The Only Cure for Dragon’s Skin
Hebrews 9:14 NIV
How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!
Scientists are always looking for cures to diseases. In 1929, Alexander Fleming discovered a fungus that killed bacteria. That discovery led to the development of the antibiotic, penicillin. It was not until the 1940’s during WWII that the antibiotic was able to be produced into a commercial antibiotic. The drug became a major cure of many infectious diseases, and is still used today.
In 1954 Jonas Salk invented the vaccine for poliomyelitis. There are three strains of the polio virus. The vaccine has been very successful in helping eliminate almost all of the polio in the world. However, the vaccine is not a cure for polio. Actually there is no cure. Treatments help offset the affects of disease. The body fights off the disease like all viruses. There is a prevention, but there is no cure.
Today we still are seeking cures for diseases. HIV, cancer, pest born diseases like West Nile virus, Lou Gehrig’s disease– all are diseases we are seeking cures for. Every now and then, God gives us grace to discover a breakthrough to a disease. Other diseases seem to evade a cure.
Sin is a human disease. It is a disease of the soul. You might say it is a disease that gets under our skin. Sin is a disease which has infected all of us and for which there is no human cure. No mater how much we try to make ourselves better, no matter how many times we resolve to make changes, we find that we are powerless to change ourselves. Our story is written on the pages of human history as well as in the history of Israel in the Bible. Although we know what is right, we have become corrupted and are not able to break the habit of our sins.
C. S. Lewis wrote a children’s series called The Chronicles of Narnia. I recommend every father buy the series and read them to their children. I used to read the series at bedtime to my son. It took many months, but it was a wonderful experience for him and myself. In The Chronicles of Narnia, C. S. Lewis tells the themes of Christ, sin and redemption through the characters of children who wander through the magical world of Narnia. Through one of these stories, Lewis helps us see how powerless we are to change the nature of sin within us. I want to tell you about Eustace and the dragon’s skin.
1. We cannot remove the dragon’s skin.
There is no human cure for sin.
In The Chronicles of Narnia, several young children represent Christians in a world of dragons, elves, unicorns, and many other mythical creatures. One of the children is a young boy named Eustace. Eustace is a very selfish boy. He always tries to see life for how it best benefits him. What he often discovers is that selfishness more often fills him with more unhappiness than joy. In the book, The Voyage of the Dawntreader, Eustace and the other children travel on a ship to discover the unknown lands of Narnia.
After a long time of sailing, they come to an island to make some repairs. Instead of helping the others, Eustace leaves the others to do the work and goes out to explore the Island. After a long day of exploring, Eustace discovers a dragon’s lair filled with all kinds of treasures. Never in his life had he seen so many treasures. He was fearful of being in the dragon’s lair, lest the dragon return while he was looking at its treasures. Eustace looked all around but did not see any sign of the dragon. Then Eustace decided he would put on one of the jewel studded bracelets he found among the treasures. Because he had spent so much energy exploring, Eustace became tired. So he lay down to take a nap and fell asleep.
Sometime later, Eustace awoke. To his horror, as he opened his eyes, he noticed lying next to him was the dragon! There it was -- the huge terrible beast. The devil himself, lay next to him. He could feel the rough dragon’s skin rubbing against him. At first he thought the dragon must have come in while he was sleeping. Was the dragon waiting to kill him and eat him later? Did he not notice Eustace sleeping on his treasure?
Eustace was afraid to get up, lest he disturb the brute beast and the dragon eat him alive. So he lay there a long time, not moving at all. Yet he realized that eventually he would need to escape. So he slowly lifted his arm. Yet as soon as he moved his arm, the beast also moved his arm, mimicking his movement. Eustace moved his leg, and the dragon moved his leg as well. It took a few minutes for Eustace to realize what had happened. Eustace wasn’t lying with the dragon. Eustace had become the dragon. His greed had made him what he was, a sinful, selfish beast. He had become the dragon, the very thing he feared.
Finally in desperation, Eustace got up and ran out of the cave. Down from the cave was a pond. Eustace ran to the water and looked down. There in the water he could see his image. He stared, looking at the image of the beast he had become. Eustace knew this had to be a mistake. He went over and grabbed a rock and began to try to tear the dragon skin off. Yet when he tore off the rough skin, there under it was still another layer of dragon skin. No matter what he tried to do, Eustace could not remove the skin of the brute beast he had become.
When sin entered our lives, we became brute beasts of sin. Our nature was changed. We no longer were free to have God’s nature. We took on the devil’s nature. We became dragons, with hearts that served self, instead of God. We were marred and ruined in our souls. And try as hard as we may, there was nothing we could do that would give us a cure for our fallen condition.
All of us know what it is like to be under the power of sin. Just think about how hard it is to break an old habit. Try to get free from the habits of speech, which we learned from our parents. Try to be free from anger, or lust, or selfishness. Try to be holy when someone abuses you with their language or when someone cuts you off in the traffic. We have a nature we are not proud of. What is more, we cannot seem to free ourselves of this plight.
The writer of Hebrews tells the Hebrew Christians that they must continue to trust in Jesus for freedom from sin. These Hebrew believers were being tempted to leave their Christian faith and return to their former trust in the sacrificial system of the Law. The writer informs them they cannot return to the old belief for it was not an adequate answer to their need for a cure for sin.
Hebrews 12:9-10 NIV
This is an illustration for the present time, indicating that the gifts and sacrifices being offered were not able to clear the conscience of the worshiper. They are only a matter of food and drink and various ceremonial washings-- external regulations applying until the time of the new order.
