Can Your God Save a Drug Dealer?

Here's a story for you. And a plea.

As I (Cristi) walk to the church, God brings to mind two things: Donnie, a local drug dealer, and Thabiti Anyabwile's sermon "Will Your Gospel Transform a Terrorist?" It seems God is asking me if I believe he is big enough to save Donnie. I repent. I'm not. So I ask him to save Donnie and grow my faith.

I arrive at the church and not long into our food prep, Elaine bursts in. Hysterical and distracted, she alternates between frantically going through our donated items and weeping about how her life has never been this terrible. I learn later it's a crack low, but she really does have a lot to weep about.

Elaine is a regular for our hot meals. She has a reputation like Mary Magdalene. Her fingers and legs are swollen from shooting drugs for so long. Her ex-partner just died from long-term drug use. Her daughter just miscarried. She is currently sleeping on the couch at Donnie's place.

I let Elaine look around for a while but finally tell her to come back in 30 minutes when we are serving food. She ignores me and carries on. At one point she tells me Donnie is taking advantage of her and physically abusing her. I feel sick. I tell her she doesn't have to stay with him. She continues in her cycle of searching through the goods and going into hysterics.

I'm about to just have her leave when she gets a call. It's Donnie. I can't hear what he is saying, but from her response, I can tell it's threatening. He wants her back. Evidently she has a drug deal to do, and he's anxious for her to get started. At that point, delayed food prep or not, I can't make myself send Elaine out when I knew an angry Donnie is waiting for her.

The drama of the evening carries on while we are serving hot meals. It's complicated with the tangle of sin and brokenness. In the end, we try to get Elaine help in several ways, but she is not ready to be free - even in a physical sense. It's heartbreaking to see the sin and oozing evil holding this precious image-bearer captive.

As I process this story, I have two takeaways:
1) I am out of my depths. Only Jesus can walk in these waters without drowning. I am helpless. I must keep clinging to him. I must keep calling on his name for salvation to come to Elaine, Donnie, and so many like them. God alone must do it. So we are desperate for you to intercede for us and with us for the lost here. That's my plea. Will you pray for these men, women, and children? That God would call them "out of darkness into his marvelous light" (1 Peter 2:9)?

2) My unbelief isn't my biggest barrier to praying for Donnie the drug dealer. It's my self-righteous pride. After the evening's events, I realize I don't even want God to save Donnie. I don't think he deserves it. I want him to pay for his sickeningly evil acts. I could write a theological paper on grace, but I don't really understand it myself. If I don't think Donnie deserves to be saved, then that means I actually think some people do deserve it (like me).

But the Apostle Paul understands that both the victim and the perpetrator find freedom at the foot of the Cross. This is the massive shock of the gospel. And it offends those of us who don't see ourselves in passages like 1 Corinthians 6:9-10:

But we're all perpetrators in some way. We all need the hope of verse 11:

And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Paul has more to say about this grace in Ephesians 2:1-10:

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Apart from Jesus, all of us are dead in our trespasses and sins. The eternally-critical difference between me and Donnie is not that I've never shot up or abused someone. It's the grace of God that made me alive in Christ. And that grace is beautifully offered to Donnie, too. Thankfully, God's changed my heart towards him, and now I pray 2021 is the year Donnie the drug dealer is transformed by Jesus and given a new name and identity: Donnie the co-heir with Christ, son of God. I want Donnie to be at the table with us in heaven.

Still, I have so much to learn about the grace of God. I long for him to take my half-baked theology and pour the glorious grace of the Cross over it so it seeps into my identity and my love for others in deeper ways.

I pray that for you, too. May the grace of our Lord Jesus and his gospel astound you and draw your heart to him more and more. May we both "grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen" (2 Peter 3:18).

*Names have been changed.