Tar and Sin

As I mentioned before we have had some rainy weather here recently. The rain brought a problem to our attention. The roof of the business has a few leaks! So today, since it was sunny, Caleb and I went up on the roof to put a layer of tar over all the seams. During that process an interesting situation occurred. Because of the nature of the job I was wearing disposable plastic gloves to keep my hands clean. Caleb would use a trowel and put the tar on the roof and then I would use a scrubber brush to spread it out. I began using my right hand to work the tar in with the brush. Soon the glove was covered in tar and I had to change it out for a new one. The gloves were not especially durable and in many places had holes worn through them. For some reason I had tar on my knuckles. By the end of the job I had tar all over my hands. I discovered that the gloves ended up being more harm than good. When I went to change my gloves the tar on my knuckles stuck to the gloves. Something had to give and what ended up giving was the top layer of skin on three of my knuckles. The strange thing was I did not realize what had happened until I saw the skin missing from my knuckles. As we continued the project I got to thinking. The tar could represent sin that a Christian allows in their life. They go along not realizing what the sin is doing to their lives. Sometimes they don’t realize what sin has done to them until they see its effect on both their life and the lives of others. After we finished I attempted to clean the tar off my hands with some soap and water. But like most of you could have guessed that did pretty much nothing. To get something like that off your skin you really need some mineral spirits or paint thinner. However I couldn’t find any so I figured I’d try the soap and water. So it is with sin. Our own attempts get rid of sin in our lives will always be futile. Sure we may be able to bring it under control for awhile, but without the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives we will not ultimately succeed. We must daily ask for help to conquer and remove the sin from our lives. A lot like I need to probably ask someone for help finding the mineral spirits. :)