“An Old Sin Surrenders to New Healing” sounds almost like a story right out of the life of King Solomon: “Midwife and distraught daughter steal baby from comatose mother.” In our country, their story would have made national headlines. And when they were caught, they would have done some serious jail time.

The story is both tragic and triumphant. How tragic that two women who should have known better would stoop to such a heartless crime. How tragic that people who knew the truth and had tasted the life-transforming gospel could also choose to steal and conceal and deceive.

But oh, how incredible and wonderful that the truth of the gospel could ultimately triumph over sin and darkness, producing repentance and restoration and forgiveness!

But don’t miss how it happened. It happened through community. It happened when truth was allowed to incubate in the context of authentic relationships. The three essential ingredients for life-transforming discipleship are truth, relationship and life. Though mother and daughter apparently knew God’s truth, without the accountability of a relationship with other followers of Jesus, the truth lay buried deep within.

No crime scene investigation could unravel, much less heal and restore, such a hopeless situation. Yet God’s Word and God’s Spirit working through the community of God’s people did just that. That’s disciple-making as it was meant to be. To God be the glory!