It was hard to come to terms with, but I knew what the Bible taught about sin: no one is perfect, all have fallen short of God's standard. I remembered Michael Wright likening sin to black ink on a white shirt. The smallest white lie might be a tiny black spot on the shirt, but it is enough to ruin it. When the shirt is put in water, the ink spreads, leaving it a dirty grey colour. I thought about my own life. There were great big black blotches all over my shirt!
Staring out through the bars, I reflected back to my time in Cyprus and to some of Michael's teaching. 'The world doesn't know how to handle sin,' I remembered him saying. He'd gestured to the other prisoners in the visiting room. 'We try to grade and measure sin and we lock up those who we think are worse than us.' He'd leaned forward and spoken more quietly, 'Society hides its ugliness in institutions to make itself look more righteous, Tony,' he'd said, 'but to God, there is no difference when it comes to sin.'
'I suppose that's the way the authorities and the outside world look at us lot in here,' I'd told him. 'We're all as bad and as mad as one another.'
'Precisely. And that's the way we all are before God. Every one of us, whether we're locked up for our wrongdoing or not, we're all tainted by sin in God's eyes, so we're all separated from him.'
'But then came Jesus?'
'You got it,' Michael had smiled. 'Jesus tackled sin head on. When he died on the cross he took on the full weight of the world's sin: past, present and future. Because of Jesus we can all be forgiven. We don't need to pay for our sins, or serve the sentence we deserve. Jesus has already done that.'
I smiled as I remember Michael, animated and excited as he spilled out these words in his Irish lilt.
'That's why you're as free a man today as I am, Tony,' he'd grinned, knowing that I understood exactly what he meant.
- Tony Anthony, Taming the Tiger
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