Sealed With a...
/If you’ve restored furniture or built a backyard deck, you know the job isn’t finished until you seal the wood’s surface. Otherwise, moisture could seep into its pores and cause warping or mold, it might be discolored by the sun or even stained by spills, among other issues.
Not just any sealer will work, though, unless your sole objective is to keep out the moisture. No, you’d be more selective than that after the time and effort you’ve given and, so, would intentionally choose at least its type (oil or water-based, natural oil, etc.) and color (clear, a natural wood color, or even a solid color that acts like paint). This extra step would matter to you because of how much you care about what you’ve made and your desire to protect its structure and preserve its beautiful appearance.
It's not a far jump to see how God would do the same with us, as His creation. But though our beauty comes in different shapes and sizes and colors, He has the same Sealant for all Christians, as the Apostle Paul told us:
“In him you also were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and when you believed.” (Ephesians 1:13, CSB)
Yes, God knows that “the Holy Spirit” is the perfect choice to protect our structure and preserve our beautiful appearance, as we “hear the word of truth and… believe.” It’s not just a comforting, abstract thought, though, as The Benson Commentary suggests the Spirit does this for us by:
Assuring our adoption and regeneration
Stamping us with the image of God
Making us heirs of a heavenly inheritance and preparing us for the enjoyment of it
Producing in us a new nature and marking us as the son of God
Now, I’m sure that wording from The Benson Commentary was hip two hundred years ago (like saying “hip” was hip fifty years ago), but what it means to the one who is “sealed” is timeless.
Our takeaway is simple, right, that sealing a piece of work ensures its good condition? Well… no, that’s not always the case. Suppose the furniture you’re working on is wet or that there are imperfections that need to be addressed. Sealing it in that condition might seal mold into the surface or keep the piece in a perpetually imperfect state. No, before finishing the work you would want to make sure it is finished and ready to be sealed and it’s the same for the Christian being “sealed with the… Holy Spirit.” We wouldn’t want blemishes, like guilt for our sins, to be sealed in us for eternity.
To truly understand the weight of that danger we need to look at how God views sin. In both the Old Testament (see Ezekiel 18:4) and New, He says, “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), and that’s our starting point. In fact, with words inspired by the Holy Spirit, the prophet Jeremiah emphasized their gravity, saying:
“The sin of Judah is written down with an iron stylus; With a diamond point it is engraved upon the tablet of their heart and on the horns of their altars.” (Jeremiah 17:1)
Our sins may not be etched into “horn of the altar,” but they’re surely written somewhere. The good news is that just as He made a way for the Jews of the Old Testament to be reconciled to Him, God does so for us as well. There, as He gave Moses the laws about sin offerings in Leviticus 4, He prescribed that a blameless, spotless animal sacrificed on the altar could pay the price for their sins. He even told the priests to “put some of the blood (from the sacrificed animal) on the horns of the altar” (Leviticus 4:18) to symbolize the blood washing them away.
But that’s precisely where we are at risk. To illustrate, most of us are familiar with today’s model of seeking forgiveness for sin, that is, confess, repent, be forgiven. Those steps are necessary, but that model overlooks the sacrifice that was necessary for the Jews of the Old Testament and is still necessary for us. Of course, that sacrifice has been made for us, once and for all, by the blameless and spotless blood of Jesus Christ. He paid the price for our sins, but unless we “believe” (as Paul says, above), acknowledge and accept His atoning sacrifice, our confession and repentance are hollow, and our guilt remains on us.
That’s when we run into this “sealant” problem. When our sins are still written, Jesus’ sacrificial blood seals us in our guilt instead of our innocence. The commentator Matthew Henry put it this way, saying that His blood “binds them (our sins) on faster, perpetuating their memory and they will remain a witness against us.” But though we may be amateurs at furniture making, when it comes to our sins Henry’s next words should be most encouraging, as he added, “In ignorance we may fall into sin, but let us not, in ignorance, still lie in it.”
And that makes me wonder… when it comes to being “sealed with the promised Holy Spirit,” what if we spent as much time finishing ourselves as we did that piece of furniture. Just sayin’…