“Snow (So)White”
January 30, 2022
One of my favorite times to stay at my parents’ house is during a snow storm! There’s nothing like being inside while fresh snow is falling—the kind of snow that is soft, pure white, fluffy, and untouched by a shovel’s edge or a plow’s blade. As the snow falls, it covers the earth like a warm blanket and it is so beautiful!
The picture of my parents’ home shows how the snow outlines the deck furniture, the bushes, shrubs, branches, and even the pool cover. You cannot see the part of the deck that could use another coat of stain, or the top of the pool cover, where rain and leaves have pooled and eventually became the burial ground for a frog or two. Everything looks so clean and without blemish.
So clean and without blemish. The perfect visual of how confessed sin is covered by the winter-white grace of Jesus’ blood-red cross. In Psalm 51:7, we read about David who had committed adultery with Bathsheba and eventually had her husband, Uriah, killed in battle. David repented of these grievous sins and asked God to wash him and make him “whiter than snow”,
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. (Psalm 51:7)
Hyssop was used for ritual cleansing in Israel—for purification of a leper and for the ceremony to pronounce a leper as healed and made clean again. David reminds us in this Psalm that the cleansing is done by God (Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean); it is not something we can do for ourselves. This is God’s grace.
Isaiah, also, must have known the comfort of freshly fallen snow when he compared it to the forgiveness of sins.
Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool. (Isaiah 1:18)
Here again, this is God’s work and God’s overwhelming grace! Our God invites sinners to come so He can make us white as snow. He does not tell us to come when we are white enough, clean enough, or when we have proven our devotion through good works. He simply says, “Come. I’ll make you white. I will do it.” Just as the freshly fallen snow covers the rip in the pool cover, and the blemished board on the deck, God’s grace blankets our sins.
Freshly fallen snow reminds me of the amazing grace of Jesus Christ. Jesus did the work once for all,
And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Hebrews 10:10)
This is the good news of the gospel. God himself purifies us by the blood of His resurrected and victorious Son. The reason our scarlet sins can be made white as snow is because Jesus’ scarlet blood covers them. Because of Jesus, our hearts can be as clean as freshly fallen snow.