White as snow

I awoke to a white world on Tuesday. It must have been snowing for several hours, and snowflakes were still drifting half-heartedly down from grey skies. Yet, even without any sun, how bright the snow looked.

I have a lovely linen tablecloth, edged with lace crocheted by my grandmother. I don't use it much; I don’t want its white purity to be sullied by tea stains. Which was whiter, I wondered, the tablecloth or the snow? Somehow the tablecloth, which looked so white by comparison with others, looked dull against the dazzling white of the snow.

It’s so easy to compare ourselves with other people and conclude that we are pretty good on the whole. It’s only when we get a glimpse of God’s ‘whiteness’, the perfect, unsullied righteousness of the Lord Jesus, that we realise that truly ‘all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags’. Such a realisation marks the beginning of our Christian lives, but only grows stronger as we learn to know the Saviour better. More and more have we cause to wonder at His grace and marvel at the efficacy of the precious blood in which sinners may lose all their guilty stains!

But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags. (Isaiah 64:6a)

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. (Psalm 51:7)

You were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver and gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. (1 Peter 1:18-19)

And was it for my sin

That Jesus suffered so,

When moved by His all-powerful love

He came to earth below?

The holy law fulfilled,

Atonement now is made,

And our great debt, too great for us,

He now has fully paid.

He suffered pain and death,

When on the hill brought low;

His blood will wash the guilty clean,

As pure and white as snow.

For in His death our death

Died with Him on the tree,

And a great number by His blood

Will go to heaven made free.

When Jesus bowed His head

And, dying, took our place,

The veil was rent, a way was found

To that pure home of grace.

He conquered blackest hell;

He trod the serpent down;

A host from fetters He’ll set free

By grace to be God’s own.

John Elias