Second Chance

In 1849, Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky was arrested for alleged anti-government activities and sentenced to death. On December 22 of that year, Dostoevsky and others faced a firing squad. The condemned men were separated into groups of three. Dostoevsky stood to one side, awaiting his execution as he watched his peers being lined up and tied to posts. Guns were raised as the condemned men awaited the order to fire. Their hearts were heavy as they heard, “Ready … aim …” But the order to fire was never given. At that moment, a messenger arrived saying the czar had changed their sentence to hard labor in a Siberian work camp. The czar had already granted the men a reprieve, but he wanted it delivered as late as possible.* In a novel he wrote years later, Dostoevsky described a character who, facing death at the scaffold, pondered what he would do if he was given one more chance to live.

He said, “I would turn every minute into an age, nothing would be wasted, every minute would be accounted for.”† What would you do if you were given a second chance at life? How would it alter the way you live? The truth is that everyone has been given a second chance. Romans 6:23 says, “The wages of sin is death,” and Paul wrote earlier in the book of Romans that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23, KJV). Everyone alive has earned the wages of sin.

But God so loved the world that He stepped in to provide all people with a way of escape from the sin’s penalty. Although we deserve death, “the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23).

Faith in Jesus provides every sinner with a second chance. Through Jesus’ death on the cross, we all have the opportunity to start again.

God offers a new beginning. The death penalty is gone, and life with all its possibilities stretches before us. It is too precious a gift to waste.