My Dirty Dress

 "For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me." Psalm 51:3

    Hanging in the back of my closet is a dirty dress I once wore. While searching for something to wear the other day, I saw it there, sin-stained and filthy. It even smells rotten, like a dead animal.

    Why do I keep it? It serves as a reminder of who I used to be. 

    Looking at it now, I can't believe I once wore that and thought I looked pretty good. I didn't know how ill-dressed I was until I compared myself to the holiness of Jesus.

    Because "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23), even when I thought I looked my best, "all my righteous acts were like filthy rags." (Isaiah 64:6) That's why the dress smells like death, because I was dead in my transgressions. But when I asked Jesus to clean me up, He took off my grave clothes and gave me His own precious robe of righteousness. And, I might add, it's a perfect fit!

    Though that is pretty amazing, there's more.

    God doesn't see that dress in my closet. In fact, he has forgotten all about it. He said, "I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more." (Isaiah 43:25) If I had any sense, I would put that dress where God keeps such things: "You will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea." (Micah 7:19)

    But, like I said, I keep it as a reminder. I never want to return to that style of living. Why would I? I am clad in garments of praise, no longer in a spirit of despair (Isaiah 61:3) as is fitting for the Bride of Christ. 

I'm lookin' pretty good these days.

"Now Joshua was dressed in filthy clothes as he stood before the angel. The angel said to those who were standing before him, 'Take off his filthy clothes.' Then he said to Joshua, 'See, I have taken away your sin, and I will put fine garments on you.'" Zechariah 3: 3-4