1 Timothy 1:12-17
Second Sunday after Pentecost Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke Sunday, June 7, 2026
“Jesus Loves the Worst of Sinners”
From 2004 until 2020, for 18 seasons total, a show aired on television called The Biggest Loser. I’m sure the producers of the show understood that they had hit on a creative title. To call someone a loser doesn’t usually make them happy. It isn’t a compliment. But in this case, the goal was actually to be the biggest loser. The show was about losing weight. A lot of the people on the show lost a lot of weight. Some over 100 pounds, a few over 200 pounds. The winner of the show was the one who lost the highest percentage of his or her body weight. That’s the biggest loser.
The readings in our worship service today suggest a cast of characters for our own sort of reality television show. Maybe we could even steal a title and call this show The Biggest Loser. A little more direct and to the point, we could call it The Biggest Sinner. Let’s think back on the contestants that we’ve introduced.
From today’s Gospel, we have Matthew. Pretty much what we have to say about Matthew is the job that he was doing. If there was one job at the time when Jesus lived that was associated with sin, one job that everyone detested, it was the job that Matthew had. He was a tax collector. Tax collectors were notorious sinners. They worked for the Roman government, and the Romans were the ones keeping God’s people the Israelites away from ruling themselves and living productively in the Promised Land, at least according to the way many people thought. Tax collectors were largely Jewish people, Israelites, who were working for the enemy. They were taking money from their own people and giving it to their oppressors. And on top of all that, they were not very honest about it. The way they got to be tax collectors was by promising a certain income to the Romans. Then they went out and got as much money as they could from their own people so they could keep plenty for themselves. We have no reason to suspect that Matthew was somehow drastically different. He was a tax collector. That’s our contestant one.
Contestant two lived long before Matthew did. He lived before the people had come to the Promised Land. He lived while the people were serving as slaves in Egypt. Contestant two is Moses. God called Moses to be a leader. We heard about that in our First Reading. Moses objected. “Who am I?” he asked. “What if they ask me who you are?” he asked God. Moses had other objections that we didn’t read. He was not very confident in his ability to step up, and seemingly for good reason. No doubt Moses remembered what had happened the last time he had tried to step up and rally his people and help them. He had killed a man. And the people didn’t even follow him, they were just worried that he might do something to them in anger.
Believe it or not, contestant three is going to be our winner. He tells us as much. Paul does not say that he is a very bad sinner. He says he is the worst. We don’t usually like to confess that. We try to minimize our sins in comparison to others. We try to rationalize them away, explain the challenging circumstances that got us there. We try to convince people our sins aren’t so bad. The comparison game looks pretty good for us right now, doesn’t it? We didn’t kill anyone. We didn’t betray our own people to make a little money off of oppressors. We didn’t do what Paul did, either.
Paul briefly summarizes his past as he calls himself “a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a violent man.” Maybe you’ve learned about his life before. The first time Scripture introduces us to Paul, he actually goes by the name Saul, and he is the guy watching the coats of the people stoning a Christian man named Stephen to death. Pretty violent. It gets worse, because Paul believed that this was the thing that Jewish believers should be doing. He thought of Christians, followers of Christ, as people who had abandoned the true faith and needed to be stopped. Paul got orders from high ranking officials, and he began to round up as many Christians as he could. He went from town to town looking for them. He would have people killed for what they believed and confessed, and he was absolutely convinced that he was doing what was best.
And then God stopped him. The living Jesus Christ came to Paul right as he was traveling to do more of his dirty work. He was on his way to Damascus, and he was headed there to find Christians and send them to the authorities. Instead, Jesus met him in a blinding light and told him that he was persecuting the one who had died and was alive again. And Jesus had big plans for Paul. Paul writes about that here: “he treated me
as trustworthy, appointing me into his ministry.” Paul was not trustworthy. Paul had not convinced Jesus that he had some special quality that could be so useful in service if only something pointed him in the right direction. Jesus considered Paul trustworthy because Jesus was going to make Paul trustworthy. With good reason people were apprehensive when they heard that Paul was going out sharing the good news after he had been attacking Christians for as long as he had.
