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Lipstick On A Pig

Hello out there! Long time, right? Yes, I know. Forgive me. I've had a lot on my plate. But for sanity's sake I make it a point to listen to a lot of good, sound Bible teaching and failing that, NPR. Recently I was reminded of former Governor Sarah Palin's "Lipstick On A Pig" comment. Essentially, the phrase is used to illustrate the futility of using a superficial, cosmetic addition to change the nature of a thing. It simply doesn't work. It's like putting lipstick on a pig.

So I was thinking about pigs and how much they love mud and dirt and slop. No matter how much you wash a pig off and clean it up, it will return (almost immediately) to the slop and dirty itself all over again. In fact, I dare say that you could scrub the pig, put it in a tuxedo and lecture it on the best way to keep clean and it would still, when given the opportunity, return to the mud. That is the nature of the pig.

How many of us as Christians operate just like the pig? We run to God for forgiveness and submit our lives to cleansing beneath the crimson flow of Christ's precious blood...we attend church services and Bible studies where we are taught to live right...but then as soon as we have the opportunity, we run back to our pigsty of choice and dirty ourselves all over again.

If that is the case has our nature truly been changed by Christ? Aren't we then just pigs with a little lipstick and maybe a fine suit of clothes and a big Bible?

How can we who are dead to sin live any longer as slaves thereto? If any person be in Christ is s/he not a new creature? Haven't all things become new? Yes. But that doesn't mean that Christians won't sin, or even that Christians won't struggle with sinful patterns of behaviour in their lives. In actuality, we struggle with sin more than we care to admit. And more often than not, the sin we struggle with is one that we always struggle with. That constant struggle can make us feel defeated. It can leave us feeling like we have failed God on such a catastrophic level that He throws His hands up in despair and walks away.

Paul. felt like that. Read Romans 7:14-25. Killing flesh and being 100% dead to sin is probably unattainable on this side of glory for a committed Christian, to be sure. So imagine if you're just a pig with lipstick on it?

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