What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.
Imagine your clean world is covered in dirt. Where would you go to get clean? You feel dirty and despair that you and your world always will be, no matter what anyone does, dirty, dirty, dirty — disgusting, disreputable, and destined to stay that way. In other words, not just dirty, but dirty with no hope of ever being clean again.
This is how I felt the other morning. I awoke at 6 am to Finneas and Rocco in my bedroom doorway saying Atticus had gotten sick. I jumped out of bed and as Paige and I walked down the stairs, the stench hit my nostrils. What I saw when I got downstairs and turned the lights on was liquid poop all over our carpet. A large deposit was in the boys' bedroom and another smaller pile was between the bedroom and the bathroom and in between and up the stairs were poop coated footprints of the morning's activities. I didn't even know where to begin. Paige immediately went and got towels and I grabbed the two little boys and carried them up to the bathtub. I got them cleaned off respectively and then laid them down on the sectional as I joined Paige in using soapy water soaked rags to begin cleaning the carpet. On my hands and knees cleaning up excrement, I felt dirty. I felt like I would never be clean ever again. Where hadn't poop-covered feet walked. They had attempted to clean up their feet which meant the toilet paper roll had poop on it and the door handles and the walls and the.... what didn't have a poop on it at this point? In that moment, I felt helplessly, hopelessly dirty and gross.
It reminded me of my moments before confessing my sin before God. Back then, I too had reached a point of seeing my filth for the filth that it was -- not just dirty and gross, but irrevocably so. The hands I had been using my whole life to wash my feet were themselves covered in grime. How can dirty objects clean up dirt without just getting them dirtier? How can crooked sticks in crooked hands draw straight lines?
Praise God for the gift of His Son. Thank God for purity from outside myself. A purity which is not defiled by touching me. A cleanliness that leaves me clean after contact. But the shower is dirty because it gets you clean and so the instrument God used to clean me up got dirty in the process. Jesus was nailed to the cross because He took my place. He became sin that I might become the righteousness of God. This required Him to possess cleanliness and a willingness trade. On the Cross, He gave me His purity and disposed of my depravity. And when He rose on the third day afterwards, He left those dirty rags in the grave and rose again in the purity in which He will rule and reign all of His laundered beloveds.
2 Corinthians 5:21
For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him
Praise God for His work in my life in showing me this as a young man and reminding me of this as an adult man with children of his own. His love endures forever!
*based on events which took place on Sunday, August 8th, 2020
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