Have you got a slate missing?

It sounds like a rude question; it implies that you are a bit eccentric or ‘not quite all there’. The correct answer to the question is that you have got a slate missing, and no I am not saying that you are odd or losing your grip!

The truth is that we all have a slate missing, Jesus took it away. Let me explain. I was reading something by Steve Brown, where he made this statement, “many of us think that when we are saved, God took our slate…..and wiped it clean.” That’s how I always saw it, and there is some truth in there, but it doesn’t go far enough.

I just need to explain what the phrase “having the slate wiped clean” means for the benefit of non U.K. readers, (no joke, this gets read by people in a few different countries!). In England, a long time ago, a shop keeper would keep a record of what you owed by writing it with chalk on a piece of slate. When you paid your bill, the shop keeper would wipe the slate clean – your debt was paid and there was no longer any record of it. It was gone; as if it had never existed. You can see why people say that is similar to what happened to us through what Jesus did for us at Calvary.

This always made perfect sense to me, and there is a verse in Colossians that explains it well….

God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.

Col 2v13-14

It says that He made us alive with Jesus, literally joined us together permanently (think Siamese Twins here). ‘Where You go, I go; where I go You go’. And at the same time as He joined us to Jesus, He ‘wiped the slate clean’.

In my mind, and maybe in yours too, there’s a picture of a slate wiped completely clean on the day we decided to follow Jesus. All the past sin and mess and grime completely wiped away – as if it had never existed. So far so good. But then I was left with a picture of that clean slate in Jesus’ hands and before I had got into day 2 of my new Christian life there were new things written on that slate; new sins, new wrongs, new debts.

The good news as Steve Brown points out is that that God not only wiped the slate clean, he then smashed the slate into pieces.

2 Corinthians 5 v 19 says that at the Cross, Jesus dealt with all of our sins (‘All’ means past, present and future) once and for all. Not just our sins, but everyone’s sins – the sins of the world. This is a constant theme repeated many times in the New Testament. All anybody has to do is accept and trust in that amazing gift and surrender their life to Him in return.

God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.

2 Corinth 5v19

In Hebrews 10 v 12 Jesus’ sacrifice is described as once, for all time.

In 1 Peter 3 v 18 it says “Christ suffered once for sins”.

1 Corinthians 13 describes what Love looks like. We often read it as a checklist to see how we are doing at being loving. No problem with that. But it is also a very good description of the character of God…. Read it through again starting at verse 4 and gain a fresh insight into what God is like and therefore how He responds to you. Note especially verse 5; love “keeps no record of wrongs”.

Jesus smashed your slate. It is more than missing, it has gone altogether. He doesn’t need it. He is not keeping a record of our wrongs. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be sorry when we get things wrong, or that we shouldn’t want to avoid repeating wrong behaviour (which is what repentance is – going the opposite way). If we have truly given our lives to Him then that is what we want anyway – because we are joined to Him, and we want what He wants.

The good news is that there is not a slate with a running total on it, that we need to keep clean by remembering every wrong thing we did and confessing it to wipe the slate. The slate is gone. We are free to enjoy being joined to Jesus, united to Christ; He in us and us in Him.