“So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:21–24)
We are deep in the throes of pollen season. You can’t really miss it, since we’re all driving greenish-yellow cars right now. It is arguably the most singularly irritating season of the entire year. If you suffer from allergies, it’s torture. If you don’t, it’s irritating. The pollen gets everywhere and covers everything. Occasionally you can even see clouds of the stuff blowing out of the trees, but even when you can’t, you can taste it every time you step outside. Constant sneezing, runny noses, and itchy eyes are part and parcel these days. Considering how small pollen particles are, it’s pretty impressive how much trouble they cause.
The only relief we can look forward to is the next rain shower. For a brief moment, perhaps a few hours or even a day if we’re lucky, the rain will wash the pollen away. Our cars return to their usual colors, our decks and homes are washed clean, and the air doesn’t attack our nasal passages. For a little while, at least. Of course, that very rain triggers even more pollen to come, but I’m working on an analogy here so let’s not push things farther than they’re meant to go.
We focus a lot of our time and energy on avoiding the “big” sins (such as sexual immorality, rage, jealousy, envy, drunkenness and the others listed in Galatians 5:19-21), which we should. But sometimes I think we forget about the “small” sins, or we think they’re not that big of a deal. As long as we’re not “too bad” then we should be ok, right? However, kind of like pollen, those small sins can become big irritants. If we don’t attend to the small sins in addition to the big ones, they can irritate our faith and our walk with the Lord. The simple truth is that sin is sin, regardless of its size.
Just like we yearn for rain to wash the pollen away, we can rest assured that, through the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we can “draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” (Heb. 10:22) Jesus didn’t just cleanse us of the “big” sins, but the “small” ones too. The pure water of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God wash us clean. May we take all of our sins to the cleansing waters of the Holy Spirit so that we can be refreshed, renewed and restored.
“Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.” (Eph. 5:25–27)
