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.
Imagine you pull out a carton of milk from your refrigerator, pour the milk into a glass, but as you’re pouring it, some of it spills on the kitchen floor. You grab a paper towel, bend down, and clean it up. Easy mess, easy cleanup – right? A few minutes later, you’ve probably moved on and forgotten about the mess.
Now imagine what happens if you spill some coffee on your brand new white carpet. The clean-up process is a much bigger deal because to get the carpet back in its original condition of being brand new, it’s going to take a lot more effort. This cleansing process will be more memorable.
The Apostle John in this verse today makes a point that should be a cornerstone piece of our personal altars as we go before God and give Him thanks for all He has done, is doing, and will do. The “mess” of our sin is deeper than we can imagine. In the book of Job, Job had three “friends” who were attempting to respond to the devastation Job was experiencing. Now these guys didn’t get much right in their assessment of Job’s situation, but one of them, Eliphaz, got it right about man’s condition before God when he said in verse 15:16, “How much less man, who is abominable and filthy – who drinks iniquity like water!” Not a pretty picture of us, is it?
The prophet Isaiah also had a keen understanding of the messiness of sin when he said in chapter 64:6 in his book, “But we are all like an unclean thing, And all our righteousness are like filthy rags; We all fade as a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, Have taken us away.” Are you getting the message?
We cannot begin to know the extent of God’s grace in the gift of salvation until we develop a heartfelt ownership of our condition in an unforgiven state before a perfect and holy God. In other words, until we know how much of a mess our sin has made of us, we will never fully appreciate what it took to make us clean. Before Adam’s sin in the garden of Eden, we were in our original condition – sinless, clean, and in an uninterrupted and unblocked relationship with God. Confession of Jesus as our Lord and Savior is the beginning of our return to our original condition.
The depth of our relationship to God will be equal to the depth of our appreciation of the effort He went to clean up our mess – our sin. The Apostle makes it clear in this verse that it took the Father’s only begotten Son’s blood to cleanse us of all of our sin. Nothing else – no amount of good deeds, no amount of money, no amount of prayers – will completely and totally wash us of our past, present, and future sins than the blood of Jesus Christ that was spilled on the cross. Anything short of the blood of the Lamb of God will leave us in our mess – unforgiven and filthy.
Now it is important that once we’re forgiven that we move forward in our lives free of the guilt and shame that we carried before we were saved – that is what is meant when we hear “we have freedom in Christ”. Jesus wants us to live in His victory. However, we need to regularly remind ourselves of the ‘Divine elbow grease’ that it took to make us clean and make us free. Nothing else can do the cleansing work but the blood of Christ. That is what we need to remember, and that is why we praise Him.
What is your opinion of yourself absent the blood of Jesus? If you think you’re nothing more than spilled milk on the kitchen floor, then your appreciation for what Jesus did for you is inaccurate and insufficient. Christ didn’t die on a cross over spilled milk. He died because the only thing that could clean up your mess – your sin – was His blood.