When The Daily Grind is the Only Way

Saturday afternoon found me trapped in the kitchen making my mother-in-law's special potato salad recipe for Sunday dinner.  Like many dishes that are made from scratch, it is memorable and unparalleled by anything I've ever bought at any restaurant or store.  In other words, it's worth it in the end.

The secret to this dish's success is what makes it so frustrating and time consuming--no shortcuts.  Believe me.  I've tried.

Try and mince the celery in the food processor and it's more soggy, irregular-sized mush than crunch.  Use pre-chopped onions?  More mush.  Use the mandolin chopper with your five pounds of red potatoes, and the consistent-sized cubes are too small so that post-boiling, they tend to fall apart.  More mush.  And fresh boiled eggs don't peel themselves--no shortcut possible for that step.

Unless you're Rachael Ray with everything minced, chopped, boiled, and peeled by your expert staff off stage before your thirty minute show begins, this recipe alone will keep you in the kitchen for a solid hour.  It sounds ridiculous to invest such a large amount of time into a single side dish you can buy by the tub at the grocery store.  But the longhand labor is necessary.

Slow step by slow step, I craft a culinary masterpiece that turns mere food to be consumed into food to be savored.

This isn't how we generally look at food or life in general for that matter.  We're always looking for a shortcut, a faster, easier way to get from point A to point B, to achieve X result.

I am guilty of sometimes even trying to take shortcuts when it comes to my relationship with God--cramming a week's worth of Bible study into a couple days, shoving a day's worth of prayer to the very end...all the while expecting the same results as if I had studied His Word  every day of the week instead of just a few, as if I had prayed all throughout the day instead of just at bedtime.

But our relationship with God doesn't work that way.  No matter how hard we may wish for one, there are no shortcuts to a relationship with God, no shortcuts to becoming a mirror image of Christ.

Instead, once we have the cornerstone of Christ as our foundation, the only way to build the walls of that relationship is one stone at a time.  The Word of the Lord  is given to us precept upon precept, manageable only one stone at a time.
In Isaiah's day, the people ridiculed the prophet for his manner of teaching them God's Word.  They felt Isaiah was trying to teach them the basics, much like a baby, and complained, "To whom would He teach knowledge, And to whom would He interpret the message? Those just weaned from milk? Those just taken from the breast? For He says, 'Order on order, order on order, Line on line, line on line, A little here, a little there'" (Is. 28:9-10).

The Message paraphrase of the same verses says, "We’re not babies in diapers to be talked down to by such as you—‘Da, da, da, da, blah, blah, blah, blah. That’s a good little girl,that’s a good little boy"

And yet, since the children of Israel refused to listen to even the most basic, childlike lessons from the mouth of God's prophet, this is exactly how God said He would speak to them, though through a foreign tongue of their oppressors and through judgment: "He who said to them, 'Here is rest, give rest to the weary,' And 'Here is repose,' but they would not listen. So the word of the Lord to them will be, 'Order on order, order on order, Line on line, line on line, A little here, a little there'" (Is. 28:12-13).  

In these verses, God offered His children "rest."  He offered them "repose."  The requirement, though, was that they trust in Him, that they listen to His Word and obey it. 

They needed to listen to and learn those foundational truths in order to proceed to the more difficult truths of God.  Yet, since man can only build upon what he already knows and God's children really didn't know too much in their hearts, God had to start again to lay the groundwork before starting up on the walls.

God told them, "Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a tested stone, A costly cornerstone for the foundation, firmly placed.  He who believes in it will not be disturbed" (Is. 28:16).

This is Jesus, our firm foundation, the one God was sending to a people who would not listen, who did not want to be taught from the ground up.

As much as our flesh wants to shortcut everything, we must commit ourselves to the daily grind of the Christian walk with Jesus if we want a real relationship with Him.  This means learning precept upon precept, not considering any Word too childish for our learning, returning again and again to those foundational truths, and listening to both the deep and the deceptively simple messages we think we have already learned from God.

It is only in this long walk that we will be transformed, sanctified, and made righteous like Christ.

Withholding Gifts from Our Children

Good Friday found me driving sullenly back to my parents' house while three children sat in perfect silence behind me.  The five of us were supposed to be enjoying a rare lunch out at Chick Fil A, but less than cooperative behavior during the biannual family pictures that morning had consequences.

