A Police Officer Caught Me Seriously Breaking the Law

I will never forget the day that I broke the law and was caught red-handed by a police officer. I had to go to a photo processing place and couldn’t find it. I’d already been around the block once when I suddenly saw it. It was at the top of a one-way street, and it looked like I’d have to go around the block again to get to it. That is, unless I nipped across the top of the one-way street into their parking lot. So that’s what I did.

As I parked my car, I noticed that a police officer was parking his motorbike across the road. I remember thinking, “He’s not interested in me.” So I ran up the row of steps into the photo processing building. It was then that I noticed that I had grabbed the wrong set of negatives. I turned around to go back to my car, and that’s when I saw the officer leaning against my vehicle.

As I approached the car, he said, “May I see your driver’s license, please?” I sat on the driver’s seat and handed him my license. He looked at it and then said something that shocked me. He asked, “Have you any excuse for going the wrong way up a one-way street?”

“The Scriptures say that the Law was given to stop every mouth—to leave us without justification and leave all of us guilty before God.”

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I didn’t think I had gone the wrong way up a one-way street. I had just nipped across the top (along the sidewalk a little) and into a parking lot. It was then that I realized that the law isn’t interested in the angle. I remember thinking, “Guilty, guilty, guilty.” I looked the officer in the eye and said, “No excuse whatsoever.”

He thought for a moment and said, “Well, there was no traffic coming.” With a sparkle in his eye, he added, “And I don’t think you’ll do it again.” He then closed my driver’s license, handed it back to me, turned around, and walked away. Phew!

That officer had within his authority the discretion to show me mercy or judgment. And it was what came out of my mouth that determined which one it would be. If I had said, “Officer, there are plenty of drivers worse than me,” then he would have seen that I wasn’t sorry, and he would have thrown the book at me. But when I said, “No excuse whatsoever,” it was evident that my sinful mouth was stopped. I had seen my guilt, couldn’t justify myself, and was genuinely sorry. That’s why he chose to show me mercy rather than judgment.

Look now at the purpose of God’s Law:

Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. (Romans 3:19)

The Scriptures say that the Law was given to stop every mouth—to leave us without justification and leave all of us guilty before God. That’s its purpose. Those who try and justify themselves when confronted with the Ten Commandments don’t see the seriousness of their sin and clearly are not sorry. And those whose mouths are stopped, those who have no excuse whatsoever, are ready for the mercy of the gospel.