This past week I’ve been out in “the bush” of Nicaragua visiting communities without electricity, water, medical care, education beyond 6th grade, and more. A interrsting aspect of this communities is that the livestock is very much communal. There are no barns, pastures, fences, or confinements. Instead, livestock are free to roam the community as they with. The most annoying aspect of this is that there are dirty, stinky, pigs running around everywhere. If you’ve never noticed, pigs are not the wisest of animals. I actually tripped over several of the pigs during the day, and was kept up all night by them constantly rooting right out side my window. The next bacon I eat will taste especially nice!
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. 1 John 1:5-10
They may be dirty, stinky, pigs, and they may be generally obnoxious, but that’s not how pigs came into the world. Pigs are actually born nice and clean. They become dirty because they live in relatively dirty conditions (at least to us humans), which they soon adapt to and even thrive within. To be honest, we are all a lot like pigs! We didn’t come into this world full of sin, but we soon started sinning. Soon we got so used to our sinful world that it really wasn’t a very big deal to sin anymore. All the other pigs, err people, are living in sin, so we might as well too. Guys, we are all sinners, and we all need to be forgiven. My friend Dr. Artie Hall likes to say that Christians are forgiven pigs. We’ve all fallen into sin, and we all need Jesus to wash us clean. We are like those dirty, stink, pigs: we are all sinners, but God loves us all so much as to die for our sins. He died not only for us to have eternal life, but to also live a different, new, and better life now. So yes, like pigs we are often pretty dirty, obnoxious, and probably don’t make the best decisions 100% of the time. BUT we have been washed clean to live new lives by the grace of our Lord Christ Jesus.
