The problem with analogies is they only work so far. They’re useful as some kind of picture, but they can’t tell the whole story.

So when we talk about the “trust/healing” model of our relationship with God,  that’s fine. We all recognize that what God asks for is trust, so he can heal us. Concepts of healing are much better analogies for our sin problem than legal, “forensic” ones. But even here, we can get into trouble if we push the analogy too far.

I came across an interesting greeting card recently. In bright yellow and orange, it looks like the outside of a box of washing powder. It’s entitled “Sin Remover” with a halo above the letter “S”! The promotional blurb says it’s “with super soul-saving agent,” and “ultra-sanctifying.” In fact it’s “guaranteed eternal!” And in a backwards nod to previous ways of trying to achieve the removal of sin, it states it is “now with self-flogging action.”

And we can smile at such absurdities… Yet they betray an underlying, almost subconscious idea of what we’re looking for—some “magical substance” that will take care of our sense of dirtiness and sin, that will make us clean and good once more.

Is this the answer to “Why did Jesus have to die?” Some divine detergent that takes care of our sin dirt? In some of the imagery we’ve used, it almost could be taken that way. We speak of being cleansed from sin and washed in the blood (though the latter in actual experience does not make things physically clean!) As if there was some physical substance that would work on removing the physical substance of sin. And already that’s a misunderstanding, for if we see sin as “spiritual dirt” then we look for some “spiritual cleanser” to fix it—and we also assume that basically we’re OK, just a bit dirty in need of external cleaning, when in reality we’re rotten to the core!