Jesus Paid It All
Do you ever wonder what God sees when He looks down upon us?
God sees all that is. God sees “the things now hidden in darkness.” God knows “the purposes of the heart.” (1Cor 4:5) God sees and knows all sin.
He sees and knows what we have done, what we did half-heartedly, what we should have done but didn’t. And He knows all the consequences of our action and our inaction.
God sees and knows what we have said, what we said and didn’t mean, what we should have said but didn’t. And He knows every consequence our words and our silences produced.
God sees and knows all our thoughts. He knows our motives, our intentions. He knows the inner-dialogue we attempt to suppress. He knows the good things we intend but then don’t follow through with. And, again, God knows the effect of all our thoughts on ourselves and on the people and the world around us.
God knows where your shirt was made and by whom, under what conditions. God sees the effects of our ingratitude on the people around us, and what they do to others for being unappreciated. God alone knows the good we could be doing with all the time we spend consuming media, and He knows what the gift of our attention perpetuates and what happened to the people we could have been helping instead.
God sees and knows it all.
In Isaiah 1, God brings His complaint against Israel. And it’s not just that they’re sinful. It’s that they’re so sinful and yet they pretend to be faithfully worshipping Him: “I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. …even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.” (1:13, 15)
Gross. Hands full of blood? Imagine that old picture, “Praying Hands.” Now dip those hands in blood. Imagine they’re your hands: dip in blood and now assume a posture of prayer. Blood tickling your forearm as it puddles around your elbow. Gross.
Gross. Profane. Blasphemous. Wrong.
But, well, God sees all. He sees the blood on our hands when we fold them in prayer. Should He listen to us? Should He hear our prayers after all we’ve done and not-done, said and left unsaid? Should He not strike us for our presumption, punish us for our sins and embarrass us for our arrogance?
He says, “Your sins are like scarlet… they are red like crimson.” God sees sin as a wound, as a crime. Blood stained hands, clothes, shoes. Hide the body, burn the evidence. Wash up. God sees and knows. "The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground." (Gen 4:10)
What would you give to be free from the stain of sin? From the blood of this world splattered all over you because of sin? What would you give to be able to look at God with your eyes open? To meet His gaze without shame?
“Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” (1:18)
God promises Israel in Isaiah 1 that though they’ve dipped their hands in blood and then had the audacity to fold them in prayer, though they deserve to be struck, humiliated, judged, sentenced and punished, yet there is another way. He will do something, He promises. And the thing He does will make the stain of their sin as white as fresh-fallen snow. They will be washed. Their evil deeds will be removed from before His eyes. They’ll go from being soaked in the blood of injustice, to being dressed in light, white, wool.
Blood is hard to get out of clothes, hard to scrub off of hands. But God has done it for us. What He promised Israel, He has delivered through the work of Jesus. Jesus was struck, humiliated, judged, sentenced, beaten, bloodied, crucified, killed, and buried. This all happened to Him because of our sin. He laid His life down because that’s what our sins required.
And now, because He did this, we are clean. Our evil deeds have been removed from before God’s eyes. (1:16) We are washed.
Sin is gross. Try not to sin. But you will sin. And it’s gross. So it is very, very good to know this: that when God sees us, He know longer sees us stained and shamed. He sees us washed. He sees us in Christ, cleansed and covered by what He did.
The deal was made and done: though our sins are red like crimson, they are now white as snow.
"As far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove the guilt of our rebellious actions from us." (Psa 103:12)
As sinning sinners in a sinful world, who know we don’t know the half of it, it’s easy to be overwhelmed when we think of the stain of sin upon our lives. And it is overwhelming. But for those of us in Christ, here is an even more overwhelming truth: Jesus paid it all.
Photo by Cassi Josh on Unsplash
