Erasable Pens

When I was in elementary school, I knew this kid who always had erasable pens. He used them for everything. That’s all he would ever use actually. I mean, I always thought they were awesome, but why? What’s the point of an erasable pen when you have pencils and pens? Maybe you could write and have it look all official, but then erase it if you made a mistake. I don’t know. They were basically a contradiction. Being able to write with something that’s permanent and then being able to erase it pretty much made no sense.

Then one day I realized that an erasable pen is a great illustration for the sins we commit and the grace God gives us for them—basically, the definition of grace. When you write with a normal pen, it is permanent and cannot be erased, but when you write with an erasable pen, it is permanent but then can be erased. Basically the eraser is magical and makes no sense. It was created especially for erasing permanent pen marks.

This illustration reflects the way Jesus died for our sins. Before Jesus graced the earth, we could only write with normal pens. If we made any mistakes, we had to start over or cross it out, and crossing out didn’t erase it—it just made the mark more noticeable on the page. Before Jesus, there was absolutely nothing we could do to cover up or fix our sins. They were permanent, and we were responsible for them. After Jesus lived on earth, died for our sins, and rose from the dead, our sins were forgiven. He took all of the sins of the world and paid for them. He spent those 3 days between death and resurrection in hell, separated from the father, and went on to escape hell and be resurrected. By doing this, he made it possible for us to do the same. Now, by choosing to live our lives for Him, we can do the same. By this, Jesus became the eraser to our pens—the eraser to something that is permanent, something so permanent that we wonder how it could ever be erased.

By the creation of the erasable pen, we were able to erase something that would otherwise be permanent. By the grace of Jesus, we were able to erase something that was also permanent, but much more harrowing—sin. And can anything else erase a pen except the eraser that was created for it? Nope. You can try, but I’m pretty sure it won’t work. In the same way, nothing else can erase our sins but the grace of Jesus Christ. He existed to erase our sins and to set us free.