Thursday, March 7

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2 Corinthians 5:21

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

My mother grew up in a tiny town in the hills of eastern Kentucky. Her father, my grandfather, Noah Sloane, ran an old fashioned general store that sold everything from Nehi grape soda to cuts of meat to pinto beans. I can still remember the big black manual cash register on the counter and the bloody butcher block in the back of the store. And I remember watching with awe as the miners came in at the end of the day to pick up a cold bottle of Dr. Pepper or their groceries for the week. These men were covered head to toe in black soot from the coal mines. Clothes, skin, hair, everything was black; you could just see the white of their eyes and their teeth if they smiled. I learned much later that many of those men would eventually die from black lung disease. But at the time I was just amazed at their appearance and couldn’t take my eyes off of them.

The longer I live the more I realize that we are all like those coal miners. We are covered head to toe with the soot and grime of the broken world in which we live. And at a deeper level our hearts are stained by the soot of our own sinfulness. Like those men covered in coal dust, we, too, long to take off our soiled garments; we long to be made clean again.

In the Psalms David writes:

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. Psalm 51:1-2

So how can we be made clean again?

The Bible says:

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

In other words, God has arranged for a trade. God is willing to trade his own righteousness for our sin. That’s a pretty good deal for us, don’t you think? He is willing to remove our soot-stained garments, place them on his own sinless son, while simultaneously imparting to us the righteousness of Christ himself. 

Can you imagine how good it felt for those miners to get all washed up and to put on clean clothes? 

If you have opened your heart to the gospel of the cross, and if you have experienced the grace of Christ, you know exactly how that feels!

Brian Coffey