What God Calls White
"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." Isaiah 1:18 (New King James Version)
In Jonathan Acuff's Stuff Christians Like, he observes a little boy and his swirl of soft serve ice cream. He is allowed to include any topping he wants. Confused by his options, the little boy accidentally covers the gleaming service of his treat with mustard. Spotting his mistake, an employee instantly offers the little boy the chance to start with some new ice cream, but he won't. Instead, he settles. He mixes the mustard into a sickly swirl, and he chokes down every spoonful.
If our hearts have been pricked by Isaiah 1's charges of dishonoring God by failing to honor those made in His image with the goods He gives us, we have come to a mustard moment. Only, that sickly shade is replaced with the scarlet red of obvious guilt. Our efforts to treat ourselves, indulge ourselves, even, have come to naught. The full weight of wrong, and not just mistaken, choices presses on us. We swing from self-pleasing pride to wild despair. Yet, the Lord calls to us in this pit with the words that open Isaiah 1:18. Come now, He invites. Move from far and getting farther as you realize your rebellion, and start moving toward the sound of My voice.
My voice, God invites, the same voice that declared Adam GOOD when the world was new, is going to talk us back from the ledge of distorting, distance-driving anxiety over our sin. Just as, explains God has both our Judge and our Reconciliation, I expertly convinced you of your state by showing victimized human examples, so I am convincing you that a new start sweeter than new ice cream is possible in Me.
But for the Holy Spirit's ironic persistence, we would rather follow through with eating the mustard ice cream, with insisting on our perpetual, defining stain. The prodigal son is our forefather in this worthless insistence on reproach over reconciliation. He prepares a speech in Luke 15:18-19 as a wholly worthwhile confession to motivate his movement, readying him to admit his past arrogance in a way that confesses he would give up his position as a son if he could.
By Luke 15:21, he is in his father's embrace. His self-talk is obsolete, is contrary to the identity his father is lavishing on him. Yet, the formerly prodigal son insists on labeling himself. He is determined to give his speech to enact uneasy, partial, contractual reconciliation that has already happened in full.
What about us? Once we realize that the scarlet God uses to code our sins is entirely justified, once we would even admit that the words His human image-bearers have spoken to confront and correct us may point to sin between us and God, what then? Will we recognize the privilege that God, Reason Himself, would reason with us to make something new? Or, will we always see ourselves branded by our sins and our mistakes?
Unlike the prodigal son who comes to himself with none but the pigs to prompt him, God often uses other people both to point out our mistakes and our sins AND to keep us moving toward a new identity in Him. I get a chance to apply this Truth to myself, and I resist. The label FIRED which people affixed to me in September as a part of His sovereign plan is still weighty, but it has become familiar. I am loath to "let" God use other human labels to indicate I am more than my most painful past experiences.
"A beautiful mind," repeated three times as feedback from this week's interview in a different but related field? That can't be mine. Put that in print to let others celebrate what God shows them through me, or risk resentment from the envious? Squirm. Did this long time bureaucrat's "command of the English language" just get emphasized emphatically by someone who has written professionally for his entire career? Shuffle. Can I get my old labels back? I will confess them many times over on this page before I will relate aspects of the divine image, gulp, God's Word says I bear by His design.
Perhaps the reason I'm not the only one to resist honesty about sincere compliments I receive and to allow them to replace pejorative labels is that we don't spend enough time in the paint store. We think that if we accept the verdict "white" which God pronounces in Isaiah 1:18, and may use other people to pronounce, we in some way monopolize that shade, that if we are made "white," and the word is spoken aloud, everybody else will have to settle for one of the other eight crayons in the basic box. We might be more willing to agree with God's appraisal if we considered eggshell, off-white, ecru, etc.
That is, God's whiteness, God's holiness, that He imparts to us is a whole category. Somebody may catch an echo of it in my writing, and say so. Praise be to Him. Somebody else may glimpse His glory, His Artist's eye, in my wife's patient fascination with sunrises and her ability to capture them on film. Praise be to Him. If we are contentious in our efforts at false humility, and I tend to be, we are refusing his balm for our irascible spirits and our opportunity to thank Him out loud when someone notices His handiwork in us.