As a mother who loves her children dearly, I wanted nothing more than to lavish this special treat on them all.  But because I am a mother who dearly loves her children, I simply couldn't.  Heart heavy, I drove home to the routine lunchtime meal of peanut butter sandwiches, bananas, and carrots.

This isn't the first time I have been unable to shower my children with every good and perfect gift because they failed in some way to uphold the rules of Scripture and of our family.  Each time, it hurts my heart to uphold justice and stay my hand, but I know how much my children learn through these teaching moments, lessons they retell for years to come because they remember what blessing was lost due to their own choices and actions.

In these times, I am merely shadowing what God the Father does with His own children.  While I usually think of God as staying His holy hand when it comes to judging the world or waiting to pour out His wrath on a perverse and unholy generation, God also holds back His blessings. 

After explaining of God's judgment to come, the prophet Isaiah appealed to Israel, saying, "Therefore the LORD longs to be gracious to you, And therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you.  For the LORD is a God of justice; How blessed are all those who long for Him" (Is. 30:18).

Gracious. Compassion.  Blessed.  These are words to describe how the Lord desires to treat His children.  In the King James version, the phrase "Therefore the Lord longs" is translated as "and therefore will the Lord wait."  He must wait to bless us with His grace and compassion...because He is a God of justice.

God doesn't deprive us of blessings out of spite or anger but simply because He is perfectly just.  As a parent, I understand this longing, this waiting to bless my own children.  How much more must our God long to bless us with all He has?

Isaiah continues, saying "He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when He hears it, He will answer you. Although the Lord has given you bread of privation and water of oppression, He, your Teacher will no longer hide Himself, but your eyes will behold your Teacher.  Your ears will hear a word behind you, 'This is the way, walk in it,' whenever you turn to the right or to the left. And you will defile your graven images...You will scatter them as an impure thing, and say to them, 'Be gone!' Then He will give you rain for the seed which you will sow in the ground, and bread from the yield of the ground, and it will be rich and plenteous" (Is. 30:19-23).

In this passage, the prophet alludes to three things that cause God to stay His hand--(1) not relying on the Lord, (2) not listening to the words of the Lord and (3) idolatry.  At the time, Israel was guilty of all three--it had turned to Egypt (not God) for protection, had rejected the words of the prophets, and was worshiping false idols.

Today, though, we, too, are often guilty of all three as well.  Sometimes, we trust in our bank accounts, our connections, our skill, and our intelligence for our security instead of in God.  We may seek out help from our spouse, friends, our family, and neighbors before we stop and ask God for help.

Likewise, we often fail to listen to the words of the Lord.  Any day that passes where we do not crack open the Bible or where we read simply to check it off our daily routine while not really engaging in the text is a day we have failed to listen to His Word. 

And finally, any time we put anything before God--even good things--we are guilty of idolatry.  Our family.  Our job.  Our favorite TV show.  Our children.  Anything can become our idol if it keeps us from putting God first.

As generally happens after we have experienced God's judgment, the people of God in the above passage grew more sensitive to God's voice to the extent that they could hear "a word behind" them. God, Himself, became their Teacher, implying they were willing to receive and be tutored by His Word  Also, they recognized their idols for what they were ("impure thing[s]") and rid their lives of them.

The result?  Blessing.  Rain. Rich, plenteous, bountiful blessing.

Yes, Scripture says "He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous" (Matt. 5:45).  Still, God's Word shows that He longs, He waits to pour out more blessings on us than He already does simply because we fail to rely wholly on Him, fail to listen to Him, and fail to put Him first in our lives.

How differently might our lives look if God could give us everything He wanted to lavish upon us?

The Truth About Passover

On the rectangular block designated for today's date, a ghostly gray font spells the word "Passover."  The word sits there quasi-transparent, hidden at the bottom line, as if the publisher were almost ashamed to put it (and every other holiday) on a wall calendar, choosing to label the holidays in the palest, smallest font so anyone could ignore them if he so chose.

For much of my life, Christians have ignored Passover as something for Jews only.  But the more I study Scripture, the more I'm learning the only way I can understand Jesus is to understand the Jewishness of Jesus.  The more I want to understand God the Father, the more I need to understand His relationship with His promised children in the Old Testament.

And understanding Passover?  It is integral to understanding Christ's sacrifice on the cross.

