True Christianity requires that we admit our sinfulness, accept the fact that we are incapable of saving ourselves, and trust in the only Savior who can. We must, however, begin by admitting our hands are dirty before we can make our way to the sink of salvation.

In the first Great Awakening, Jonathan Edwards noted that the first thing active in conversion was an overwhelming sense of sin:

“Persons are first awakened with a sense of their miserable condition by nature, the danger they are in of perishing eternally, and that it is of great importance to them that they speedily escape and get into a better state…These awakenings when they have first seized on a persons, have had two effects; one was, that they have brought them immediately to quit their sinful practices; and the looser sort have been brought to forsake and dread their former vice and extravagances…The other effect was, that it put them on earnest application to the means of salvation, reading, prayer, meditation, the ordinances of God’s house, and private conference; their cry was, What shall we do to be saved? The place of resort was now altered, it was no longer the tavern, but the minister’s house that was thronged far more than ever the tavern had been wont to be” (1)

A couple of drinks at our local tavern will temporarily distract us from the grime on our hands, but once sober we will see the stains on everything we’ve touched. Without the Gospel our lives become an ongoing crime scene where our guilt is confirmed every time somebody finds our fingerprints on another sinful extravagance. Jesus, however, offers us immunity from prosecution by removing the crime scene tape and washing our hands in the sea of forgetfulness.

As far as the east from the west
Seventy times seven
You’ve forgiven me
And you keep cleansing me
And placing my sins into the sea of forgetfulness (Helen Baylor)

(1) Jonathan Edwards On Revival (The Banner of Truth Trust, 1965, p. 23-24)

Photo by Sabine van Straaten on Unsplash