“Do you have your mask?”

“What’s the new case count for today?”

“What else can we use for toilet paper?”

These are all sayings we’ve become familiar with in the last few months. Before then, we knew what all these words meant individually, but we didn’t have an occasion to string them together like this. But now? Well, now these are sayings that are known. Understood. They are accepted as part of our new vocabulary and vernacular, born from the pandemic and the implications of it.

Acceptance is one thing, though. You can accept phrases like this based only on familiarity. But the Book of 1 Timothy gives us a phrase that is not only acceptable, but trustworthy:

This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—and I am the worst of them.

We have plenty of phrases that we have now accepted. But we have very few new ones that are trustworthy. Because if you’re like me, you simply don’t know who or what to believe right now. You don’t know who or what to believe about the proper response to COVID-19. You don’t know who or what to believe about opening the economy. You don’t know what political aspirations, what ulterior motives, or what hidden agenda is behind all the seemingly endless varying reports and statistics and prognostications swirling around the internet right now.

We have plenty of sayings that we’ve accepted. We have precious few that can be deemed completely trustworthy. Again, back to God’s Word:

This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—and I am the worst of them.

People have opinions, and most of the time they aren’t afraid to share them. And with most of these issues, everybody has a little bit of the whole truth on their side. But there are always more things to consider. There is always, “the other hand” of contradicting opinion or information that invalidates the trustworthiness of the sayings.

The complexity of issues makes 1 Timothy 1:15 all the most refreshing, because here there is no “other hand”:

You can have your opinions about gathering, economic issues, politics, and finances, but here is the simple truth that deserves full acceptance. The work of discipleship, then, both for our own sake and for the sake of others is to make sure that which deserves full acceptance is fully accepted in our hearts and souls. It’s to press that simple truth further and further in until we feel is in the very marrow of our bones.

Today, Christian, you’ll find lots of things you can halfway accept, but only one you can do so fully. So work hard to make sure you do.