The first Passover was celebrated in Egypt, where the Israelites were slaves.   God told them "I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn...The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you" (Ex. 12:12-13).  Here, the word translated as "pass over" is the Hebrew word pasah from the noun pesah, which is translated as "Passover."  While "these words have no connection with any other Hebrew word,...they do resemble the Egyptian word pesh, which means 'to spread wings over.'"1

As Arthur W. Pink says in his book Gleanings in Exodus, "The word has, consequently, the very meaning of the Egyptian term for 'spreading the wings over and protecting;' and pesach, the Lord's Passover, means such sheltering and protection as is found under the outstretched wings of the Almighty.  Does this not give a new fullness to those words, 'O Jerusalem! Jerusalem!...How often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen does gather her brood under her wings?' (Luke 13:34)...It is not merely that the Lord passed by the houses of Israelites, but that He stood on guard protecting each blood-sprinkled door!"2

Can you see the image here of our "mother hen" of a Savior standing with His protective arms spread in front of each blood-painted door while the death angel canvasses Egypt for firstborn sons? This is an image foreshadowing Christ's own sacrifice covering our sins, thereby protecting us from the curse of sin and death.  Yet, this image is not the image of a passive Savior whose past shedding of blood merely hides our sin, but of one who actively stands in the way at each door to protect His children.  He is our defender.

This story of Passover--it is, at its core, a story and a promise of redemption through such a defender.  

As Messianic Jewish rabbi and author Derek Leman says, "At the first Passover, it was more than just a promise.  There was an actual sacrifice, and an actual firstborn was redeemed....The lamb's blood in Egypt was the means of a mighty act of redemption."3

In other words, God's promise to redeem the firstborn son's life in Egypt was not a forward-reaching promise that would merely require faith now and sight generations later.  Even though this promise did allude to faith in such a future fulfillment found in Christ's sacrifice on the cross, at the very first Passover, the Israelite slave witnessed a fulfillment of the promise--an actual sacrifice of a pure, spotless lamb, an actual redemption of a firstborn son.

Here, though, the blood was mere animal blood, not the blood of the only pure Son of God. Much like with Abraham, the Israelites' salvation came not through the blood of animals but by their faith (see Galatians 3:6 and Hebrews 10).  As Lemen says, "though the option was given to the people for escape, they still needed to choose to exercise that option.  The Israelites needed faith and obedience, to believe God's Word and act on it.  The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world calls for action as well as faith"3

Faith in action was necessary for salvation.

Understanding Passover, then, is important to understanding the very nature of salvation, itself.  Had the Israelites merely hidden behind the doorposts and lentils covered with the lamb's blood yet did so without faith in God, they would not have been redeemed.   The same is true of us.  We cannot really have faith in God if we choose to not obey God's holy Word--all of it.  Faith in action.

For the Jews to celebrate Passover each year was for them to remember God's promise of redemption and His fulfillment of that promise.  Its celebration was intended to give future generations a real, historical example of God's faithfulness, of faith and a pure, blood sacrifice mingling together to redeem a son from the power of sin and death.  This reminder was preparing them for faith in Christ as their Passover lamb, hence John the Baptist's calling Him "the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" (Jn. 1:29).

Christ's blood shed at Calvary--He is our choice.  We must act in faith, choose His covering of blood by living a life of obedience to Him.

Whether you choose to celebrate a traditional seder meal at Passover or not is a personal conviction, not something I'm trying to force on anyone. Understanding that Christ IS our Passover and living a life of active faith in Him is what is important. 

(With Passover starting today (Monday, April 14),  I'm pausing our march through Isaiah to appreciate the beauty that is Christ's sacrifice.  Set aside the bunnies, family photos, baskets, eggs, and chocolate for the moment and just relive all He has done for you.)


1 Rosen, Ceil and Moishe Rosen.  Christ in the Passover.  Chicago: Moody, 2006, 27-28.
2 Pink, Arthur.  Gleanings in Exodus.  Chicago: Moody, n.d., 93. 
3 Leman, Derek.  Finding Your Place at the Table of Tradition.  Nashville: Lifeway, 2008, 23-24.

Mother Nature or Father God?

Tornadoes continue to rip across the United States, the most recent ones touching down late last week.  This past winter, the United Kingdom has suffered more severe flooding than has been recorded in over two and a half centuries.  Even now, North America remains covered in the third highest recorded level of snow, with a blizzard slamming into the northwest only six days ago.

It seems every time I flip to a news page, I'm reading about one natural disaster or another.  Blizzards. Tornadoes.  Floods.  Hurricanes.  Earthquakes.  Tsunamis.

The media calls it "Mother Nature."

