One Sentence I Took As A Ruling

Eleven words, six years ago, in a corridor, and she can still hear the exact tone.

She is not going to repeat them here and this page is not going to ask her to. It was not shouted. It was not even unkind exactly, and the woman who said it has been perfectly warm to her since and almost certainly does not remember saying anything at all.

It was a small sentence about whether somebody like her really counted as one of them.

And it was said in a corridor, between two rooms, by one person, with nobody else present, and it took about four seconds.

Six years.

That is what she cannot get over when she thinks about it clearly, which is not often. Four seconds of a woman's Tuesday against six years of hers.

And here is the part she has never said to anybody, which is that she did not just take it as a rude remark. She took it as a finding. As though a body with the authority to decide had met, considered her case, and issued a determination through that woman in that corridor.

She has been living under it as a ruling ever since.

She still goes. She serves. She is warm to everybody including the woman. And underneath the whole of it there is a sentence with a date on it that she has never appealed, because you do not appeal something you have never told anybody about.

You know that corridor.

Maybe yours came from a relative. Maybe it was at seventeen. Maybe you cannot even remember the words now and only the feeling of them, which is common and which does not make it less operative.

Nobody set out to sentence you. That is worth saying twice, because you have probably worked it out already and it has not helped. She was tired or careless or had an opinion she should have kept, and she moved on within about a minute, and none of that has ever reached the thing sitting in you.

Who is bringing the charge

Here are two questions in a row, both of them asked and answered, and they are the exact questions for a woman in a corridor.

Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again.Romans 8:33-34

Who shall lay any thing to the charge.

That is a courtroom question and it is asked in a courtroom form, and the answer given is not a defense. It is a jurisdictional answer. It is God that justifieth, which means the only party with standing in this matter has already ruled, and the ruling was in your favor.

And then the second question, in case the first was not enough. Who is he that condemneth. And the answer names the one person entitled to and says what He did instead.

You are not under any charge, and the one entitled to file one has already ruled the other way. That is what Romans 8:33-34 does by making it a question of jurisdiction rather than of evidence (Romans 8:33-34), and it is the Holy Spirit who bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, which is the notification of a verdict already entered.

Nobody in a corridor has jurisdiction

Now the practical part, and it is worth being precise about it.

That woman was not empowered to decide anything about you. Not by her room, not by anybody in it, not by any office she holds. If she had gone to the people in charge there and told them what she said, they would have been horrified.

She had no jurisdiction. She was a person in a corridor with an opinion, and an opinion is not a finding however much it sounds like one when it lands.

You have been living under a ruling that was never issued by anybody with the power to issue it. Scripture says who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand (Romans 14:4), and read the last clause, and it is the Holy Spirit who does that holding up, which has been happening for six years underneath a sentence you thought was load bearing.

And she is not being prosecuted here

Let me be plain, because it matters and you would want it said.

Nothing here condemns her. She said one careless thing on one afternoon and she has been warm to you for six years and she almost certainly has no idea. That is most people, most of the time, including you and including me.

Nothing here tells you to raise it with her, to confront it, to leave that room, or to think worse of anybody in it.

You are not being handed a grievance, and there is nobody here to be angry with. The word says charity beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things (1 Corinthians 13:7), and it is the Holy Spirit who has produced that in you for six years, which is why you have gone on being warm to somebody while quietly living under something she said.