Scandal!

“Tim Tebow involved in a sex scandal.”
“Billy Graham greatly overestimated the numbers saved at his crusades.”
“Outspoken Christian Jeremy Lin is really a Buddhist.”

People loves a good scandal.

Anyone of the above headlines would cause a flurry of clicks to read the account of a hero falling. (For the record, they are all false.)

The sports world has recently been rocked by revelations in which the ultimate good guy, Joe Paterno, and clean college football program, Penn State, covered up multiple cases of abuse by an assistant coach.

If you are not from Pennsylvania, it is hard to understand how shocking this is.

The location of Penn State is called Happy Valley.
Joe Paterno was the ultimate blue-collar coach who players adored.
Penn State has plain uniforms with no names signifying a team rather than individuals or superstars.

Pennsylvanians truly bleed the blue and white of Penn State.

We took pride in not being like other programs with recruiting violations or booster payments made to players. Our players were Academic All Americans not frequent residents in the county lock up.

Now we have been rocked by one of the greatest scandals to ever hit sports.

As shocking as this is, it is far from the greatest scandal.

Tim Tebow or Jeremy Lin falling from grace would not top the charts of all time greatest scandals.

Not even Billy Graham, the face of Christianity for decades, could find himself involved in a scandal as big as the greatest ever.

The scandal of grace ranks second to none as the greatest scandal ever.

In this storyline, a perfect God created the planet and all was good. He gave mankind one rule which we promptly broke bringing  corruption to the planet. God gave us a choice to continue walking with Him or choose our own way.

We chose poorly.

He should have pushed the big red button labeled “Nuke”  and destroyed the planet**. After all, this was our fault, not His

Instead, He put his plan of redemption** into action to allow forgiveness to come to mankind.

And the most jaw dropping of all the elements…

He did it for FREE.

He gives us this forgiveness on the simple condition we say we want it and desire His help.

All other religions make their participants prove themselves before bestowing favor. God, broke the rules when he gave us grace and forgiveness at the beginning of our spiritual journey.

FF Bruce says it well when he states “God pronounces believers righteous at the beginning of the course, not the end….it cannot be on the basis of works they have not yet done….purely an act of God’s grace”

Now that is a headline worthy scandal.

Scandals make headlines.

We need to get the word out more about the greatest scandal ever. People want to hear about it more than you think. Give it a try! Go break the news of a scandal today.

Which part of the grace’s scandal stands out to you the most. Share it below as we help each other put into words the scandal of the gospel.