But as I listen to the loud rumblings and watch the narrow slivers of light from another thunderstorm shaking across our hay fields this evening, I know better. 

"Mother Nature" is not the supernatural force beyond our control.  We have not offended "Mother Earth" with the way we have polluted the land.  As Christian writer and speaker Kay Arthur is so fond of saying, "It's not Mother Nature; it's Father God."

And yet, an act of God's judgment is not how the world perceives what some media outlets have dubbed "wild weather."  As the prophet Isaiah says, "O LORD, Your hand is lifted up yet they do not see it" (Is. 26:11).

Mankind does see the judgment of God with his lifted hand, but it both denies God the authority behind the resulting destruction as well as refuses to accept it as a demonstration of judgment.   As such, the weatherman claims "Mother Nature is sure angry today" when, in fact, it is Father God who is demonstrating His wrath.  Or, on other occasions like with the tsunami in late 2012 that killed thousands, we watch clip after clip of people wringing their hands and asking "why!?" while refusing to look upwards and inwards for the answer.

I do understand this "head in the sand" attitude.  It's often too harsh to think of a God who would massacre 19,000 people in a matter of seconds, isn't it? And so, as Isaiah's words state--the Lord's hand is lifted in judgment; yet, the world does not see it.

Isaiah, though, gives an explanation for all of God's judgments, whether they be of the natural kind or not: "For when the earth experiences Your judgments The inhabitants of the world learn righteousness. Though the wicked is shown favor, He does not learn righteousness; He deals unjustly in the land of uprightness, And does not perceive the majesty of the LORD" (Is. 26:10).

God judges mankind for one purpose--so each man or woman will learn righteousness.  That's what it all boils down to--doing whatever it takes to get our attention, to make us righteous.

To become righteous means to become right with God.  This requires moral perfection, which we are utterly unable to achieve on our own, no matter how many good works we accomplish.  As Paul says, "This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe" (Rom. 3:22).  Christ's righteousness, then, justifies us, covering our sin, so that we become right with God once again.

This is the sole reason for God's judgment of any man or woman on this earth--to lead that individual to righteousness and, thus, to salvation in Jesus.

Tonight's thunderstorm outside my window is a blessing, not a curse, for my rows of corn and newly planted potatoes, giving them life that they might live.  And yet, so much of the erratic weather we witness is less a blessing and more a sign of God's judgment.

Let us not blame Mother Nature nor shake our heads in bewilderment as so many do.  Instead, let us recognize the power of Father God at work as He seeks to draw a lost and dying world to its knees in order for its people to learn righteousness, which is found only in His son Jesus. 

Raising The Next Generation of Pharisees

In the modern church, there are many of us who are diligently striving to raise up our children in the Word, to provide that Biblical foundation above all else.  We are careful with the shows we allow into our children's eyes as well as the lyrics of songs we allow into our children's ears.  We are standing in the gap for the next generation we're nurturing.

And yet, when I look at my own generation's "us versus them" mentality that we're transferring onto our children when viewing the lost world, I can't help but think there is something serious missing.  A look into Revelation 2 and the seven letters to the seven churches may hold the key, as this passage reveals churches that are missing one thing or another in their service to Jesus.

In all seven letters, Christ is a good teacher, first commending the churches for what they're doing right before showing where their faith is lacking.

Of the Ephesians, He says, "I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate evil men, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false; and you have perseverance and have endured for My name's sake, and have not grown weary. Yet this you do have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate " (Rev. 2:2-3, 6).

In this passage, there is so much good Christ finds in the Ephesians' faith.

First, they were not content to be pew-warmers. Instead, they are living a faith in action, working hard for the cause of Christ. A glance at the Greek shows the word "toil" as meaning "to grow weary, tired, exhausted (with toil or burdens or grief)"* This group takes seriously the Great Commission, demonstrating to the point of exhaustion their belief they are not saved to sit but saved to serve. Even in their physically weariness, Christ says they "have not grown weary." Despite physical weariness, they were still strong spiritually.

Next is the Ephesians' commendation for "perseverance." The very fact that this group is persevering implies that there is something they were having to persevere through. They are steadfast. They are enduring great trials and suffering, yet remain loyal to Christ.

These hardships are alluded to when Christ says, "have endured for My name's sake." The King James version renders this phrase as Christ knowing what this congregation "hast borne." This wording seems to better reflect the symbolism offered by the original Greek's "bastazō," which means "to bear, to carry"* From this, it is easy to envision the Ephesians bearing the burden of claiming Christ's name and metaphorically "carrying" His cross. It seems they are taking seriously Christ's edict that "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me" (Lk. 9:23).

