Fear builds around us prisons only we can see. We peer out through the bars of damaged memories and foolish choices—walled in by concrete years of dark regrets. And we assume the sentence is for life.

But then one day there is a rattling at the door; keys open up a rusty lock. The cell in which we kept ourselves more rigidly than any jail is opened by a word of grace. “Your sins are forgiven you,” says the Lord who vowed to open every prison door.

The sentence is commuted, and yes, the record is expunged. “As far as the east is from the west so far does he remove our transgressions from us” (Ps 103:12).

We walk out in the light of grace—amazed at freedom we have never known, and breathing in the oxygen of hope. This is the genius of the gospel, and why this story always liberates.

Walk out of fear, but stay in grace. -Bill Knott