When the Diaper Blows Out

God wants us clean and he wants his world clean, so Jesus comes with bucket of soapy water and rags for scrubbing.

I take a pastor’s study with me in my backpack when I travel or work from coffee shops around town. I carry my laptop, a few books, my Bible, pens, notebooks, Advil, stamps, sticky notes, and more. Before I started using a backpack, I used to use a small, rolling Samsonite travel bag with a long, retractable handle. The bag had a few different zippered sections, one I used for books, one for my laptop, one for pens and pencils, and one in the back for the retractable handle. Each day after getting home from work, I would leave the bag in the entry hallway of our house. One day, that bag became an invitation for adventure for our daughter, who unzipped the back zippered section, wedging her little toddler body inside. There this sweet child sat while contentedly playing and pretending to be working like Daddy. Walking out of our bedroom at the far end of the hallway, the scene was sweet. “How cute that is,” I thought, “she’s trying to work like daddy.”

But then I got closer.

As I did, I realized that this sweet, tiny child of mine had what those in the parenting business call a “blowout.” Something hadn’t agreed with her system, and her diaper hadn’t done its job. My beloved little girl, sitting in her own yellow-brown mess, was filthy, and so was the inside of my work bag.

How does a Dad respond in that situation? To me, the situation and the solution were clear. The situation was that my kid was self-covered in filth, and my stuff was kid-covered in filth. The solution was that I would need to clean up the mess if I wanted my kids and my stuff clean again.

This is so much like what God does for us in the gospel. We’ve had a blowout in the midst of his creation, wrecking ourselves and the world. God wants us clean and he wants his world clean, so Jesus comes with bucket of soapy water and rags for scrubbing. God intends to save us and scrub us so that he can adopt us. “When the time came to completion, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4-5). “So that” is a statement of purpose. God redeemed us for the purpose of adopting us. Yes, freedom is immeasurably better than slavery, but freedom in the royal family is eternally better than freedom by yourself. The only true Son changed us from abandoned slaves to adopted sons.

We talked about this at church on Sunday, that in many ways adoption is the pinnacle of salvation. Adoption means that God pulls us out of the mess, and cleans us up. Our situation is secure, as Martyn Lloyd-Jones says:

My relationship to God is not a variable one. The case is not that I am a child of God, and then again not a child of God. That is not the basis of my standing, that is not the position. When God had mercy upon me, He made me His child, and I remain his child. A very sinful, and a very unworthy one, perhaps, but still his child! And now, when I fall into sin, I have not sinned against the law, I have sinned against love. Like the prodigal, I will go back to my Father and I will tell Him, ‘Father, I am not worthy to be called your son.’ But He will embrace me, and He will say, ‘Do not talk nonsense, you are My child,’ and He will shower his love upon me!

The Father showers his love on us, like I had to shower my child. That’s what a Father does.