Originally published as a featured article for Doorway Publishing

Sin sneaks.

This means that sin’s greatest power is found in its inherent ability to get you to think that it has no power. The average person tends to view sin as nothing more than a minor temptation or a nagging itch, nothing really to concern yourself about because the warnings of its deadly effects are hollow, nothing to fear. Like a ghost in a Turner Classic movie, sin seems to float around the world as a harmless phantom, no longer able to haunt and scare as it once did.

And here-in lies the subtlety of sin, it has us all fooled because it has mastered hiding. It dresses in patchwork clothing that makes it seem outdated and old, causing people to see it as an anachronistic idea from a more barbaric and superstitious past. “Sin? Haven’t you grown past that yet? Only crusty grandmas and blowhard preachers still believe in such fictitious non-sense.”

But in our modern mindset, we must be careful not to be so smug, for sin is still just as deadly as ever. As the theologian, Cornelius Plantiga Jr. writes concerning the introduction of sin into the world, “The story of the fall tells us that sin corrupts: it puts asunder what God had joined together and joins together what God had put asunder. Like some devastating twister, corruption both explodes and implodes creation, pushing it back toward the ‘formless void’ from which it came.” Sin has come to wreck all the good that God wanted for us. It has not stopped killing, stealing, and destroying.

So how do we warn people about the red-fanged monster that has seemingly gone into hiding? How does God wake us up to the fact that sin is daily murdering us in our sleep? He uses a canvas of human flesh and paints a picture with blood.

It is like the story “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” In this classic Gothic novel, the writer Oscar Wilde tells the sordid tale of a hedonistic young and handsome man named Dorian who expresses the selfish desire of never wanting to age, and he despairs of having his beauty fade. Looking at a picture that was just painted of him, he cuts a bargain and sells his soul. Under the influence of an older and debauched man, Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian makes the Faustian deal, and as the book describes it, “The wish is granted, and Dorian pursues a libertine life of varied amoral experiences while staying young and beautiful; all the while, his portrait ages and records every sin.”

So, throughout the story, Dorian indulges his devilish appetite. Being led astray by Lord Wotton’s wicked advice, “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.” So, Dorian gives in to his baser instincts without giving a care. Because each act of flesh-driven debauchery that he makes leaves a rotted residue that is applied directly to the painting. Over time the countenance of the painting turns cruel and demonically dark, completely distorting the original visage to the point where the portrait has become so hideous that it is only recognizable by the signature that was left by the painter. All the while, Dorian stays as unblemished and beautiful as ever.

By the end of the book, all of Dorian’s sowing to the wind began to reap a whirlwind of overwhelming guilt and shame. He could stand it no longer. Wilde writes, “A new life! That was what he wanted. That was what he was waiting for…He would be good.” But what to do with that horrid painting? He had to get rid of it. The story continues, “Was he always to be burdened by his past? Was he really to confess? Never. There was only one bit of evidence left against him. The picture itself—that was evidence. He would destroy it.”

So, he grabbed a knife to stab the painting. He would kill the painting so he could be free from his past. “He seized the thing, and stabbed the picture with it.” There was a cry and crash so loud that the servants ran to see what happened, and here is the scene as Wilde describes it; “When they entered they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not until they examined the rings that they recognized who it was.” And so it ends. Dorian dies, a casualty of his own depravity.

It is a sad tale, and though it is a work of fiction, it is an exquisite metaphor for the power of the Passion Picture. Hanging on the cross was the perfect man, unblemished, innocent, and pure. As scripture says, “A lamb without blemish or defect.” And yet it was on this man of flesh that God wanted to paint the sin that lies within each of us. Isaiah 52:14 describes the man hanging on the cross, “Just as there were many who were appalled at him—his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form marred beyond human likeness.” Like the picture of Dorian Gray, the Crucified Christ was “loathsome of visage.”

On his flesh was a visible record of every man’s sin, each crimson stripe called out against our own depravity. Isaiah goes on to say in 53:2-3,

“He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.”

Jesus was lifted high on the cross so we couldn’t ignore the hideous spectacle. The Son of God was disfigured because of my rebellion and wickedness. Sin cannot hide when it hangs naked on top of Calvary for all to see. The evidence is clear, and it can never be buried again. God exposed it, written large on history’s stage for all the world to witness, using the canvas of his Son’s own body. But why?

Oscar Wilde, through the character of Dorian, explains it best, “A new life! That is what he wanted.” That is what I want. And through the Passion Picture, the perfect man died so I don’t need to. He carried the burden of my past on his shoulders, so I could be set free. His horror was on account of my sin, and I see it clearly painted in blood. Red blood.

Dorian died because he wouldn’t confess. But that does not have to be your fate. Listen closely to how your story could end:

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. As Scripture says, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.” (Romans 10:9-11)

The Passion Picture exposed the monster, sin no longer can hide, nor can it condemn. So, consider the cross before yielding to temptation. And look upon the bloody face of Jesus, he died for you.