Scandalous Grace

He had plenty of ‘trophies’ to validate how good he was at basketball.

He was signed right out of high school at 17 years old. He was the winner of the NBA Slam Dunk contest in ’97. He competed in two Olympics. He was the NBA MVP in 2008. He was the youngest player in NBA history to reach 30,000 points during his basketball career. He was a five-time NBA champion and widely regarded as one of the greatest basketball players ever to set foot on a basketball court.

He was the “Black Mamba”: the late basketball legend, Kobe Bryant.

Generations, like mine, grew up watching Kobe sink that iconic fadeaway jump shot. We watched him square off against NBA giants like Lebron James and Michael Jordan. It won’t be long before we’ll see Michael Jordan present Kobe Bryant into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.

It comes as no surprise that people all over the world are still grieving his death. And as we see Kobe Bryant’s jersey added into the Hall of Fame, we’ll rediscover how much we miss him all over again.

We’ll also rediscover our tendency to put such tremendously gifted people on a tremendously high pedestal.

And I’m not just talking about athletes enshrined in halls of fame whose retired jersey hangs on walls for the world to see. We put all sorts of gifted people on pedestals: politicians, movie stars, pop-icons, colleagues, classmates, and yes, even ourselves.

The Corinthian church thought they had every reason to sit on a pedestal, too.

The Pedestals in Corinth

First century Corinth was a wealthy, thriving metropolis within the Roman Empire – a city of around 600,000 people from all over the Mediterranean world.

Sure, Corinth had a bit of a reputation. But not all of it was good.

Sure, they saw themselves as a respected intellectual, philosophical epicenter – second only to Athens. But Corinth was also known for being a hotbed of vice and debauchery.

Corinth happened to be one of the leading locations for the worship of the Greek goddess Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Needless to say, their ‘worship practices’ were pretty raunchy. They were widely known as the ‘Sin City’ of Greece.

And that’s where God had sent Paul to plant a church. Pretty scandalous, huh?

Paul loved that church. He had lived and worked in the mission field of Corinth for 18 months. As you read his first letter to those Corinthian Christians, you can tell Paul is sincerely concerned about their spiritual well-being.

From what Paul writes, it seems like the cancerous parts of the Corinthian culture were starting to creep their way into this Christian congregation. There were reports of church members sleeping with temple prostitutes. There was a case of incest that had to be dealt with. They were abusing and misusing the Lord’s Supper. There were even some who were preaching that there was no resurrection from the dead.

But Paul doesn’t tee-off on any of these issues. Instead, he spends the first four chapters dismantling the pedestals the Corinthians had built in their hearts.

Including the pedestal they had built for Paul.

The Corinthians idolized their Christian leaders to a fault – to the point where factions had broken out in the Corinthian church. They compared their Christian leaders to Greek philosophers (after all, the ‘wisest’ philosophers of Corinth were outstanding public speakers, so if their Christian leaders didn’t have that kind of rhetoric skill, then, by Greek standards, they must not have true wisdom either); and Christian men like Apollos, Peter, and Paul measured up in their minds.

They had seen Paul throw down with the Cynics and Skeptics. They had heard him preach in synagogues throughout Corinth. The Corinthians had this attitude that, if you aren’t a Christian rock star like Apollos, like Peter, or like Paul, then you really a nobody.

But those weren’t the only pedestals Paul needed to tear down, because if the Corinthians weren’t busy venerating Apollos, Peter, and Paul, then they were busy venerating themselves.

They, after all, were a very gifted congregation, blessed with an abundance of spiritual gifts, talents, and abilities. They prided themselves on how talented they were. They started bragging and boasting, which undoubtedly led to feelings of entitlement towards God’s love. They were so infatuated with themselves, they couldn’t see they were spiritually sick. Not only that, they had forgotten who they were when God had brought them to faith.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1:26, “Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.” But Paul doesn’t stop there. In chapter 6, he gets a little more candid with their background prior to coming to faith: they were once “adulterers, homosexual offenders, thieves, drunkards, idolaters, and prostitutes.” They weren’t entitled at all to God’s love and forgiveness. They were sinners – in desperate need of saving.

The Pedestals in My Heart

In the days after Kobe Bryant’s death, as I was scrolling through all the articles recapping his life and legacy, I remember seeing one article that was trending about a reporter from the Washington Post who was suspended for tweeting an article about Kobe from 2016. The headline of that article she tweeted was “Kobe Bryant’s Disturbing Rape Case: The DNA Evidence, the Accuser’s Story, and the Half-Confession.”

It didn’t take long before people everywhere were calling for this reporter to be fired, calling her cold-hearted, disrespectful, and insensitive.

I suppose there’s something to be said about knowing when to speak and when to be silent. There’s also something to be said about our desperate attempts to whitewash the ugliness in our lives.

We convince ourselves that we have to do something to be somebody in this world. We try to outweigh the bad we do with good. We constantly compare ourselves to others. We tally up the ‘noble’ things we do and broadcast them on social media. We’d like to think that we are somebodies because of how influential we are, by how many followers we have, by how many ‘Likes’ that one post got. We’d like to think our earthly treasures are evidence that we’ve got it made with God.

But just as we don’t like seeing evidence that our childhood heroes are sinners, we – who also want to be put up on a pedestal – don’t like being shown that we’re sinners, either. We don’t like being told that we are in desperate need of saving.

“But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”

Paul had – so he once thought – every reason to boast in himself, be it his educational background, his profession, or his zeal as a Pharisee. And God turned his life completely upside down. That’s the beauty of the gospel. Paul could boast before the Lord – not because of who he was – but because of who his God is: the God who in love would die to save us.

Leaving the Pedestal For You

God didn’t bring you to faith in him because there was some quality in you that drew him to you. God didn’t call you to be his own because you stood on some pedestal above the people around you. “It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus.”

God chooses the losers of this world to shame the winners, the poor to shame the rich, and the weak to shame the strong. The great scandal of the cross is that there – we find a righteous God and Savior, holy and blameless, dying for sinners deserving of death and giving them his perfect obedience! Your God is the true MVP who got down from his celestial pedestal to go up on a cross and die - all to rescue you and pull you up out of this sin-broken world. When we had nothing to give God, he gave us everything.

You are a somebody to God. Not because you have plenty of trophies to validate your somebody-ness in your eyes or the eyes of the world: you are a somebody to God purely because of who he is for you - a God of amazing, abundant, one-sided grace - his undeserved love for you.

Before they took the court the Friday after his death, the Lakers held a pregame tribute for Kobe Bryant. At it, Usher sang a spectacular rendition of the Christian song Amazing Grace. And while much of the world sees Amazing Grace as nothing more than a beautiful song sung at funerals, I found it incredibly striking that song was sung for this basketball legend.

You and I might not go down as legends in the eyes of the world - but our trophies aren’t the reason we’re a somebody to God: we’re a somebody to God purely because of God’s amazing grace.

When you feel you’re unlovable, your God loves you.

When you say “I can’t forgive myself”, your God’s mercies are new every morning.

When you’re ready to give up because life seems too much to handle, your God is there to guide you and give you strength.

And when you feel like you just can’t keep going, he’ll carry you through it.

Because he’s a God of grace.

Scandalous grace.