Have you been around a child with a poopy diaper? It’s no secret. Like with the Grinch, three words for a dirty diaper: “Stink. Stank. Stunk.” When my two-year-old walks by me after doing his business, I am immediately alerted to his condition. “You have a poopy diaper,” I exclaim. His immediate response, a resounding “No!” while running away. What’s his purpose in denying? He’d rather live with the mess and smell than take a moment away from play to let me fix him up all fresh again.
Don’t we like to say “No!” to God? Perhaps the Spirit points out something that stinks in our lives. We unwisely think that if we just keep playing at life, God will go away and ignore that foul odor that’s stuck all over us.
Listen! Just as a baby is helpless to clean himself, we are helpless to wipe that nasty sin away. But it’s so simple! Jesus can wipe us clean. He wants to wipe us clean. He’s chasing us down to wipe us clean. (Sometimes I even have to pin my two-year-old to the floor while I’m cleaning him up). And he’ll do it again and again, as many times as we need that cleaning.
Is this a crude analogy? Perhaps, but it holds special meaning at this time of year when we remember that Jesus came as a baby. Mary wiped him up many times. Isn’t that ironic? What a normal baby Jesus was, and yet he grew to ultimately wipe up the world.
There’s no hiding sin. Not even behind the mantra of “love”. For what type of love leaves a baby in a messy diaper, bottom festering red and sore? Love sees sin and does not ignore it. Love wipes sin, at the cost of the wiper.