The RC Sproul Jr. Principle of Hermeneutics can be quite helpful. It affirms “Whenever you see someone in the Bible doing something really, really stupid, do not say to yourself, ‘How can he be so stupid?’ Instead say to yourself, ‘How am I stupid just like him?’” That means that we should learn to recognize ourselves in the foibles of those in the Bible.
Consider this common failure among the disciples. How many times do we see them jockeying for position, arguing who will be at the right hand of Jesus, bickering over who will be the greatest? We’re so familiar with it yet somehow we manage to miss the same spirit in us. We, fools that we are, turn their folly into an occasion for pride, thinking, “I thank you Lord I’m not like other men.” We may not literally clamor for the seat at Jesus’ right hand. We do, however, compete with all the zeal of an Olympic athlete in a good game of spiritual king of the hill. We parade our piety, display our doctrine, sing our spiritual gift. We confess with our lips our utter unworthiness to receive God’s grace, then turn around to see if everybody noticed how humble we are.
Which is why scandal can be such a potent means of grace. While I still face the same temptation to present myself as better than I am, while I may have once earned a black belt in self-deceit, my very public scandal eliminates me from the game. When you can’t win, you’re free to stop trying. When you are lying on the ground at the bottom of the hill, your nose bloodied, your legs broken, covered in muck, all from your own folly, you get a deeper understanding that the victory is found on a completely different hill, one the real King climbed- Calvary.
Sure, it means people, even your brothers and sisters in the Lord, treat you as a by-word. They scoff and they mock, treat you with contempt, determine you are not worthy of grace and forgiveness. This too is a means of grace, because I am a by-word, due scoffing and mockery, owed contempt and utterly unworthy of grace and forgiveness. It helps to be reminded of that. It helps me remember that it is all of grace. It helps me to rest in Him, and to praise Him. And it helps keep me from looking longingly at that other hill.
My sin is shameful, dishonoring to my Lord. It is something to be repented of, not something to be celebrated. What we celebrate instead is first the forgiveness of the sin, because of Jesus. Second, we celebrate how the Spirit uses something so ugly to beautify me, something so dirty to wipe me clean. He covers the scandal with grace, and in His grace, reveals the grace of the scandal.