The Red Line

“Mommy, I can’t wear those shoes. They hurt my foot.”

First sandals, then flip-flops. They still hurt.

At this point I realized it wasn’t the shoe. It must be my foot. Flip-flops hardly touch the top of your foot, yet they still bothered me. So Mommy called me into the room designated as the “doctor’s office” and looked at my foot.

She didn’t have to ask where it hurt.

A big part of the top of my foot was swollen and red. Several bite marks marked the top in the midst of the swelling and a tight red line climbed my leg.

Venom. Poison. A Brown Recluse had gone hunting that night and found my foot. While I slept, it bit several times on my right foot. At first I didn’t notice. It did not wake me from my sleep. I didn’t notice even when I awoke. Not until I tried to put my shoes on did I notice something was wrong. By that time the red line of poison was headed to my heart.

Sometimes sin can be like that too. It sneaks up like a prowling lion and strikes when your guard is down. Other times, it comes subtly like a serpent in the garden. A slip here and a slide there leads to falling head-long into the sin you said you’d never do.

Even once sin has begun poisoning our lives, we still may not realize it until the conviction of the Holy Spirit brings it to our attention. Despite the dire state of my foot, I did not realize there was a problem until I tried to put on my shoe. Then my foot told me all about it. Likewise, people often live in the grasp of destructive sin until the Holy Spirit opens their eyes to the mess they are in and shows them the way out of it into salvation.

Often time sin catches us when we are sleeping spiritually. It doesn’t come loudly, it just sneaks in when we allow it a foothold, takes up residence, and starts poisoning our lives. James 1:14-15 shows us, “But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.”

Death is the ultimate wage of sin. From the time that Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, the ticking time-bomb of the poison of death has been a red line headed for the heart of every son of Adam and daughter of Eve. People may try ways to treat the symptoms of a sin-poisoned heart. People may try to ease the ache caused by the God-sized whole in their heart. Yet, none of this can cure the sin-darkened heart.

I could have found or made a shoe that would go around the swollen area of my foot. I could have gone bare-foot to ignore the pain. But ignoring the problem would not have saved me. It needed treatment to draw out the poison and heal the wound. Likewise, ignoring the poison of sin does not take away the consequence of it. The poison keeps spreading. The red keeps creeping.

The good news is, we have a Great Physician who can heal us from the poison of sin and take away its scarlet stain. Isaiah 53:5 says, “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.” Sin required a price –blood, death. Jesus, the perfect, sinless, virgin-born, Son of God, paid that price for all who would receive it. As that well-known verse says John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

We are all on the path of death, the payment for our own deeds. No amount of good works can ever cleanse our hearts of the sin that darkens it anymore than mowing the lawn could take the grass-stains out of your clothes. Eating all my vegetables couldn’t undo the venom that was already in me from the bites. Yet God in His great mercy does not leave us in our helpless state. All we have to do is call out to Him.

Isaiah 1:18 “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”

(All verses taken from the King James Version)