Jeremy L. Berg

There was a day when God went dumpster diving.  Some 2,000 years ago God so loved the world that he sent his only Son into the dumpster of sin and death, so that everyone who believes in him shall not go to waste but have the eternal kind of life (John 3:16).  Jesus came and took out our garbage for us; for we had let it pile up so high that it was now too heavy for any man to carry.  As Isaiah said, “We’re all sin-infected, sin-contaminated. Our best efforts are grease-stained rags” (Isa 64:6).  But Jesus exchanged our trash for God’s treasure (1 Pet 1:3-5).

The good news, according to Paul, is that “Christ was without sin, but for our sake God made him share our sin in order that in union with him we might share the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21).  God dove head first into the overflowing dumpster of the world’s sin, covering himself with the grease and grit, mold and mildew, dust and dirt.  He pulled us out of the pit (Ps 40:2; 103:4), and wiped us clean (Ezek 36:25; Heb 10:22).  He gave us new clothes and covered our smell with expensive perform (Ezek 16:9).  He took our brokenness upon him self and made us whole again.  We need only accept his gift.  We were like cracked cisterns unable to hold water (Jer 2:13), but the Spirit has sealed our cracks and made us vessels capable once again of carrying God’s love and grace to others (2 Cor 4:7).

Still some are unwilling to let go of their precious junk.  Boston College professor Peter Kreeft says it in so many words:

All sin is spiritual garbage, and necessarily meets its end in destruction.  God can’t let garbage into heaven.  Only if the “sinner” won’t let go of his garbage does he get burned with it.  God offers to take the garbage off his back, to separate the “sinner” from the sin so that the sinner is not separated from God.  Jesus is the garbage man. 

Yes, Jesus is the garbage man who hauls all of our sins far away.  “As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our sins from us” (Ps 103:12).  We however still need to make the effort to get it to the curbside.  We need to do the dirty work of bringing secret sins into the open, confessing them to God and thereby allowing God’s love and mercy to haul them away.   Some refuse this task—and pay the ultimate price.  We’ll save that conversation for later date.

NEXT: “Spiritual Clutter”