A couple of months ago, my daughter’s school had an exhibition planned. As part of the social studies presentation, a few children from different parts of India were chosen to represent their state and its culture. Since I’m half Mizo, my daughter was very excited to participate and represent Mizoram. She asked me many times to help her learn a few common phrases in Mizo and prepare a presentation on the state, and she wanted me to cook something unique to the state. She was asked to wear something traditional and kept begging me to get her a traditional Mizo outfit. I looked online and found cheap and terrible-looking replicas, and with the original traditional dress being too expensive, I told her it just wasn’t possible.
However, my daughter didn’t give up. She brought out the big guns and called up her grandmother. My mother, who barely attended any of my functions in school, now wearing a grandma hat, was only too willing to help her, much to my surprise. She called up her relatives and found a way for me to connect with my niece, who could help me with this. To cut a long story short, my niece went to the market in Aizawl and found something that would fit the bill, sent it by speed post, and we finally got the much-awaited parcel with just two days to spare. Thankfully, it fit well.
My daughter was in awe of her dress. It even had a matching bead necklace and earrings. The dress was white with some of the traditional patterns of the Mizo Puan (the traditional hand-woven cloth worn like a sarong). She LOVED it!
The day of the exhibition arrived, and I helped her get dressed. She looked beautiful in her dress, and she was elated. I had many instructions for her, including how she must be careful not to stain her dress as she ate her lunch. I even gave her something to change into for the lunch break. “Why, mamma?” she asked, “Is it because the dress is too expensive and precious?”. “No,” I explained, “You know how we got it with so much difficulty, and you have no spare dress in case this one gets dirty or stained, so you must be extra careful with it. Do everything you can to keep the dress spotless. You would be uncomfortable presenting the state with stained clothes, and white is so easy to stain.”
Even as I was saying those words while brushing her hair, I began to think of how much care we had to take to not let a single thing stain that dress. And yet I knew that any small accident on her end or a friend’s could easily stain the dress. Oh, the pressure to keep it perfectly clean!
And then I began to think of another set of beautiful white garments, yet these couldn’t be stained. We who are in Christ are clothed with rich robes that are much more precious, beautiful, and perfect. This is the garment of the righteousness of Christ, His OWN righteousness, which He clothes us with.
Isaiah 61:10 says, “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God – for He has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.” Because this is a robe of HIS righteousness, which is perfect, it can never be stained; it can never be ruined! How wonderful that our God would so wonderfully clothe us, such sinful people. This thought made my eyes fill with tears of gratitude to the Lord. I am clothed with a righteousness not my own. Though I may fail, My Lord’s righteousness is perfect, and it's on that I stand and have my identity.
In 2020, as I was going through a difficult time, I remember listening with my two young daughters, who were about four and six then, to an audiobook, The Priest with Dirty Clothes, written and narrated by R. C. Sproul. This children’s story is based on Zechariah chapter 3, about how Christ imputes His righteousness to us. It is about a priest named Jonathan who must go before the King with his priestly clothes, which must be spotless. However, they get stained and nothing he tries can remove the stains. He tries everything he possibly can.
With the court magician who maligns and accuses him and no way to clean his clothes, his only hope is the Great Prince who exchanges his beautiful clothes for Jonathan’s dirty ones. The King declares, “As long as he (Jonathan) wears your clothes, he may stand in front of me.” Jonathan, in the Great Prince’s clothes, which can never be stained, is granted full access to the King and is full of joy. The accuser can say nothing anymore against Jonathan!
Listening to this story with my four-year-old, asking questions every few seconds, I could not stop crying, thinking of how wonderful Jesus is to me. I, with the burden of my dirty clothes, trying in vain to keep them clean and remove the spots, and at times, just giving up – how heavy the load of guilt and shame. And yet, He, the Son of the Great King, comes and takes my filthy clothes, and because of His blood shed for me, He takes away my sin and clothes me with salvation, with His righteousness, shutting the mouth of the accuser. As I battled different accusations of the devil, this became my prayer, “Lord, I thank you that I stand before you not on the basis of my righteousness but on the basis of the perfect righteousness of Your beloved Son, my Lord Jesus.”
As my daughter finished getting ready and left for school, my heart was filled with gratitude and praise to the Lord for the reminder that morning of how wonderful the Gospel is and how beautiful Jesus is.
Photo by Dan Cristian Pădureț on Unsplash
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