And finally the Ephesians are seeking out and expelling any who deviate from the true gospel. Unlike today's Christianity where small concessions of false gospel here and there are splintering churches and watering down denominations until the gospel is completely ineffective, the Ephesians seem to hate false apostles just as Christ hates them.

BUT (and here's where the Ephesians went awry), Christ finds something specific wrong with their faith: "But I have this against you, that you have left your first love" (Re. 2:4).

This problem is so poisonous to the lost world around them.  They hated as Christ hated. BUT, they did not love as Christ loved.

They did not love with Christ's "agape" love, a love only available to those infused with the Spirit, a love not possible by any human means.

Somehow, they lost this kind of love. Whether the Ephesians lost Christ's love because they grew cynical after booting too many impostors out of their church or whether they lost that love in the busy-ness of "doing" for God...I don't know. Maybe it was a little of both, which made them become Pharisees, so focused on busily standing guard at the front door to keep out the false teachings that they exchanged a passionate, merciful love for legalism.

And perhaps then this legalism led their righteousness to turn into self-righteousness...an all-too-easy leap to make when you know you hold the truth and forget what pit God's grace saved you from.

In America today, I see Christianity being painted as a legalistic, self-righteous religion, mainly because too many Christians are using their swords of truth as weapons of hatred and self-righteousness when standing against such polarizing sins as abortion and homosexuality. This using legalism as a justification for not demonstrating agape love reveals that we, too, have left our first love.

While this heart problem affects our witness to a lost world, it also affects our teaching of our own children.  Even when we are doing what is right by raising our children in the Word and carefully guarding their hearts and minds, if we are teaching them the tenets of our faith but are not routinely showing them, ourselves, our love for the world beyond our doorsteps--if we don't consistently give them opportunities to demonstrate that love of Christ beyond the walls of our families and our churches--then we have left our first love.

Even as I write this, I'm still not sure how to walk that line of hating as Christ hates yet loving as Christ loves. They seem so opposite. But I think it goes back to what Jesus pointed out as the top two commandments--to love God and then love my neighbor as myself.

If we maintain or reclaim our first love for God, His Spirit will help us show agape love, which will then infect everyone around us, and the rest will follow.  Yet, if we do not, then my fear is that despite our best intentions to set ourselves apart from the world, we Christian parents will be raising another generation of Pharisees who will hate as Christ hates but who will not love as He loves. 

* www.blueletterbible.org

A Building Thunderhead

There are days when I want to shove God into action.  I read of the injustices around the world--stories of brother slaughtering brother, of women being trafficked instead of protected, of children living in fear and extreme poverty, or of one group seeking to wipe another from the face of our planet in the name of religion.

I feel a mixture of anguish and anger at the injustice of it all, often asking why our most patient God doesn't step in and just put an end to all this suffering.  This isn't how it was meant to be.

My prayers repeat the words of the martyrs beneath the altar in Revelation who call out, "'How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?'" (Rev. 6:10).  No matter my impatience, God continues to wait; it is as if I have received those saints' same answer: "a little while longer" (v.11).

"How long, O Lord,"  I push-- impatient, antsy, lacking comprehension of who or what He is waiting on.  And yet, all the while, He sits in perfect patience.

The prophet Isaiah describes this patience as a building thunderstorm: "For thus the LORD has told me, 'I will look from My dwelling place quietly Like dazzling heat in the sunshine, Like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.'" (Is. 18:4).

I have watched such clouds of morning dew transform ever so slowly into the wrathful thunderstorm caused by a Louisiana summer's "heat of harvest." In the morning, clouds stretch small and thin on the horizon, streaks of translucent gray against the brilliant aqua of a sunlit sky.

By noon, I compare both how dark and opaque as well as how high and how wide the heat has made the clouds to determine whether or not the storm will come; yet, despite modern meteorology and radar available on every smart phone, there is still no telling if or when or even where the day's heat will build to the breaking point.  Those clouds are still, ultimately, a mystery.

What's more, even in those times of drought when cities and sometimes entire states are praying for such showers of rain to come, there is no rushing or forcing those droplets to fall.

