Whitewashed Sin

I want to share a dream I had last year. It's vivid, unsettling and honestly gross, so be warned.

It was mid-day, sunny and comfortable. I was sitting in the grass in the front yard with a friend who is connected to my past, but I'm no longer in contact with them. We were talking casually when suddenly my mouth fill up with something. I opened it, and hundreds, no, thousands of medium sized, thin worms began pouring out.

I got up and went to a corner of the yard where I had privacy. I opened my mouth as wide as I could, used both hands and pulled the mass of worms out. I stayed calm, even as the worms spilled out of me.

The most striking part wasn't the worms themselves, but their color. They were pure white. In the dream I even marveled, not at the horror of worms pouring out of my mouth, but at their brightness.

When I woke up, I knew it was about deliverance. God freeing me from things in my past. But I still couldn't make sense of why the worms were SO bright white. What was the meaning?

I left the question unanswered and rejoiced in my deliverance. I am a new creation in Christ.

But last night, as I was drifting off to sleep, the dream came back to me. Once again, I saw those white worms. And this time, I understood.

Whitewashed sin.

A worm, no matter how white, is still a worm. And sin, no matter how we try to justify it or dress it up, is still sin. We can excuse it, minimize it, or cover it in something that looks clean, but underneath, it remains corruption.

Jesus talks about this in Matthew 23:27

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness."

Sin doesn't lose its nature just because we try to make it look harmless.

The good news is, Jesus doesn't leave us in our whitewashed sin. He may expose it, but not to shame us, but to free us. To forgive and cleanse us completely, from the inside out.