How can I end my life well?
“Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.” (1 Timothy 1:13-14)
This time, my mind was not at peace before I went to Korea for “2017 Internet Ministry to Korea”. The words I heard during the retirement process of my dear mentor pastor made me think a lot. For example, I asked myself, how should I retire after completing my pastoral ministry, how to achieve enduring beauty, etc. The worries that started like that made me to think about not only my retirement from the ministry but also my own death. It made me to think to myself again how I should end this life in front of the Lord and people. When I think about how I can end my life to give glory to God, I have come to think that among the many things I need to guard against myself, I should be especially vigilant about the sense of merit. While I live on this earth, I don’t want to be sensitive to numbers and my record as I work hard for the expansion of God's kingdom while serving the church, the body of the Lord, until I die. Whether I have been pastoring for a few years, or documenting the things I have done for the Lord during those years, or asking for a certain amount of retirement money from the church at the end of my ministry, etc, I don't want to show my merit and glory in front of people with those things. Rather, like the Apostle Paul, I want to confess, 'It is the grace of God that I am what I am,' and while carrying out the Lord's work with the power of that grace. And at the end of my life, I want to confess, "I have fought the good fight, finished all my work, and gained faith. I have kept it, and now all that is left is to receive the crown of righteousness” (2 Tim. 4:6-7). To do that, while I was contemplating on what to do, I went to Korea and met a pastor I got to know about through internet ministry. When I heard the story of the reality of the church that the pastor saw, heard, and experienced through the pastor on Friday morning, the day before returning to the United States again from Korea, for the first time in my life, my heart was unbearably frustrated and my heart was blank. Not only that, I wanted to cry. I couldn't hear any more. Anyway, the previous Thursday, when I met a couple of associate pastors and talked to them, I heard bad things about the Korean church through those pastors, and I wrote this: ‘We pastors need to repent. Please pray for that. Thank you.’ But the next Friday morning, I heard the bad stories about the Korean church through another associate pastor, and my heart was so stuffy that I wanted to cry. As I listened to the stories of those bad pastors, I thought that the reason we pastors were arrogant and greedy for material things was because we had forgotten God's grace. I also thought that the reason was because we had forgotten God's mercy.
In 1 Timothy 1:13-14, the apostle Paul is writing a letter to his spiritual son Timothy, especially saying two things. Those two things are the Lord's mercy and the Lord's grace.
First, Paul told Timothy what he was like in the past: “Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man …” (v. 13). Before meeting the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:4, 26:14), Paul was a violent man who blasphemed Jesus Christ and persecuted His church. In other words, when he didn’t believe in Jesus (1 Tim. 1:13), he was a zealous persecutor of the church (Phil. 3:6). Paul did this without knowing that Jesus was the Messiah (Christ) (1 Tim. 1:13). Therefore, he was shown mercy because Jesus Christ might display His unlimited patience (v. 16). As I meditated on these words, I thought of the Lord's mercy toward me. Because of my sins, I was reminded that I was a sinner worthy of eternal destruction (2 Thess. 1:9). When a sinner who deserves the punishment of eternal fire (Jude 1:7) thinks that the Lord displayed His unlimited patience to me (1 Tim. 1:16), what is this if this isn’t the Lord’s mercy? He imputed all of my sins to Jesus, His sinless, only begotten Son, so that Jesus could receive the punishment for my sins. He bored with great patience the objects of His wrath – prepared for destruction (Rom. 9:22). What is this if this isn’t the Lord’s mercy? Knowing that this Lord's patience means salvation (2 Pet. 3:15), how could I not thank the Lord for His mercy and humble myself before Him?
The next thing Paul is talking about to Timothy is the Lord’s grace: “The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 1:14). Before meeting the resurrected Jesus, Paul, who was “a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man,” knew that he was the worst sinner among sinners (v. 15). To Paul, the chief of such sinners, Jesus Christ displayed His unlimited patience (v. 16). The Lord was merciful to him and didn’t punish him with the wrath of eternal destruction. On the contrary, the Lord gave him eternal life (v. 16) with abundant faith and love (v. 14). Not only that, but the Lord considered Paul faithful and appointed him to His service (v. 12). Although we may be unfaithful, the Lord is always faithful. The Lord, who could not deny himself (2 Tim. 2:13), was faithful to Paul and appointed him with the apostleship to the Gentiles (Rom. 11:13). If this isn’t God's grace, what is it? It is the great grace of the Lord that the one who persecuted the church zealously before believing in Jesus could receive eternal life rather than receive the punishment of eternal destruction. That is why Paul said he thanked Christ Jesus our Lord, who had given him strength (1 Tim. 1:12). As I meditated on these words, I thought about the Lord’s grace that was bestowed upon me. It cannot be without His abundant grace. I can't help but be thankful for the grace of salvation of the Lord who gave me faith, the gift of grace, and enabled me to receive Jesus Christ as my Savior. Not only that, what a great grace that the faithful Lord considered such an unfaithful man like me and entrusted me with the office of a pastor.
I remember hearing about the late Pastor Kyung-jik Han through an Internet article one day. The memory is that he said, ‘First of all, I confess that I am a sinner. I went to shrine worship.’ Not only him, but the late Pastor Yoon-sun Park also said that while leading the revival meeting, he confessed his own shrine worship this way: ‘I have been guilty of attending shrine worship only once. So I have always been unable to contain my grievances over that incident’ (Internet). These two godly men, who publicly confessed their sins of worshiping at the shrine, in my opinion, lived humbly in front of the Lord and people until the end. I think that they were able to do that because they came to the Holy Lord, always remembering their past sins, so they realized more and more deeply the magnitude of their sins. So I think they gradually realized the magnitude of the Lord's mercy and grace to greater, greater, and deeper depths. A Christian who realizes that he is a sinner more and more deeply in this way has no choice but to realize God's mercy and grace more and more deeply. The reason is because he is full of the consciousness of grace. And even after completing pastoral ministry, a Christian who is filled with a sense of grace not only confesses with his lips but also truthfully, 'It is by the grace of God that I am who I am' (1 Cor. 15:10), but also humbly confesses the same confession at the end of his life. And he cries out to the Lord, “Not to us, O LORD, not to us but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness” (Ps. 115:1).
He who is living today with the great mercy and grace of the Lord,
James Kim