His grace first sounded in our hearts, it seemed a counter-narrative, as though describing some new God. But Jesus, image of the unseen Father, told us—showed us—what was always irrefutably true: “God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him” (John 3:17).

Grace is the way God thinks of us. “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jer 29:11).

Repent of any untrue view of Him. Believe the goodness of our God.

And stay in grace.

—Bill Knott

OPENING THE GATES

Within the castle of our fears, inside the moat well-filled with pride, we wonder why this life we chose seems lonely and unhappy. Our citadel seems much more like a prison.

We wanted strength, we said, so we built battlements and gates to keep our painful secrets safe. We rarely let the drawbridge down, for we have much to guard. But from the turret we can see a joyous life we long to live—a liberated life, well-filled with love, with kindly people laughing, caring, trusting and forgiving.

Grace always builds for us communities of hope. It brings companions who, like us, once lived behind grim castle walls. We learn, in time, the undefended life, where broken people are made whole, where we admit how much we need the healing freely ours in Jesus.  We trade our fears for faithful friends: we drain the moat; we plant peace lilies on the walls. 

“For freedom Christ has set us free” (Gal 5:1). And so we find the life we crave—where we are neither lonely in our sins nor alone in our salvation. The grace we’re given gradually becomes the grace we share with those still trapped behind dark castle walls.

“Come down; come out,” we chorus at the stones. “Come live the shared, abundant life Christ promises to prisoners.”

And all who do can stay in grace.

–Bill Knott

ONE GOOD WORK

Our stories are distressingly familiar.

We start each week, or each new day, with adamant intention: I will lose weight; I won’t lose patience with the kids; I’ll treat my colleagues kindly; I won’t waste hours surfing on the Web.

And only hours or days later, we note the uptick on the scale; the strangely quiet children who endured our angry words; the whispering around the water cooler; the useless rantings of a hundred posts that only fenced us off from love.

Our best intentions are like “ropes of sand.” Convinced by all those self-improvement books that mastery is within our grasp, we measure all the transient things that never plumb the depths of our true brokenness.

There’s only one good work worth mentioning, according to the God who made us and redeemed us: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent,” Jesus said, referring to Himself. When we admit our inability to makes ourselves leaner, kinder, wiser and more patient, we open up our lives to Him who says, “I am making all things new” (Rev 21:5). Our wholeness is the gift of grace: we cannot reach it by ourselves.

If virtues ever grace our lives, it will be grace at work in us.

Invite grace in, and give it room. And it will stay with you.

–Bill Knott

Walking Together

We haven’t lived the same life stories, or even understood each other from the start. Our differences are many and profound.

Our ancestors didn’t share the same small towns in Poland, Ghana, Mississippi or Nebraska. We didn’t attend the same schools; have similar access to good jobs; like the same food or music at our picnics; or experience equal pay—or equal justice.

We hurt differently, but we know what pain is. We grieve our losses and celebrate our joys in ways uniquely meaningful to us. We may share faith, but not the same one. Our beliefs are often different.

And yet we choose to walk together, trusting that the time we spend in listening and in telling will build trust, ease conflicts. We can share a kind and valued humanity as sons and daughters of a loving Father. “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all” (Titus 2:12).

The miles ahead are dusty and unknowable. And yet we choose, because of grace, to take the next step forward on the road. We trust the miles we share and stories we tell to lead us to God’s gracious destination.

So walk with me, and let me learn from you.

And we will stay in grace.

–Bill Knott

Righting Our Wrongs

My story of grace starts with an admission I was wrong—lost, stubbornly resistant—and will be many times before my journey is complete.

In the overarching narrative of grace, there’s only One who ever got it truly right—only One who both believed and lived perfectly. It was Jesus—not me—who never needed to apologize, or make amends, or ask forgiveness for a fault.

And so the community that gathers around Him—the believers who follow Him wherever He goes—are men and women increasingly aware of their own brokenness. They know that every heart has corners where the Spirit doesn’t yet dwell—unredeemed attitudes, prejudices, rusting vats of bitterness. In grace, they bring these to the light where each may be identified, confessed, and yes, through grace forgiven.