In Jonathan Acuff's Stuff Christians Like, he observes a little boy and his swirl of soft serve ice cream. He is allowed to include any topping he wants. Confused by his options, the little boy accidentally covers the gleaming service of his treat with mustard. Spotting his mistake, an employee instantly offers the little boy the chance to start with some new ice cream, but he won't. Instead, he settles. He mixes the mustard into a sickly swirl, and he chokes down every spoonful.
If our hearts have been pricked by Isaiah 1's charges of dishonoring God by failing to honor those made in His image with the goods He gives us, we have come to a mustard moment. Only, that sickly shade is replaced with the scarlet red of obvious guilt. Our efforts to treat ourselves, indulge ourselves, even, have come to naught. The full weight of wrong, and not just mistaken, choices presses on us. We swing from self-pleasing pride to wild despair. Yet, the Lord calls to us in this pit with the words that open Isaiah 1:18. Come now, He invites. Move from far and getting farther as you realize your rebellion, and start moving toward the sound of My voice.
My voice, God invites, the same voice that declared Adam GOOD when the world was new, is going to talk us back from the ledge of distorting, distance-driving anxiety over our sin. Just as, explains God has both our Judge and our Reconciliation, I expertly convinced you of your state by showing victimized human examples, so I am convincing you that a new start sweeter than new ice cream is possible in Me.
But for the Holy Spirit's ironic persistence, we would rather follow through with eating the mustard ice cream, with insisting on our perpetual, defining stain. The prodigal son is our forefather in this worthless insistence on reproach over reconciliation. He prepares a speech in Luke 15:18-19 as a wholly worthwhile confession to motivate his movement, readying him to admit his past arrogance in a way that confesses he would give up his position as a son if he could.
By Luke 15:21, he is in his father's embrace. His self-talk is obsolete, is contrary to the identity his father is lavishing on him. Yet, the formerly prodigal son insists on labeling himself. He is determined to give his speech to enact uneasy, partial, contractual reconciliation that has already happened in full.
What about us? Once we realize that the scarlet God uses to code our sins is entirely justified, once we would even admit that the words His human image-bearers have spoken to confront and correct us may point to sin between us and God, what then? Will we recognize the privilege that God, Reason Himself, would reason with us to make something new? Or, will we always see ourselves branded by our sins and our mistakes?
Unlike the prodigal son who comes to himself with none but the pigs to prompt him, God often uses other people both to point out our mistakes and our sins AND to keep us moving toward a new identity in Him. I get a chance to apply this Truth to myself, and I resist. The label FIRED which people affixed to me in September as a part of His sovereign plan is still weighty, but it has become familiar. I am loath to "let" God use other human labels to indicate I am more than my most painful past experiences.
"A beautiful mind," repeated three times as feedback from this week's interview in a different but related field? That can't be mine. Put that in print to let others celebrate what God shows them through me, or risk resentment from the envious? Squirm. Did this long time bureaucrat's "command of the English language" just get emphasized emphatically by someone who has written professionally for his entire career? Shuffle. Can I get my old labels back? I will confess them many times over on this page before I will relate aspects of the divine image, gulp, God's Word says I bear by His design.
Perhaps the reason I'm not the only one to resist honesty about sincere compliments I receive and to allow them to replace pejorative labels is that we don't spend enough time in the paint store. We think that if we accept the verdict "white" which God pronounces in Isaiah 1:18, and may use other people to pronounce, we in some way monopolize that shade, that if we are made "white," and the word is spoken aloud, everybody else will have to settle for one of the other eight crayons in the basic box. We might be more willing to agree with God's appraisal if we considered eggshell, off-white, ecru, etc.
That is, God's whiteness, God's holiness, that He imparts to us is a whole category. Somebody may catch an echo of it in my writing, and say so. Praise be to Him. Somebody else may glimpse His glory, His Artist's eye, in my wife's patient fascination with sunrises and her ability to capture them on film. Praise be to Him. If we are contentious in our efforts at false humility, and I tend to be, we are refusing his balm for our irascible spirits and our opportunity to thank Him out loud when someone notices His handiwork in us.
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