Listen to today’s devo!

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)

Expanded Passage: 1 Timothy 1:1-17

In one of the most famous stories in literature, from Victor Hugo’s classic novel Les Miserables, Jean Valjean is caught stealing the bishop’s silverware. When the police drag him back to the scene of the crime, the bishop not only insists that Valjean keep the silver, but also hands him two silver candlesticks, saying, “You forgot to take these.” That gracious act transforms Valjean. He gratefully sells the silverware to begin a new and productive life, but he keeps the candlesticks, which will forever represent grace to him. As the reformed thief breathed his last at the end of the book, Hugo wrote, “The light from the two candlesticks fell upon his face.”

That’s a powerful story, but I know a better one, and so does every born-again child of God. “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith,” the apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesians (Eph. 2:8). When he later wrote to Timothy, who was pastoring that same Ephesian church, he shifted to a first-person pronoun (1 Tim. 1:14). This was Paul’s testimony too.

Certainly, the lost silver cost the bishop a great deal, but think what Christ’s sacrifice cost him. No wonder the German martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned us not to settle for what he called “cheap grace” by being unwilling to pay the cost of discipleship. Paul didn’t, Bonhoeffer didn’t, and neither must we.

Surround yourself with reminders of the difference God’s grace has made.

Bob Black is a third-generation Wesleyan minister and professor emeritus of religion at Southern Wesleyan University (SC).

© 2026 Wesleyan Publishing House. Reprinted from Light from the Word. Used by permission. Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®.