This is the image of our God, waiting to enact judgment.  The word used in verse four is "quietly."  Unlike me at times, He is not concerned about the unjust getting away with anything because He always has an eternal view versus my short-sighted, temporal one.  Unlike me, He will not be rushed.  Also, His timing cannot be predicted with any certainty.

We do not know the when or the where.  The only certainty in this simile is that His storms of judgment will come.  And when they do, they will be at the perfect time: "For before the harvest, as soon as the bud blossoms And the flower becomes a ripening grape, Then He will cut off the sprigs with pruning knives And remove and cut away the spreading branches" (Is. 18:4-5).

The next time we witness injustices around us--perhaps even suffer greatly from them, ourselves--we must keep this image of God in our minds, as a God quietly, slowly building wrath as a thunderstorm in the summer afternoon heat.

It is am image both to fear and to give comfort, depending on where you are in your relationship with Him.

Wrestling With the Familiar

Five months into life as a newlywed, I left a lonely husband at the airport terminal so that I could attend a professional conference in Austin, Texas.  My trip only lasted a few short days, but during that time, my husband got the hair brained idea that he should wash all his clothes in order to make my job easier when I returned. 

Unfortunately, the poor man had zero experience with separating lights from darks, and so, he never imagined the dangers of adding bright red socks into a full load of white laundry.  Worse, once the damage was done, he didn't know stuffing those clothes (including the two wet, red socks) into a hot dryer was the next worst thing he could do.

As you may imagine, I returned home to find all the white underwear tie-dyed a mottled pastel pink, their hue heat set.  Permanently.

In the end, he sheepishly wore those pink Hanes until they wore out.  Little did I know that with children in my future, this would merely be the first of many experiences with inadvertently dying fabric.

An infamous verse in Isaiah speaks of our sin as dyeing our souls: "'Though your sins are as scarlet, They will be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They will be like wool"

I know.  This is a verse well known to most Christians. But immediately before this part, the first words of this verse read, "'Come now, and let us reason together,' Says the LORD" (v. 18).  With those words, God is stating that He wants us not to mindlessly do as we are told.  Instead, His desire is that we wrestle with His words so that we comprehend and obey based on an understanding and true desire of the soul to obey, not because of mere tradition or religiosity.

These words mean God wishes us to wrestle with the common words we may have had before us our entire lives.  With the familiar, we are to pause.  To reread.  To study what we believe ourselves to already know.  To approach Scripture with the intent to learn what more God has for us to know in the common everyday language we have already committed to both and mind and heart.

In the above verse, it initially looks like God is repeating himself, giving two different words for red--scarlet and crimson.  Yet, since we know God does not waste words, either the two words hold different meanings or He is using emphasis for a reason.

"Scarlet" dye was created from "the insect 'coccus ilicis', the dried body of the female yielding colouring matter from which is made the dye used for cloth to colour it scarlet or crimson"*

According to Matthew Henry, this word scarlet denotes  "a deep dye, a double dye, first in the wool of original corruption, and afterwards in the many threads of actual transgression; though we have often dipped into sin, by many backslidings; yet pardoning mercy will take out the stain."

The concept of our sin being "double dyed" seems to be reflected in God's double use of words for "red," emphasizing just how permanently we are stained by sin in His eyes such that nothing we can do could ever release us from that stain.  

What I find most interesting, though, comes from Henry Morris' Biblical Basis for Modern Science.  Morris explains further the tern scarlet as it is created by the coccus ilicis insect:

"When the female of the scarlet worm species was ready to give birth to her young, she would attach her body to the trunk of a tree, fixing herself so firmly and permanently that she would never leave again. The eggs deposited beneath her body were thus protected until the larvae were hatched and able to enter their own life cycle. As the mother died, the crimson fluid stained her body and the surrounding wood. From the dead bodies of such female scarlet worms, the commercial scarlet dyes of antiquity were extracted. What a picture this gives of Christ, dying on the tree, shedding his precious blood that he might 'bring many sons unto glory' (Hbr 2:10)! He died for us, that we might live through him! Psa 22:6 describes such a worm and gives us this picture of Christ. (cf. Isa 1:18)" (Morris 73).

Knowing how two red socks transformed one load of laundry, I have long looked at this verse differently.  Yet, now that I have wrestled to understand how "double dyed" I am by my sin and how scarlet dyes were created in Bible times, I am even more in awe of how impossible it is for me to be "white as snow" without Jesus' sacrifice.

It makes me wonder what more God will teach me the next time I encounter this same Scripture.



*Blue Letter Bible Lexicon