Kids have a way of keeping you humble.  You can be as cool and cosmopolitan as can be, but children always bring you back to Earth.  

This is one of my favorite pictures of Henry.  We were headed to Iceland and had a layover in Stockholm, Sweden.  Just before we boarded the plane, I smelled something.  I looked at Henry and realized that he had filled his pants.  It was a doozy and it was starting to leak out.  So I did the only thing I could – I ran to the bathroom with baby wipes, a fresh diaper, and a spare outfit.  But I was too late, the mess had already spilled onto everything.  His clothes were completely coated.  And the only way to get his one-piece baby jumper off was up and over his head, so I did that and it smeared the contents of his pants up his back.  It was disgusting.  Henry just stood there with his typical grin.  He had a giant scar in the middle of his forehead from where had barreled full speed into a hallway corner in our house a month earlier.  He was a mess.  I looked at him and started laughing.  I couldn’t stop laughing.  He was filthy, but it occurred to me that I really didn’t care.  I didn’t love him because he was clean and perfect without any blemishes.  He was my son, and there was nothing he could have done that would change that or make me feel any differently about him.  I loved him and no amount of messy diapers could change that. 

More recently, our older son had a nighttime accident while camping out in his sleeping bag in the garage.  He awoke in the middle of the night with the urgent need to go to the bathroom, but in the pitch dark, he couldn’t find his way.  He had an accident in his pants and then proceeded to walk throughout the house leaving a dripping and putrid trail behind him.  The next morning when I went into the bathroom, a disgusting layer of filth covered everything in the bathroom – the toilet, the walls, the sink, the door – everything.  And on the corner of the sink counter sat a washcloth, covered in feces, that he had tried to use to wipe up the mess.  I sat and stared at that pathetic little filthy rag.  It was smelly and wretched and pitiful.  It would never clean anything.  I felt compassion on my son. If the room was ever going to be cleaned, I would have to do it myself.  

Then it hit me – that feces covered washcloth is what our attempts at righteousness look like to God.  We walk through life trying to impress God with our goodness to show him that we are worthy of his love.  But it will never be enough.  God is holy and righteous and perfect, and we are none of those things.    

The Bible says in Isaiah 64:6 that “all our righteous acts are like filthy rags . . ..”  In Romans 3:10 and 23, Paul reminds us that “there is no one righteous, not even one” because “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  

God’s grace through Christ’s death for us means we can take off our masks of sufficiency.  We are not sufficient and never will be.  We are not clean.  We are not okay.  We are not good.  We can never do anything to earn God’s love.  We are disgusting and filthy.  And nothing we do can ever change that.  

But the Bible says that God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.  The miracle of the Gospel is that God knew that humanity had messed its pants.  He knew we were like little children who have accidents and do disgusting things.  He knew we were incapable of cleaning ourselves up.  And he knew that if we would ever be clean he would have to do it.  And he made a way to clean us up through Christ’s death on the cross.  

As I look at myself and our modern world, the biggest thing I see is self-righteousness.  We live in a culture that is obsessed with outing others.  Everyone is concerned about how someone else has failed and is not good enough, how someone else is a moral, cultural, environmental, political, or cultural sinner.  And our world has no place for grace.  Once you are labeled a sinner, you are damaged and irredeemable. This culture of self-righteousness encourages us to cover over our failures and pretend that we are good.   

But the Bible says something else.  It invites us to acknowledge our wretchedness.  It invites us to acknowledge our filth and accept God’s grace that will fully and permanently make us clean.  Repentance is powerful because it is counterintuitive.  Only by acknowledging and owning our failure, and accepting God’s grace are we made clean.  We can’t do it ourselves.  We can’t be good enough to clean up the messes we have made.  But the Good News of the Gospel says that’s okay.  God knew we couldn’t clean it up ourselves and so he did it for us. He doesn’t love us because of how great we are or the good things we have done. He loves us because we are made perfect in Christ.

I don’t think we need anymore holy warriors. I don’t think we need any more people pointing out how others have failed. May we be people who give up our own filthy rags of attempted righteousness and instead clean ourselves with the perfect grace and forgiveness of God.