“For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)
“Oh, no, Devon! What did you do?” Rachel stared wide-eyed at the computer screen.
“I don’t know what happened, Rachel!” Devon got up from the couch and joined her at the computer desk. “I just wanted to see the pictures that Dad took of us on Christmas Eve.”
“But now they won’t open! The screen is full of strange-looking characters – boxes and percent signs and stars and stuff.” Rachel turned and looked directly into her little brother’s eyes. “Devon. Did you open the pictures through the camera software program like Dad showed us?”
“Well…I think I kind of forgot exactly all the right steps. I’m sorry – I guess I should’ve waited and asked somebody to help me.”
“That’s what I thought. It looks to me like you opened the pictures into a text editing program instead of the camera software. See, Devon, you’ve got to understand: A text-editing program can’t ‘read’ an image file. It tries to change a non-text file into a text-file so that it can ‘read’ it. But image files can never be changed into text, because – because they can’t. So that’s what all these numbers and weird letters and symbols are. It’s a corrupt version of the file. Now we won’t be able to view the Christmas Eve photos – they’re all corrupt!”
“Corrupt? What’s that mean?”
“It means, well, something that used to work, something that used to be fine and well and perfect – but it’s been changed and broken up to where it can’t work anymore. It’s no good, and there’s no way to go back and make it good again.”
Maybe you are like Devon and have never learned the word “corrupt” before. If a computer gets a “virus” (like a mechanical “sickness”), then it is called “corrupt.” If a pond is really clear and its water very pure, but then someone comes with a wheelbarrow full of smelly, yucky garbage and dumps it into the pond – that pond is now “corrupt.” A photo file becomes corrupt if it is opened up into a program that it doesn’t fit. To corrupt something is to make it unusable, dirty, and ruined. To corrupt something is to take something that is naturally set up to be beautiful and good and pure and working properly – and to wreck it so that it is no longer any of those things.
Did you know that all human beings are born spiritually corrupt? Each of us has a major heart problem – we are sinners by nature. One wonderful truth about Jesus Christ is that He has never, ever, NEVER sinned. He’s never even thought about sinning. He was tempted to sin, but He resisted temptation. It is not Jesus’ nature to sin. Because He came to Earth as 100% God and 100% man, He Who “knew no sin” could take our sins upon Himself. And we can be made righteous – even in the eyes of the holy God! – because of Jesus’ sinlessness.
Jesus is the only human Person Who ever has (or ever will) be able to live on Earth without ever giving in to the corruption of sin. Adam and Eve lived for a little while without sinning, but eventually, they sinned, too. Praise God that Jesus was righteous enough to cover all of our unrighteousness so that we could be made righteous in the eyes of God. We are born corrupt spiritually – but we have an opportunity for spiritual life and true righteousness, if we place our trust in the sinless Jesus Christ. He lived a non-corrupt life, and then He took sinners’ corruption upon Himself – all so that sinners’ might be non-corrupt before God!
No one, nor no thing, ever corrupted the perfect Savior Jesus Christ.
My Response:
» Do I act like someone who is corrupted by sin?
» Is it hard for me to believe that Jesus made it through His youth without ever sinning once?
» Why do I have reason to give thanks to Jesus for never allowing Himself to become corrupted?
