Jesus Takes Away Your Spiritual Trash 

It was garbage pick-up day for my elderly parents. My dad had wheeled his trash receptacle down to the curb as usual. However, later he noticed someone in a truck taking their neighbor’s garbage while ignoring my parent’s trash. Thinking they had been forgotten, they called the waste service. They were informed that their workers had not made it to their neighborhood yet. The business had actually received several other calls about an unauthorized individual who seemed to be collecting a few select people’s garbage. Why would someone do that? I guess in our day you have to wonder if this person had some nefarious purpose, such as looking for personal or financial information that could be used for identity theft.

Meanwhile, the neighbors whose garbage was taken, also mistakenly thought my parents’ trash had been forgotten. So they graciously decided to make an exchange, rolling my parents’ still-full trash can over to their curb as their responsibility while leaving my parents with an empty receptacle. It was all rather confusing until the real garbage workers showed up later, collected everyone’s waste, and straightened it all out.

This strange situation got me to thinking about what Jesus has done for us. He took our sin – our moral filth – our garbage – upon Himself. His receptacle was empty of any uncleanness. He was pure and sinless. Yet the Bible declares that God “made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (II Corinthians 5:21). Jesus graciously exchanged our sin for His righteousness. He didn’t take our spiritual garbage in order to steal our identity but rather to help us discover our identity in Him. Because of Him and His sacrifice for our sin, we can have our hearts cleansed of the guilt and condemnation that we deserve. We can be forgiven of our sins and find our place in God’s family as one of His beloved children. God no longer sees the mess we have made of ourselves, but He sees the righteousness of Christ in us. And even better yet, He changes us so that we can actually quit making such a mess but start living more in line with His will for us.

Some of us may want to argue that we aren’t such a big mess, at least not when compared to other people we know. We may look at ourselves as being basically good people. However, it is kind of like the garbage receptacles we sometimes see. Some people’s trash is unbagged, messy, and overflowing out of the cans. Another person’s trash may be neatly tied up in one little bag. Nevertheless, it is still all garbage. The Bible rightly notes that “we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6). Your sin may not seem as bad as someone else’s, but it is still sin. It still falls short of God’s standard. Instead of comparing ourselves to others, we should compare ourselves to Jesus. In light of His purity, we all have fallen short of the mark, no matter how good we think we may have been.

This exchange Jesus has executed on our behalf doesn’t take place automatically. We have to choose to accept it. He has made it possible for us to be righteous, but we have to recognize our need, repent of our sins, believe in what He did for us on the cross, and put our trust in Him to cleanse us. Have you done that?

Let’s be thankful for Someone who so loves us that He not only takes away our spiritual garbage but leaves us with His own righteousness and purity in its place. What a Savior!