We have a troll - yes, of course I'm talking about Baz. It's ironic to note that Baz happens to be the name of a close friend of mine - also a past paedophile who has learnt his lesson, found God and is building a new life for himself with God's aid.

We have a troll - so do we laugh or do we cry? Do we get angry and return insult and invective in return for his ignorant tirades? Do we descend to his level and throw back at him the rocks he is using to damage us.

Or do we seek to live in the truth of who we really are? As Paul puts it in Ephesians 2:

3All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature[a] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. 4But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9not by works, so that no one can boast. 10For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

It is in that context we can indeed cry - but cry for the sad lost man who is Baz. Cry for a lost soul that is seeking to justify himself rather than find God's grace to live by. Cry for one so desperate as to need to post as we have seen here.

So let's pray for Baz that one day he will find true justification in Jesus. Pray that he will come to repentance and that one day, whether in this age or in the age to come, we will welcome him as a brother in the family of God into which we have been adopted, in which we have no right to be but yet into which God has bought us by His grace.

Or as Paul puts it in Romans 8:
31bIf God is for us, who can be against us? 32He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?