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!

And if God is to us some “cleansing agent” then we objectivize him, and do not look for any personal relationship—we just want the “Sin Remover” stuff. If all we are looking for is cleanliness, or a not guilty verdict, or legal absolution, then why do we need anything like an actual personal God in our lives? In fact too many answers to our question are just that—mechanical, legal, or transactional, just taking care of some perceived “problem,” whether it’s spiritual dirt or legal status or sin debt.

The reason why there’s so much confusion and debate over how God makes us right is that we fail to understand what went wrong in the first place. Ideas of payment and propitiation assume that God imposed a penalty on sin. Ideas of substitution assume that God demands a death before he can forgive sin. Ideas of “infusion” of some spiritual “substance” assume that sin is an actual object that can be dealt with, or that sin is some metaphysical dirt that must be mechanically washed away.

All these concepts are wrong because they see sin wrongly. Sin is not some object—not dirt, nor a pathogen, not a disease agent or whatever. Sin cannot be weighed by the pound or physically observed. Sin is the broken relationship with God—that is the key. Only as we accept this understanding can such confusion be cleared up, since the answer to a broken relationship is a restored relationship. We may think that to call sin a disease is helpful, but even here we can be mistaken because then we think that what needs to happen is to provide some kind of antidote or antivirus, whatever. No—sin is only a disease metaphorically—you can’t see sin under a microscope!

So the answer is the restoring of the relationship, by bringing us back into harmony with God, by creating an at-one-ment of trust. You don’t need any kind of object or reagent or injection—for that won’t deal with what went wrong. The simple truth is: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.” 2 Cor. 5:19 NLT. It really is as simple as that, and we don’t need to make it more complicated!

© Jonathan Gallagher