-
by Stacey Bauman
Resurface. Zam. Scrape. Or most correctly: Flood.
Whatever you call it, it is this miraculous occurrence that happens almost hourly at every arena in North America. All the snow, ice chunks, snot rockets, spit, blood, and sometimes even vomit from the previous hour are removed and replaced with a fresh, clean, new sheet of ice.
It is the perfect picture of the miracle that happens through a relationship with Jesus.
In the same way that a grind-it-out practice or a hard fought game leave the ice ruined, sin leaves our life ruined and we can’t fix it on our own. In fact, sin doesn’t only ruin life, sin KILLS!
Paul describes it this way:
Romans 6:23a “for the wages of sin is death . . .”
and James describes it similarly:
James 1:15b “. . . and when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death.”
Sin doesn’t just chew up the surface of our life a little, just making life more difficult and inconvenient, it kills and completely ruins life. The Bible describes this death not only as a physical death – that our bodies will one day die – but also as a spiritual and eternal death – that we are separated from a relationship with God forever because of our sin.
But thank God that we have a spiritual Zamboni! I mean isn’t that essentially what Jesus is? Paul describes it this way:
2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”
If we are in Christ – if we trust & believe in Him and His death on the cross for our sins – we are made new. He scrapes up all the old sin in our life and He lays down a fresh, clean, new sheet of ice for us to live life on. He makes us perfectly new again and He doesn’t hold onto that old sin for a later date – it is gone:
Psalm 103:12 “as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.”
Jesus takes our deadly sin with Him onto the cross and makes us perfectly new in exchange, ready to live life with Him.
Are you in Christ?
If not, know that you can be, simply by faith.
If so, what will you write on this fresh, new sheet He has given you?
comments powered by Disqus
