What’s made the dirtiest you’ve ever been? Mud football? Transmission repairs? Planting with steer manure? Fixing the bathroom plumbing? Have you ever been so dirty the clothes didn’t want to come off? From maybe rain or sweat or something worse they stick to you like they are the outer layer of your skin. If you’ve really gotten down and dirty once you peal ‘em off they’re too disgusting to wash. Even Maytag has it limits. So, you trash the worthless clothes, shower, and put on something clean. The simple process feels great.
That’s the new life Paul describes in Col. 3:5-15. He talks about stripping off our “old sinful nature.” Sometimes our old sins seem as much as part of us as our own skin. Perhaps that’s why the sinful nature is often called our “flesh” (Eph 2:3 kjv). Our old sins stick to us like wet manure soaked Levis.
Jesus offers new clothes. The new life begins the process of trashing our selfishness, being washed clean through Christ (His blood actually washing our sins away- weird, eh?), and putting on His perfect, clean, sinless, unselfish life (actually lived through us – weirder, eh?). The simple process feels great.
I wonder then, why do I sometimes reach back into the trash and pull the muddy Levis back on?
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