Stains

Stains, nobody likes them, and we all seem to have something spill on ourselves at the most inconvenient time. Coffee down the front of your shirt, pasta dropped in your lap, or grape juice on your couch or carpet. Life can be like that at times, unexpected events that have emotional impact woven into unfortunate sequences of events.

Now there are stains and there are permanent serious stains. Some spatters come out with a little spray-and-wash, others are much more tenacious and take extraordinary measures to attempt to remove them.

It is these serious, unyielding, permanent stains that I would like to address today.

There is a beautiful Christian song titled Jesus Paid It All. The lyrics go like this, “Jesus paid it all. All to Him I owe, sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow.” Notice the adjective crimson to describe the stains present in our lives. Bloodstains have the connotation of being the very hard to remove kind. Sin is like that, once it has taken place, you cannot go back in time and undo the wrong that has been done. A person may feel remorse over improper actions, however there are no do-overs to reconcile what has taken place.

There is an exception however, and that is the power of God’s grace. The bible says that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. So, we are all stuck with this permanent stain issue. No one escapes it. But the good news of the gospel is that Jesus is the ultimate stain remover! The passion of Christ, his perfect life, atoned for us with His own blood. He became the sacrifice for our stains. It is this power of His forgiveness that washes us white as snow. The metaphor here is beautiful, from crimson stain to purity white as snow.

At the end of the day, we are not able to blot out our stains by our own willpower or strength. Our righteousness can only be found in Jesus Christ. No other valid option remains. It is the power of the Holy Spirit that helps us to be grateful for receiving unmerited favor for the forgiveness from the  permanent type of stains that are a part of our history.