Bill Knott’s GraceNotes: GETTING IT RIGHT (June 11, 2021)

2021-06-10

We love being right so much we often get it wrong. It’s sheer deliciousness to know more than someone else, to offer the correct answer when the teacher asks a question or the boss needs information. And when we have the final fact that vanquishes opponents, we bask in the warm glow of self-congratulation. I’m right; they’re wong. New verse; same song. We relish moments when our rightness can’t be challenged. They feed our central narrative of righteous pride in who we are, how well we have prep...

We love being right so much we often get it wrong.

It’s sheer deliciousness to know more than someone else, to offer the correct answer when the teacher asks a question or the boss needs information. And when we have the final fact that vanquishes opponents, we bask in the warm glow of self-congratulation. I’m right; they’re wong. New verse; same song.

We relish moments when our rightness can’t be challenged. They feed our central narrative of righteous pride in who we are, how well we have prepared.

But imagine for a moment if Jesus had done similarly with us. He who made all things, including us, has at His fingertips and in His mind all facts, all truths, all righteousness. But still He stoops to welcome prodigals back home—ragged, dirty as we are, with wrong opinions and bad habits.

For Jesus, being right also means “being right with us”—reuniting us to the love that will not let us go: “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Cor 5:19). Grace makes you right, especially when you’re wrong.

Don’t get this one wrong. Receive the love that restores and reconciles.

And stay in grace. -Bill Knott

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