Parable of the Bag of Dirty Clothes

                                             Parable of the Bag of Dirty Clothes

Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. ³⁰ But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”
³¹ Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. ³² I have not come to call the 'righteous', but sinners to repentance.” Luke 5:29-32


         I got to thinking, while I was in Honduras (there was a lot of time for that), about an incident that happened at 3:30AM. I was at the hospital delivering a baby and they don't have gowns or shoe covers for the doctor to wear. I've been told later they do, they just didn't give them to me. Why? Because I didn't ask. Why didn't I ask? BECAUSE I DON'T SPEAK SPANISH! Anyway, sense a little frustration? Back to the story. So the patient pushes the baby out with an expressive force. They say the body has 18 different types of fluid. I think my scrubs got 20 on them because they also got some undesirable baby fluids. So I waddled back to my room to take off these nasty scrubs and clean my shoes and then I thought, these scrubs are too gross to put in my dirty clothes bag. I don't want all my other clothes to get this stuff on them. What did I do? I walked fully clothed into the shower and took a cold shower.(it was so hot there I only took cold showers. Actually I refrigerated my oatmeal before eating it because I didn't want warm food in my body). Then I hung my scrubs to dry (with the humidity it only took three days) and then put them in with the dirty clothes.

       Humanity is like my dirty clothes bag. This is the distinction of Christianity that, like the above verses, it gives an unfavorable diagnosis. The Bible says we aren't clean, we are like the clothes in my bag - dirty. The Bible says "all have sinned", "there is none righteous, no not one". Unbelievers don't accept that; they think "I am a good person." Why do they think that - because they are surrounded by a bunch of clothes that smell just like them. Sure, they know dirty when they see it. "Get those nasty scrubs out of here - those things are filthy." Unsaved people know what evil is and so they take comfort in the fact that they aren't like that. They grade evil on a curve and judge themselves against that standard. What they don't realize is that the standard is clean not less filthy. We cannot come into the presence of a clean God in our dirty state. Therefore God sent His Son, Jesus, to take our dirt on Him. If we admit we are sinners and in need of cleansing, which the Pharisees wouldn't do in the above verses and which most of mankind refuses to do, and accept God's free gift of washing our sins away through His Son's blood shed for us on the cross, we can be cleansed and brought into the presence of God. This is why we have been created. To live a life in a glorious relationship forever with our Maker. Yet the one thing keeping us from this is acknowledging our sin.

        Have you humbled yourself before God and said, "I am a sinner in desperate need of forgiveness. I receive Christ's death on the cross in faith to wash my sins away. I in humility bow my knees before You and surrender my life to You in gratitude for saving me from my sins. I look forward to a new and increasing relationship with You now that I can come into Your presence." If you have, God has removed your sin as far as the East is from the West and put the Holy Spirit inside you to enable you to live a life pleasing to God and bring you into His presence. Heavy stuff, huh? But the first step is admitting that you are in that dirty clothes bag.