Aren’t we just like babies, perhaps, not physically “stinky” but spiritually “stinky’?
As a childcare worker, changing a baby’s poopy diaper is one of my daily routines. It is not a pleasant task, so I pray to God that He would help me find joy and his presence while doing the mundane work. So, one day, while I was changing diapers for the infants, I had a personal encounter with Jesus. After this personal encounter, my soul delighted with a great sense of joy and satisfaction.
As I started to engage myself fully in the work my hands were doing, an interesting question came into my mind: Aren’t we just like the babies, perhaps, not physically “stinky” but spiritually “stinky’? It is the smell of poop that keeps babies from those who love them, just like the sins we bear keeps God from us. As descendants of Adam and Eve, the moments we born, the sinful nature starts to manifest. As years go on, the sins we commit get accumulated. Just like yeast, sins have power to permeate into every aspect of our life, make us “stinky” before God.
However, does God let us perish in sins? No, just like how a mom doesn’t let her baby soil in the unclean diaper. God rescued his people immediately. He has already prepared a salvation plan and proclaimed it, as early as when sin first came into the world. God said to the serpent that “He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” (Gen. 3:15) This son of man, Jesus, is the means that God used to rescue mankind.
In Isaiah 53, Jesus is described as the one “surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.” As I was wiping the infant, I started to imagine that the sins I used to bear, which made me unapproachable by God, has now all been taken over by Jesus. All stains now have become stains of Jesus. Yet, Jesus takes it gladly, without a complain. Like a snowy white wipe, he wipes us clean. He does not stop taking over our burden of sins, until we are clean, until we are not smelly at all…Because of the punishment he took for us, we have peace. And “by his wounds we are healed.” (Isaish 53:5)
Now what happens after we are wiped clean by Jesus? I always change cloth for a baby if his/her cloth got stained, too. When we accept Jesus, we are given this new cloth to wear, which is a new identity in Jesus Christ: son and daughter of Heavenly Father. The new identity in Jesus Christ made us holy and righteous before God’s eyes, which enables us to co-exist with a Holy God in the spiritual realm and share the eternity with Him. Like a mom now can hug the baby again!
The more I meditate on God’s salvation love, the more I am thankful for His mercy on us who have chosen to accept Jesus. I hope God extends his mercy on my family someday as well.