For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become a transgressor of the law.

- James 2.10

On Friday, November 9, Michael Rogers of Melbourne, Australia, was a hero. A week later, he was a criminal.

After suspected terrorist Hassan Khalif Shire Ali stabbed three patrons at a local shopping mall, and as he held off three police officers with his blade, Rogers, who is homeless, rammed the suspect repeatedly with a shopping cart. His quick thinking allowed the cops to apprehend the perpetrator without further violence. The internet fell in love, with admirers opening a Go Fund Me campaign and raising over eighty grand to benefit the newly-minted celebrity.

Then law enforcement took a dekko at the grainy cell phone footage and discovered that Rogers had a number of outstanding charges for theft and B&E. He turned himself in on Friday, November 16, one week after his much-publicized heroics.

Seems ironic. The whole thing reminded me of that slab of dialogue in Disney's "Black Pearl," where Captain Jack Sparrow rescues Elizabeth Swan only to face arrest and hanging as a pirate. As Admiral Norrington explains, "One good deed is not enough to redeem a man of a lifetime of wickedness." To which Captain Jack quips, sotto voce, "Though it seems enough to condemn him."

James makes the same point regarding any effort at works salvation: no amount of good-deeding expunges the stain of original sin. As D. L. Moody once observed, if you hang a man from the roof by a chain of ten links and one breaks, he falls, despite a ninety-percent success rate!

But James does not leave us at the mercy - or mercilessness - of our spotty track record. Instead, he points us to "the law of liberty," which he also dubs "the royal law," "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Christ, who kept the whole law without fail, sacrificed his perfection in place of our failure and by that act offers us redemption. 

The National Homeless Fund says it will hold the money for Rogers in hopes that he can settle his issues and start a new life. One prays for such an outcome. But his story serves as an example to all of us that our only hope for eternal life lies, not in acts of heroism, but in the mercy shown us by the sacrifice of Christ.