Les Mis

One of the greatest stories ever told is one by Victor Hugo called Les Miserables. I had the joy of seeing the musical a week ago with several of my closest friends. It was an amazing experience and one that has been a window of the soul into the heart of grace. I want to share a scene in the musical that spoke to me. I am assuming here that you are familiar with the story – if not, there is a movie version that is almost as good.

Javert is an inspector who has spent his life following the Law to its letter. And he has spent it hunting down Valjean, a criminal who had his life “bought” who now seeks to do good. But Javert, one bound to the Law and its letter, has no understanding of change. Once a criminal, always a criminal. And from his point of view, Valjean deserves prison for life. For years Javert hunts him, coming close several times, but never capturing him, until one day the tables are turned. It is Valjean who decides Javert’s fate, and in a moment of grace, Valjean releases Javert. Javert is furious:

Who is this man?
What sort of devil is he
To have me caught in a trap
And chose to let me go free?
It was his hour at last
To put a seal on my fate
Wipe out the past
And wash me clean off the slate!
All it would take was a flick of his knife.
Vengeance was his and he gave me back my life!
Damned if I'll live in the debt of thief
Damned if I'll yield at the end of the chase
I am the law and the law is not mocked
I'll spit his pity right back in his face
There is nothing on Earth that we share
It is either Valjean or Javert!

How can I now allow this man
To hold dominion over me?
This desperate man that I have hunted
He gave me my life. He gave me freedom.
I should have perished by his hand
It was his right
It was my right to die as well
Instead I live.. but live in hell
And my thoughts fly apart
Can this man be believed?
Shall his sins be forgiven?
Shall his crimes be reprieved?
And must I now begin to doubt
Who never doubted all these years?
My heart is stone and still it trembles
The world I have known is lost in shadow
Is he from heaven or from hell?

And does he know
That granting me my life today
This man has killed me, even so?
I am reaching but I fall
And the stars are black and cold
As I stare into the void
Of a world that cannot hold
I'll escape now from that world
From the world of Jean Valjean
There is nowhere I can turn
There is no way to go on

And so Javert casts himself into the river and drowns himself.

I am drawn back to a scene earlier in the play where Valjean is arrested for stealing from a priest who has lodged him for the night. The priest not only saves him from certain prison again, but gives him even more silver to get him started in his life. Valjean is shocked, and his reaction is worth noting as well:

What have I done?
Sweet Jesus, what have I done?
Become a thief in the night,
Become a dog on the run
And have I fallen so far,
And is the hour so late
That nothing remains but the cry of my hate,
The cries in the dark that nobody hears,
Here where I stand at the turning of the years?

If there's another way to go
I missed it twenty long years ago
My life was a war that could never be won
They gave me a number and murdered Valjean
When they chained me and left me for dead
Just for stealing a mouthful of bread

Yet why did I allow that man
To touch my soul and teach me love?
He treated me like any other
He gave me his trust
He called me brother
My life he claims for God above
Can such things be?
For I had come to hate the world
This world that always hated me

Take an eye for an eye!
Turn your heart into stone!
This is all I have lived for!
This is all I have known!

One word from him and I'd be back
Beneath the lash, upon the rack
Instead he offers me my freedom
I feel my shame inside me like a knife
He told me that I have a soul,
How does he know?
What spirit comes to move my life?
Is there another way to go?

I am reaching, but I fall
And the night is closing in
And I stare into the void
To the whirlpool of my sin
I'll escape now from the world
From the world of Jean Valjean
Jean Valjean is nothing now
Another story must begin!

And Valjean leaves a changed man, one bought for God.

What do you see here? How poor words are in describing the scene! Both men escape from this world of Jean Valjean, but in different ways. In the later scene described here first, one escapes through death – physical death. In the earlier scene listed here second, one escapes through death – spiritual death.

What I would like you to see here is that escape from the Law is only possible through death. What does Scripture say?

For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. (Gal. 2:19, 20a)

We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life… because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. (Rom 6:4, 7)

So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ (Rom 7:4)

Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules (Col 2:20)

Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with him, we will also live with him (2 Tim. 2:11)

Christ’s death not only paid the price for our sins and enabled us to have a relationship with God by faith, but it gave us the example to follow: we die in Christ to sin and to the Law that we might live to God. The Javert character is correct in that there is no escape without death. The problem was the mechanism by which he carried it out. What he did not see was that it was a different kind of death, a death to the self, a death to the vision, the belief that he could actually fully abide by the law. Do you see it? The death that we die in Christ is one where we give up, where we release this idea that we can actually be “good enough” to merit the favor of God, and instead cast our eternal destiny on His grace.

I find I am more like the Javert character than I am Valjean. What a struggle it is to daily die to myself and trust fully in His grace. What an strange way to live—by dying—to me. I hope that you and I can remain open like Valjean – in the light of His grace, we stand in undeserving gratitude, and die to ourselves, forever changed people.