Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

Devotion based on James 4:8

If your clothes caught on fire, it might be your first instinct to run. But as a child, you probably received the same instruction I received if faced with this scenario. I was told to stop, drop, and roll. If your clothes are on fire, running away won’t do any good; it will simply fan the flames. But stopping, dropping, and rolling are meant to snuff the fire out by eliminating the fire’s air supply. It might seem counterintuitive not to run, but it’s the right thing to do.

When Adam and Eve fell into sin, their first instinct was to run. Moses tells us that when the Lord God came to pay a visit to the Garden of Eden, the two occupants of that former Paradise didn’t come running to greet God; they hid from him. Their reason for doing so was simple and straightforward: they had done the very thing that God had told them not to do, and now they were dreading the eternal consequences: death itself!

But rather than leaving them in the misery of their guilt and sin, what did our gracious heavenly Father do? He called those scared sinners to his side. And when they came near to him, what did he do? He came near to them with the promise of a Savior. Yes, they would have to endure some earthly consequences for their sin, but God would send a unique offspring of the woman—his own Son, Jesus—to crush the devil’s head and defeat the eternal consequences of sin once and for all.

What does that important biblical account teach us? That when we find ourselves engulfed in sin, as tempted as we might be to run from God, we should run toward him. No, don’t stop, drop, and roll. Run to the open and forgiving arms of Jesus, who alone can heal the wounds of our sin with the cooling balm that flows from the wounds he willingly endured for us on the cross. And it’s in his wounds where we can wash our hands and purify our hearts forever.

Prayer: