I HAVE BEEN PERSUADED
"I have been and am now persuaded!" Paul said that something (Someone) had persuaded him some time earlier and that as he wrote he was still utterly convinced that nothing could separate humans from the love of God that is seen in and as Jesus Christ (Romans 8:38). In a whole series of trenchant denials he lists what might be offered as proofs that God had changed his mind and turned from his commitment to creation. Ten times he says "no!" What about death? Does that not prove that God has turned from us, that in the face of our moral ugliness he has finally and forever walked away? "No, in fact, it was through death, the death of Christ, that God placarded his faithful refusal to abandon us!" What of life with all its dangers and challenges? "Nor that!" What about evil angels? "Nor those!" And what of emperors and such? "Nor those!" And on he goes. Ten times he says no—this man who knew what pain and deprivation and loneliness was—ten times he says no and concludes by saying "and nothing else you could name!" can keep God from us.
He didn’t persuade himself of this! The participle (verbal adjective) is passive. Someone had persuaded him; had made a believer of him. He didn’t use to think that way but now that he had seen the brutal realities of life, day in and day out, he had changed his mind. The participle is also a perfect passive. This means he was persuaded sometime earlier and that that persuaded frame of mind was still with him after all he had seen and heard and felt and experienced!
And if we had made a list of our own that had things in it that weren’t explicit in his he’d have said, "Nor that!" or "Not that either!" He’d have said no until the cows came home because for him, amidst all the teeming number of realities, there was one that was more real than all else—God’s self-disclosure in Jesus Christ.
Had we asked him if he didn’t accept that harsh realities were real, he’d have said, "Oh, they’re real enough. I’ve met them face to face and so have a host besides me. But God is real! And Jesus Christ is real. I look at all those harsh realities, walk around them, pick them up and feel their weight and how solid they are and then I turn and see him watching me. One look at him and the remotest hint of hesitation in me burns away and the adventure continues. I get weary, of course, and I don’t always feel joyful and clear-headed. But that’s part of the adventure, don’t you know. I have the complete awareness that even when I feel these I’m still in the adventure. It’s part of the adventure that you brawl with tough realities. The real secret is to see him and once you’ve seen him, really seen him, there’s no going back. By then he has you and you don’t want to go back. Back to what, for pity’s sake? Back to less than him? That isn’t a real option. Not for people like us."
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.