A legal religion, more committed to correctness than redemption, will always chase away the broken and the flawed, for they can never seem to measure up. But Jesus says to all discouraged by their deficits in holiness, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matt 11:28).

By grace, we can still build communities where apologies abound and forgiveness flourishes. The future of our healing starts today.

So stay in grace.

–Bill Knott

First Personal Plural

The Biblical prophet Daniel, about whom no mistake is ever recorded, is found in the book that bears his name “confessing my sin and the sin of my people” (Daniel 9:20).

This is how grace acts in times of national and international tragedy—not for “me and mine” but for “us and ours.” Grace doesn’t say, “It wasn’t my fault: I kept myself pure from disease,” or “I’m not responsible for the sins of my ancestors.”

Grace moves us to accept responsibility for our neighbor’s faults and the bigotry we inherited from great-grandparents; to pray for the generational sins that have endured in every nation, tribe and people. In this, we begin to fulfill the Biblical counsel: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal 6:2)

The heart renewed by grace is freed to admit responsibility even for mistakes transparently not its own in some specific, legal sense, for grace always moves toward the first personal plural—to “we,” to “us,” to “ours.” As those bought by the blood of Jesus, we’ve come to realize that nothing human is foreign to us[1]: my neighbor’s sin might well be mine tomorrow. It’s our pride and ignorance that makes us pray as the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people” (Luke 18:11).

Grace teaches us our place among the broken and the wounded.

So, “Lord, teach us to pray.” And stay in grace.

–Bill Knott

[1] Edward G. Robinson

Widening the Circle

An old and wintry tale records a farmer’s frozen prayer: "God bless me and my wife, our son John and his wife--us four and no more. Amen."

We smile, for we’ve known Christians who sometimes prayed like that. Sometimes we were those Christians.

It’s in our nature to want good things for ourselves—and the grace and blessings of the Father are certainly good things. We spend our praying on the things we need—patience with our children; forgiveness for our wandering; stamina to get through one more week—or day.

But it’s in the nature of God to give His blessings freely—to shower His grace on more than those who ask Him. “He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt 5:45). And from our resurrected lives we pray for grace on those who least deserve it—the angry boss; the callous “ex”; the enemy whose joy is causing pain.

Grace is an “all or nothing” virtue. If we’ve received it, we extend it. And we pray that other undeserving souls discover grace as well.

Unclench your fists. Unfurl your heart. Pray widely now.

And stay in grace.

-Bill Knott

Received—And Given

Those who most need grace from us are those who see us at our best—and at our worst; the people who share houses, schools and cubicles with us.

They sleep on the other side of the bed, or in the bedroom down the hall. They are the parents who seemed never to believe in us, or relatives who expect us to give endlessly. They work in the corner office, behind the counter, or any of a hundred places where expectations sometimes clash. They differ on food choices, paint colors, politics and faith.

In short, they’re near enough to know if grace has left its mark on us, if gospel values of forgiveness and reconciliation really fill the spaces of our lives. They see the choices that we make—to hold our tongues; to apologize when needed; to not hold grudges; to release our claims on vengeance. And they measure our religion, not by creeds or preached theologies, but by the cold cloth on a feverish night, and the love that has no need to shame.

Grace can’t be sought from everyone, but can be shared with anyone. “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another” (1 Jn 4:11). “Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you” (2 Cor 13:11).

This is the sum of practical religion—adding grace, subtracting faults. Live the gentleness of Jesus.

And stay in grace.

-Bill Knott

Grace Without Fear

Those who fear that a rich embrace of grace always leads us to be careless about following Jesus only illustrate how fear distorts reality.

Grace is not—nor ever was—permissiveness. In the center of the story, Jesus dies upon a cross—because the Father’s perfect law required every sinner’s death, or the death of the only One who could atone for them.

Grace is not—now or ever—forgiveness without consequences. Lashed and beaten, Jesus bore the punishment we earned, the wages of our sin. “He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed” (Isa 53:5).

Grace is not—nor ever will be—a declaration by the Father that rebellion doesn’t really matter. If nothing less than Jesus’ sacrifice could make us whole, trust me—no, trust Him: nothing matters more.

 It’s the deepest proof of the Father’s unfathomable affection for us that He whose law was terribly offended also offered us the way to be restored to Him. And it’s the greatest evidence of our sanity that we choose Jesus, healing, and renewal.

