The Grace That Saves One Man… and Kills Another
It was 2012, and my wife and I were on a date. Movie tickets in hand to see a film I had never even heard of. It was called Les Misérables.
As I settled into my seat expecting a normal movie.
Then the opening scene started… and they began to sing.
Not just a little. Not just a scene here or there.
The entire thing.
I remember looking over at my wife with those kind of eyes that had much judgement and annoyance and asked, “is this a musical?”
Are they really going to sing the whole time?
They were.
I’m still not sure how my wife pulled that off, but let’s just say I now watch every movie trailer before committing to buy a theater ticket. 😉
But the message of the film could not have been any clearer… and it moved me deeply that day.
So fourteen years later, when I heard the Broadway adaptation was coming through Boise, I knew I had to get tickets for the family. Mary and I got to introduce our three big kids to Les Misérables. It honestly felt like a dream come true.
My hope was simple... That this incredible message would touch our kids’ hearts the same way it did mine. Because it really is that powerful.
Underneath the music, the story, and the emotion is one of the clearest pictures of grace I have ever seen.
A man steals bread to feed a starving child and spends nineteen years in prison for it.
That man is Jean Valjean.
When he is finally released, he is hardened, marked, and rejected by the culture. No one will take him in until a bishop does. Valjean then repays that kindness by stealing from him.
But instead of calling the police, the bishop does something unthinkable.
He gives him more.
“You forgot these,” he says, placing silver in Valjean’s hands.
No punishment.
No lecture.
No conditions.
Just grace.
And that moment changes everything.
Valjean becomes a new man. He spends the rest of his life pouring out the same mercy he received, loving the broken, raising a child who was not his, and even sparing the life of the man who hunted him.
Because grace does not just forgive you.
It transforms you.
But not everyone rejoices in it.
Javert, the man obsessed with justice, order, and earning, cannot reconcile what he sees. A criminal becoming righteous? Mercy overriding the law?
It does not fit into his system.
And instead of bending, he breaks.
Because grace will always expose something in us.
Not just our sin, but our pride.
It confronts the part of us that still believes we are better than others, that we have earned our standing, that we deserve what we have.
It reveals the older brother in Luke 15, the one who stayed, obeyed, did everything right, and yet resented the celebration when grace was given to someone undeserving.
This is the scandal.
That God would take the worst of sinners and call them His own.
“And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion…” Luke 15:20
Grace runs.
Grace embraces.
Grace restores.
But grace also offends.
Because it levels the ground.
The thief and the rule keeper stand in the same place, both in desperate need of mercy.
As Josh White often says, “A saint is nothing more than a sinner who has cried mercy.”
The question is not whether grace is available.
The question is, will you receive it like Valjean?
Or will it harden you like it did Javert?
Because the same grace that saves the sinner is the same grace the “righteous” must learn to receive.
