Picture in your mind that you are wearing a white shirt or blouse with a pocket in front. You put a pen in that pocket. But the pen leaks and produces a dark stain on the front of the shirt or blouse. Picture that you also ate some kind of juicy fruit and the juice squirted out of the fruit and landed on the front of your shirt or blouse. You had other food to eat but that also landed on the front of you. Later, you worked on your motorcycle and got grease on you. Your once clean, white shirt or blouse is now stained with many stains. What are you going to do with it?
Your sins that you commit before God are stains upon your spiritual clothes. They are deep stains that you cannot remove with any amount of good works. Isaiah 64:6a “But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags.” Jerimiah 2:22 “’For though you wash yourself with lye, and use much soap, yet your iniquity is marked before Me,’ says the Lord God.” But God has made it possible for you to have your spiritual clothes clean and without spot once again. Isaiah 1:18 “’Come now, and let us reason together,’ says the Lord, ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool.’”
Jesus Christ died upon the cross and shed his blood for you so that your sin stains might be cleansed. Ephesians 5:25-27 “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.” Jesus loved you so much that He gave Himself to cleanse you from your sin stains so that you can be a part of His glorious church, without spot or wrinkle or blemish. It is the blood of Jesus that cleanses you. 1 John 1:7 “But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.” Revelation 1:5-6 “And from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth. To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”
In 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, the apostle Paul lists some of the sins that could stain your spiritual clothes. “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.” This is not a complete list of sins. But whatever the sin stain, Jesus is the only one to cleanse you from your stains. The apostle Paul continues in verse 11 “And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.” Ananias told Saul in Acts 22:16 “And now why are you waiting? Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord.” Your baptism was when your sins were washed away.
What a wonderful analogy, that you can see yourself first covered with stains from sin, but now washed clean in the blood of Jesus. The stains are gone. You don’t have to feel guilty of the things of your past. Those sins have all been washed away. Though your sins were as scarlet, you are now washed as white as snow. But, you cannot go back to your old way of living, and be filled with sin stains again. 2 Peter 1:5-9 “But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.” You must be diligent to grow spiritually and not forget that you were cleansed from your old sins. Perhaps the next time you drink the cup at the Lord’s Supper, you can be reminded that the fruit of the vine that you drink is to you the blood of Jesus that cleanses you from your sins.