Grace is what God says it is—love defeating brokenness.

So stay in grace.

Grace While We Wait

If red lights linger more than 60 seconds, we blame bureaucrats who don’t understand real-world traffic patterns.

If checkout lines at the local market are 10 shoppers deep, we grumble at inattentive managers who make us needlessly wait.

When wounds won’t heal and pain endures, we wonder why God doesn’t act as quickly as we need, or chooses not to intervene. We weren’t wired to wait, we say, even though each day, each week, requires we do more of it.

It takes great grace to learn to wait. We’ve made our plans as though each traffic light will always be green, each errand will flow seamlessly, each scar will quickly disappear. We count the hours we spend waiting as something less than fully living—an exasperating gray zone between what we’ve imagined and when we think it should occur.

But waiting well is time in grace, a window to reflect on God’s long, unfolding calendar where “in everything God works for good with those who love Him” (Rom 8:28). The same grace that waited patiently for us to come home, through all our sins and misadventures, now holds us as we wait the end of separation, loss, and pain. “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psa 90:12).

Grace waits. And so do grace-filled people.

So stay in grace.

Grace Reaching

An old—and unworkable—policy from the Chicago trainyards once declared: “When two engines approach each other on the same track, neither can move until the other moves first.”

It reads like an all-too familiar description of what happens when we find ourselves in conflict with someone. We stay put; we sit tight. We wait for the other to make the first move toward apology or reconciliation. Just as soon as our wounded pride is soothed and our correctness underlined, we’ll become—we promise—the forgiving persons we’ve pledged to be.

It’s marvelously fortunate for us that the Father doesn’t act that way—that He takes on Himself the responsibility for moving toward us when we’re stuck in shame and brokenness. “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:19).

Grace always moves toward pain and guilt and bitterness. It doesn’t pause to grind in wrongs, or tally all infractions and offenses. It seeks the peace for which we were created, the friendship that’s infinitely more valuable than the sum of others’ failures.

“Be kind to one another,” the Scripture says, “tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you” (Eph 4:32).

And you will stay in grace.

All of Grace

On our best days, we just can’t save ourselves. And on our worst, the story is the same.

When all our words are moderate and cheerful; when every deed is generous and sweet; when all our weaknesses recede, and all our strengths are trending up—we need God’s grace to save us from unholy satisfaction with ourselves. 

And when we’re stuck in bitterness and hurt; when we’ve got nothing good to say about ourselves or any of our peers; when we seem chained to old, destructive habits like prisoners to a wall—we need God’s grace to save us from dejection.

The acts that save us all belong to Jesus. We offer nothing—deed or word, good or ill—that makes us more entitled to His love, or threatens His affection for the broken and the lost. “For there is no distinction,” the Word of God reminds us, “since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom 3:22).

Remember now the great unchanging, undeterred, and undeserved love of Christ. And stay in grace.

Trusting What is True

Is grace, at heart, believable?

‘Of course,’ you say.  Why not believe?  It’s the noun that always follows “Amazing,” the tune the bagpipers skirl at dawn; the soaring hymn a tenor lifts into a vast cathedral.

For some, it may be what the sermon is about, or what we learned in Bible class.

But is grace believable at the baseline of our fears—in those tough places in the soul where shame and memory combust to make us cringe again, again?  Does grace reach down below the intellect, the wonderful idea, and heal those wounds we so much never want to show the world?

At its heart—and in our hearts—grace offers us what no one else is giving.  Redemption is for real—for all those moments and those years we’ve blown it big and ruined all our future.  “All we like sheep have gone astray. We’ve turned every one to his own way.  And the Lord has laid on Him”—on Jesus, the only righteous one who ever lived—"the iniquity of us all” (Isa 53:6).

It seems too good—too kind; too merciful—to be true.  And so we linger in the half-light of our fears, humming a tune we dream might yet be ours.

The hymn has outlived every copyright.  God’s grace is clearly in the public domain. 

Make this song yours.  And stay in grace.

Morning has Broken

These hours between midnight and dawn test the patience of the world. We stumble through the hallways of dark houses. We seek companionship in all-night TV channels and books that used to put us to sleep. We hide from pain or grief that won’t let us close our eyes.

