Painted Into A Corner
So as I am writing this, there are painters going through the parsonage. Everything right now is covered in wet paint. My wife looked at me and told me three bone chilling words:
DON’T. TOUCH. ANYTHING.
Yeah…wet paint as far as the eye can see. So, as I sit here confined to my table, I can’t help but see an analogy between this and sin.
If I reach out and touch it…that smooth perfectly painted wall…it’s tempting…not only will I ruin its perfection, but the evidence of my transgression will be plain to see. It will stain my hands, and everything I touch afterword.
I know this. But I just wanna know…Is it still wet? I mean it has to be dry now….how will I know if I don’t touch it? I mean if I never try, I will live in ignorance.
Ignorance or stains. Maybe that is how you see the choice that faced Adam and Eve.
And that is our attempt to explain it. But the truth is God painted a perfect garden and humanity could not resist the temptation to remodel. While we were made in God’s image, we wanted creation in our image.
What was God to do with His stained creation? His justice and his wrath would see it unmade. Yet His love and grace desired His creation.
In Romans 3 we read: But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.
Praise God that He put our sin into forbearance.
Praise God that He paid for our sin upon the cross.
Praise God that we are saved apart from the law.
Now, does anyone know what removes paint….
Covered in grace,
-Pastor Dan