What makes you erupt in praise?

If you had to finish this sentence: “I find myself erupting into praise when…” I wonder what you’d say. Possible answers might include: “I see a glorious sunset”, “I hold a newborn baby”, “I read an inspirational passage of Scripture” or, in my case, “Reading FC finally gain promotion back to the Championship”. Yes, I know, I’m shallow.

However, it’s less probable that you’d respond: “When I realise the enormity and extent of my miserable sinful state and sordid past”, but that’s what catapults Paul into his outburst of worship in the opening chapter of his first letter to his spiritual son, Timothy. Paul provides a comprehensive but not exhaustive list of his past failings in verse 13, cataloguing blasphemy, violence and the persecuting of others among his transgressions, leading him to conclude that he viewed himself as the “worst of sinners”.

Yet it’s the gravity of his historic sin that provides the conditions in which the light of the gospel shines at its brightest. Paul’s unlikely conversion becomes the prism that disperses the white light of salvation into glorious technicolour. The apostle takes no pleasure in the polluted nature of his past, yet finds himself led to a place of praise as he reflects (v.14) on the “grace of the Lord poured out abundantly” on him. He even recognises how, in His sovereignty, God has chosen to providentially use his own (Paul’s) bygone sinful actions to showcase His redemptive power, claiming that it was “for that very reason I was shown mercy so that … Christ Jesus might display His unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on Him and receive eternal life”(v.16) Paul as Exhibit A of what it looks like for the lost to be found.

It’s with his iniquitous back story in the rear-view mirror that he finds himself – to return to the question we began with – erupting into praise. Praising God for His grace and mercy, praising God for bringing good from evil, praising God for the salvation from sin of which his testimony is a microcosm. But more than just that. Paul’s conversion and the grace that brought it about lead to Paul reflecting not only on his own salvation, but on the character, nature and attributes of the One whose initiating move enabled it.

In just one verse (17), Paul identifies God as the eternal King of the ages, the ruler over all time and history, the self-existent immortal One, invisible and unlimited by the constraints of physical form, and the One who alone is true God. In a world of uncertainty Paul guides his readers to the sovereignty of God. In a world in which we walk through the valley of the shadow of death he points to the immortality of the God who rescues us from death. In a world of “sight” he directs our attention to the transcendence of the invisible God. In a world of multiple deities and proliferating idols he declares the uniqueness of the only God who is.

But although this is, in one sense, an intensely personal response to his own Damascene crisis moment, Paul broadens the scope of his doxology to draw in not only Timothy but all subsequent readers with the use of one word – the word “Amen”.

Here is the invitation for us as we imbibe his words to own all that Paul has just effused and declared by joining him in agreement; to signal our concurrence by adding our voice to his resounding “Amen”. To reflect on our own God-enabled journey from darkness to light and from death to life that we might, with the great apostle, find ourselves pouring forth praise for so great a salvation. To the non-Christian any concentration on our own sins and shortcomings might be viewed as an exercise in morbid introspection and negativity, but if it leads to such an outburst of praise, to be honest, I’ll take it.