Why must dawn wait? Why must the hope of day stretch out so far away? If we could, we’d reach out and pull the first gray light of morning toward us–wrap ourselves in a little bit of hope and cheer. But dawn isn’t within our grasp.

Only one man in all history could bring the morning. Just one man could rightfully claim, “I am the light of the world.” Only Jesus could split the prison where we were chained in shame with the marvelous good news of grace and pardon and power and peace. Only He could triumph over death and hell, because only He had experienced—and broken—their power.

This hurting world of ours desperately needs the story of His resurrection. This dark planet, racked by war and ravaged by disease, cries out for the good news of that amazing sunrise.

Morning has broken, and goodness has won.

Celebrate the new life you’ve been given. And stay in grace.

When I'm Afraid

We wouldn’t ridicule a child who said to us, “I’m really scared. Please hold my hand.”

We wouldn’t taunt a hurricane survivor, “Snap out it. Get on with life.”

Because we’re human, we know fear. Hurt and pain may come our way; events may spin beyond control; we could lose those that we can’t live without.

When all the world is afraid, let’s honor those who own their fear with honesty. It is no sin to be afraid. The fault lies only when we let our fears erode what heaven says we owe each other—grace and truth and gentleness. There’s no just cause for hate or hoarding, prejudice or wounds. Our worry need not make us lose our wits.

A hundred times the Bible says, “Don’t be afraid,” or as the better versions have it, “You can stop being afraid now.” There’s just one thing that calms our fears—the truth that we aren’t left alone. “Peace I leave with you,” the Lord who calmed the storms declares. “My peace I give to you” (John 14:27). Wherever He is welcome, fear declines, then disappears. The grace that saves us also soothes us.

Hear the voice above the storm. Take the hand still offered you.

And stay in grace.

Alone, Not Lonely

We were created for community, and nothing so upsets us as required isolation from the people who bring color, warmth, and hope into our lives.

The world has quickly grown uncomfortably, unhappily too small. We huddle with our loved ones and thank God that we seem healthy. But each of us knows stories, now coming dangerously close, of illness, fear, and existential panic.

Suddenly, we miss the colleague who so regularly annoyed us; the relative who made inconvenient, unannounced visits; the friendly patter when we met our neighbors in the market or the street. The sights and sounds, the rhythms and routines of life a month ago were oddly comforting when we could safely take them all for granted.

And time—there seems to be too much of it; open, unplanned, unsure hours when thoughts turn endlessly to wondering: What if? What outcome? And what then?

“I will never leave you nor forsake you,” the Father said to Israel (Josh 1:5). “Remember, I am with you always,” the Son promised His disciples. (Matt 28: 20). “You know Him,” Jesus said of the Spirit, “because He abides with you, and He will be in you” (John 14:17).  Eternal love still holds us.

There is no better company than Father, Son, and Spirit. Held and healed, warmed, enlightened, we can weather any crisis, any quandary, any virus.

So stay in grace.

Glad to Pray

“Lord, teach us to pray.”

The men who urged Jesus to educate them about prayer weren’t immature or novices.  Each of them had prayed—in penitence; for safety; for a good night’s catch—as part of a life story that led them to careers in fishing, tax collecting, and even political activism.

But they had heard from Jesus—from time in close with Jesus—a whole new way of praying, one that began with an entirely new view of God.  Gone was the angry, frowning deity of their imaginations, the God who was always disappointed with them.  For they had heard their Master call this God His “Father”—even “Daddy.”  The grace they found in Jesus opened up a whole new way to pray.  And they were hungry to know more, learn more, pray more.  Grace made them passionate about prayer.

So it will be with us.  When we discover what has always been true—that we are loved and held as closely as a parent holds us; that we were truly, eagerly embraced before we had a righteous thought—we unclench our bodies and our minds.  Our prayer becomes an easy, reverent conversation warmed by love, and all our fears diminish.  The Father who loved this world so much that He gave Jesus to us (John 3:16) rejoices when we trust Him, welcome Him, and tell Him everything.

Grace leads us first to gratitude, and gratitude to prayer. 

So stay in grace.