Paul received mercy. Jesus didn’t get even with him or teach him a lesson in anger. He called Paul to be a believer and a servant. Paul truly believed in what he had been doing before. His ignorance and unbelief were not worthwhile excuses, but they were real. God’s mercy was also real. The love of Jesus was real. Grace overflowed to Paul. Faith and love were the results. And you can see this all over Paul’s story. He went from persecuting Christians to making Christians by sharing with many the good news of Jesus Christ who died and rose to take away sin.
Understand what it means that Jesus came to do this. He was blasphemed for the people who were doing the blaspheming. He was persecuted so that he could save those who were doing the persecuting. He was murdered to pay the price for murderers. He didn’t commit violence. He was the victim of violence. His work, his worthiness, his trustworthiness were given to Paul, and the same comes to every sinner whom God calls to faith.
Paul was a believer called into a special role of sharing the Gospel with others as his full-time effort. He was writing to Timothy, whom God used in a similar way. But the truth that Paul reminds us of in these verses was not just for pastors. It is a general truth. It seems it had become a common saying among Christians already: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” To this Paul added his own twist: “of whom I am the worst.”
So Paul has made his claim. He’s the biggest loser. He’s the worst of sinners. What does that mean for us? Perhaps some take comfort in this idea: if Paul is the worst of sinners, at least I am not that bad. But this really is not a game show or reality television. I may or may not be the worst of sinners. But I am a real sinner. Maybe violent persecutor doesn’t describe me, but have I attacked others when I disagreed with them? Have I been violent in my thoughts, or maybe in my words, even if I would never be or have never been physically violent? We could go on. It is certainly not outside the realm of possibility that the very people who come to church today or on any other Sunday have real sins in their own lives that they just can’t shake. Paul never forgot what he had been. Real people struggle with real sins.
Paul is absolutely an amazing example of the grace of God at work. But so is every sinner. No one has figured any way out of sin, any way to pay for it, any way to get rid of it. The only answer is Jesus. That was obvious in the life of Paul, and it becomes obvious the more we carefully consider our own lives, our own weaknesses, and our own shortcomings. Yet God calls us to serve him. He called Moses. He called Matthew. He calls sinners. He loves sinners.
In other words, it’s not about being the biggest loser or the worst of sinners. In Jesus, Paul was the biggest winner. We are the biggest winners who have every sin removed, every weakness forgiven, every shortcoming overcome. How could we do anything less than what Paul does in this section of Scripture and praise God? We have good news to share with others. We have a trustworthy statement. Christ Jesus came to save sinners. All of them.
The show The Biggest Loser has kind of fallen on hard times. People have learned that crash diets and extreme behaviors don’t necessarily produce the best long-term results. The winners of the television show have for the most part gained all the weight back that they lost on the show. That’s the big difference between being the biggest loser and being the worst of sinners. Paul knew that as painful as it was to consider a previous chapter in his life, he was forgiven. He was saved. Even his worst sin was unable to undo that. You have the same promise and assurance. To the King eternal, to the immortal, invisible, only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.
The Text: 1 Timothy 1:12–17 (EHV)
12I give thanks to the one who empowered me, namely, Christ Jesus our Lord, that he treated me as trustworthy, appointing me into his ministry. 13He did this even though formerly I was a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a violent man. But I was shown mercy, because I acted ignorantly in unbelief. 14The grace of our Lord overflowed on me along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. 15This saying is trustworthy and worthy of full acceptance: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” of whom I am the worst. 16But I was shown mercy for this reason: that in me, the worst sinner, Christ Jesus might demonstrate his unlimited patience as an example for those who are going to believe in him, resulting in eternal life. 17Now to the King eternal, to the immortal, invisible, only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.