Forgiven

I have tried to avoid addressing the Supreme Court's ruling on same sex marriage and the recent issues surrounding Kim Davis in Kentucky. Unless you have been living in a cave for the past few weeks you know she is a county clerk who was jailed for refusing to grant marriage licenses to same sex couples. Both sides of this issue have had plenty to say, and I felt no need to contribute my thoughts. That is not the purpose of this blog, and nothing I would say has not been said by others.

However, there is one aspect of this that is very unsettling to me that I feel needs to be addressed. Critics of Kim Davis have pointed to her past, failed marriages and children born out of wedlock, and claimed she has no right to pass moral judgments on any one else. As I've heard and read those comments I recognized they were coming from people who have never known the forgiveness that comes from asking Jesus Christ into one's life.

This past weekend I read a statement on Facebook from an individual who began by writing that he was a Baptist pastor who wanted to speak to the Kim Davis issue. He then began to criticize her past and quoted the Bible verse that says that he that is without sin should cast the first stone. In his opinion, she should have resigned from her position if she would not do her job, and because of her past had no moral grounds to hold the position she has. In a statement I found incredulous he claimed that if she could not put her name on a marriage license for a same sex couple, she should not have put her name on three of her own marriage licenses. He admitted in some follow-up comments that he recognized she had become a Christian after her last marriage, but he still held to his original statement.

Maybe this pastor needs to read a few more verses from the Bible. 2 Corinthians 5: 17 comes to mind, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new." In Micah 7: 19 God promises to cast our sins into the depths of the sea, and in Jeremiah 31: 34 he says that he will forgive our iniquity and remember our sins no more. Evidently, this pastor wants us to remember things that God has forgotten. These, and many other passages of Scripture, make it clear that when a person comes to faith in Jesus Christ that our past sins are forgiven and we become brand new persons.

Arguments can be made on both sides of this issue, and Christians can disagree about whether Kim Davis was right in refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. However, no one has the right to point to her past mistakes and use them as a weapon to criticize her. She claims she has given her life to Jesus Christ, and if this is true then God has forgiven her past sins, as He has for each of us who are believers.

The Bible is clear that we have all sinned. Our sins may differ from one another, but we are all guilty of sin in our lives. It is only through the grace of God and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ upon the cross that our sins can be forgiven. When we repent of our sins and ask Christ into our lives we are born again, and it is at this point that we become the new creatures referred to in 2 Corinthians. Our sins are forgiven and should no longer define us.

As Christians we are the recipients of great grace, and we should be the first to extend that grace to others. Whether you agree with Kim Davis on this issue or not, no Christian should judge her based upon her past unless you are willing to be judged for your own past sins.