Jesus Removes the Stain

Today's Scripture Jeremiah 2:1-5, 21-22

Insight

In Jeremiah 2, God compares Himself to a farmer who carefully planted His people “like a choice vine of sound and reliable stock” (v. 21). Yet, inexplicably, they’d turned into a “corrupt, wild vine” (v. 21). Elsewhere in Scripture, this same metaphor of a vine is used for God’s people (Isaiah 5:1-3; Ezekiel 17:5-10; Hosea 10:1). Jesus returned to this image when He said, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener” (John 15:1). He told His disciples that they were “clean because of the word I have spoken to you” (v. 3) but urged them to remain in Him and “bear much fruit; [for] apart from me you can do nothing” (v. 5).

“Are. You. Kidding?!” I yelled, digging through our dryer looking for my shirt. I found it. And . . . something else.

My white shirt had an ink spot on it. In fact, it looked like a jaguar pelt: ink splotches coated everything. I clearly hadn’t checked my pockets, and a leaky pen had stained the entire load.

Scripture often uses the word stain to describe sin. A stain permeates the fabric of something, ruining it. And that’s how God, speaking through the prophet Jeremiah, described sin, reminding His people that its stain was beyond their ability to cleanse: “Although you wash yourself with soap and use an abundance of cleansing powder, the stain of your guilt is still before me” (Jeremiah 2:22).

Thankfully, sin doesn’t get the last word. In Isaiah 1:18, we hear God’s promise that He can cleanse us from sin’s stain: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”

I couldn’t get the ink stain out of my shirt. Neither can I undo the stain of my sin. Thankfully, God cleanses us in Christ, just as 1 John 1:9 promises: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”