We want our sins to be reckoned as tiny for numerous reasons. One is the obvious self-justifying one, but we also want our sins to be small because we want God’s forgiveness to be a reasonable forgiveness. We want God to be a gentleman, the kind of being who would obviously be well-bred enough to be able to overlook our little faults and peccadilloes. But God is not a well-mannered gentleman. His forgiveness is much closer to that which would be extended by an out-of-control crazy man. Our sins are as scarlet, and God forgives them all. Our sins are crimson, and He makes them like bleached wool.
We are, all of us, a piece of work, and here in the midst of this wreckage of humanity, God has a remodeling project going on to stagger the imagination. God does not forgive us because we were already half the distance to passable. He does not forgive us because we were all semi-okay. No, we were all not okay, and not okay is an expression that does not do justice to our condition.
We think sin is being out of compliance with a list of arbitrary rules. But no, we are sinful deranged because we don’t want to conform to the way God is. The rules are not petty; we are. God is not petty; we are.
So our sins are as scarlet and crimson. Our problem is that sin is the wrong color—blood red. And the only thing that can put such a problem right again is something else that is the same color—the blood red color of our redemption. So as we come to confess our sins, let us seek red for our red.