Like the lame beggar, we’re born unable to walk in God’s ways. Like him, we’re spiritually bankrupt, unable to pay our debt to God. Like him, we can be right at the door of spiritual truth yet still be outside. And like him, healing comes wholly by grace—unearned, unexpected, transformative grace.

Our world is filled with hurting people. They are everywhere—from beggars sitting on sidewalks to desperate mothers making unthinkable choices, like the woman in Riverside, Kitwe who took her daughter’s life because she was dying with a diagnosis of HIV and had no one to care for her. Sometimes the depth of human suffering seems overwhelming. But sometimes, in the midst of such pain, everything changes in an instant.

Consider the scene that unfolded at Jerusalem’s Beautiful Gate, the entrance leading from the Court of the Gentiles to the Court of Women. It was three in the afternoon—the hour of prayer and evening sacrifice. Peter and John, often partners in ministry who had together witnessed Jesus’ trial and empty tomb, were heading to the temple.

A Life of Limitations

There lay a man who had never taken a step in his life. For over forty years (Acts 4:22), he had been carried everywhere he needed to go—to the temple, to the table, to bed. Like the young man at the Luyanshya turn-off who sits in his wheelbarrow all day, or the insane boy dressed in rags, sleeping on the ground across from the mosque in Kitwe, this was his daily reality.

Every day, others would lay him at the temple gate—the text suggests he couldn’t even sit up on his own. He had been there so long it seemed normal, both to him and to the crowds that passed by. While others entered the temple to worship, he could only beg from the outside. Though the rabbis taught that Judaism rested on three pillars—Torah, Worship, and showing kindness—this man could only hope for the latter.

His situation mirrors our own spiritual condition. As Paul would later write in Romans 5:12-21, we’re all born unable to walk in a way that pleases God. Adam’s spiritual lameness passed to all his descendants. Like this man, we can be right at the door of spiritual truth yet still be outside, separated from God.

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