What Doesn’t Belong

What Doesn’t Belong

Some things just go together. Others don’t. Pickles and chocolate don’t belong together. Ditto to bacon and chocolate. Not in my book, anyway. But once on a road trip, I found a place selling both of these bizarre food combos. Their sign said so. I wondered when I saw it if anyone actually came looking for a pickle dipped in chocolate or had a secret hankering for a slice of chocolate-covered bacon. Maybe customers simply decided, “That’s really weird, but I’ll give it a try.” Because pickles and bacon don’t belong with chocolate.

Sometimes (like in that roadside store) it’s easy to spot what doesn’t belong. But sometimes it is not. It’s harder for me to see that nursing a quiet grudge does not go with being saved by grace, or that habitual gossip shouldn’t flow from a redeemed heart and mouth. That gluttony doesn’t belong with gratitude or that pride is out of sync with servanthood.

The truth is, because I am a saved-by-grace daughter of the Most High God, sin doesn’t belong in my life. It shouldn’t sit easy with me. Ever. I should never think it natural to keep on sinning, having once tasted living water. Sin and the Spirit of the resurrected Christ should not comfortably cohabit in me. The idea that I would nurse some secret, repetitive sin should be as absurd to me as the idea that I would pine for a chocolate-covered pickle.

The longer I walk with Jesus, the easier it should be for me to spot what doesn’t belong and simply pass on it. I was not tempted even for a second to plunk down a chocolate-covered pickle or piece of bacon to go with my Diet Dr Pepper. They held virtually no appeal. May my favorite petty sins hold even less!

You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.

1 John 3:5-6, ESV