No human religious sacrifices atone for sin’s spiritual disease. Religious rituals are human efforts that have no bearing on the soul’s condition. However, many people still look to these religious rites in hope they will set them free from the power of sin. Yet, God sent Jesus to a cross to cover our sins with his sacrifice. Jesus can do what we cannot do.
2. Aslan alone removes the old dragon skin.
The only cure for sin is Jesus’ death on the cross.
Return again to the story of Eustace and the dragon. Eustace had become the very thing he dreaded. He became the selfish dragon. Eustace tried to free himself from this horrible state, but he could not. Try as he might, the old dragon skin would not come off.
Eustace did find healing, though. He did find a cure. It was not a cure he could provide for himself, but he did find it. He found the cure in the Lion named Aslan. Aslan, The Great Lion, represents Christ in The Chronicles of Narnia series. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Lewis shows Christ’s sacrifice through the sacrificial death of the Lion on a stone altar. Through his death, the Lion defeated the witch, who represented the devil. Aslan came to life again and set free those who had been held under the power of the evil one.
For Eustace to discover his cure from sin, he had to submit his life to Aslan — the great Lion. He could no longer be full of himself. Now Eustace had to surrender self to the Savior. The only way he could be rid of the dragon skin was to lay still and let Aslan do his work. Describing what the great lion did, Eustace told a friend, “The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off.”
Eustace had tried to take away his dragon nature by himself, but it didn’t work. The only thing that did work was the piercing claw that tore away everything of his old nature. It was this painful cleansing that allowed him to be transformed into the new nature which God designed and desired for him.
Jesus is the one God sent into our world to tear away our old nature. His painful entrance into our lives gives us freedom from our sinful old nature as we submit to his holy presence. It is Jesus, not ourselves, that enables this cleansing. Jesus made this possible by dying on the cross to cancel our sin.
The writer of Hebrews tells us that Jesus’ death fulfilled the expectations of the Law. The Law’s prescription of sacrifices serve as a metaphor of a greater reality seen in Jesus’ action on the cross. Through Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection, God enacted a spiritual release from sin’s guilty claim. Jesus, in a spiritual sense, became both the sacrifice and the high priest, presenting the perfect sacrifice before the throne of God.
Hebrews 9:11-12 NIV
When Christ came as high priest of the good things that are already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not man-made, that is to say, not a part of this creation. He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption.
Hebrews 9:24 NIV
For Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence.
We must not look upon the spiritual nature of Jesus’ accomplishment as if it were somehow a lesser reality than the physical act of earthly events. Who can say that God’s existence, which is spiritual by nature, is any less real than our physical existence? What the writer of Hebrews describes is a reality accomplished by Jesus in his death that endures for eternity. Jesus’ blood, not the physical, but the spiritual accomplishment in Jesus’ death as sin’s release, has been presented in the Holy of Holies before God.
God provided the cure for sin in the holy blood of Jesus. His death on the cross cancelled the debt of our sin. His blood covered our guilt. Now by our faith, God declares us holy and acceptable to his presence.
Why blood? Isn’t that a morbid idea? Many today object to speaking of Jesus’ blood sacrifice. Some refuse to sing hymns that mention the blood of Jesus, as if blood is a shameful subject. However, the writer of Hebrews states that God required a blood sacrifice to remove our guilt for sin.
Hebrews 9:22 NIV
In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
It seems so strange to our earthly thinking that God would require a human death, and that of his own Son, to be the requirement for our release from spiritual bondage. Couldn’t he just accomplish this in a spiritual way? Perhaps he could have. However, our sin is acted out down here in our earthly lives. Here, in our flesh, we act selfishly, bitterly, hatefully. A strange paradox is formed at the cross. Mankind acts selfishly to preserve power striking down the Savior, while God acts in unconditional love, selflessly giving himself as a ransom for our sin. This drama in flesh and blood then becomes the means by which the Savior offers pardon to those who sent him to the cross. It is God’s selfless love that turns a bloody human execution into an object of worship, where we now view the cross as a symbol of faith.
We should glory in the blood of Jesus. It still stands in God’s presence as the spiritual declaration of our release from sin. Through the blood we have a cure for the dragon’s skin.
Hebrews 9:14 NIV
How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!
Jesus alone provides salvation. He is The Great Lion who died to set us free. Jesus took the blood of his sacrificial death into heaven. Now in heaven, he offers salvation by grace to everyone who believes in him.
3. Alsan removes the dragon’s skin completely.
Jesus’ death is the complete cure for sin.
When Eustace wanted a cure for his dragon’s skin, he found it in Aslan the Great Lion. Aslan removed the skin completely. When Jesus gives us salvation, he saves us completely. He offers a perfect cure. Unlike the story of Eustace, we still see sin’s affect on us in this life. Yet God declares we are completely pardoned by God for all eternity.
I had polio as a child. I am crippled in my right arm as a result. The disease destroyed the nerves that enable muscle to grow. As a result, I no longer have muscle in my upper right arm. I no longer suffer pain from the disease, yet I live with the outcome of its work. I have found that I cannot grow muscle in my right arm. I have tried. I’ve lifted weights. I’ve tried sports. I have exercised. Nothing works. Nothing will grow muscle on my arm, not in this world. Only in the life to come will I be free from this limitation. However, I accept it. God gives me all the grace I need.
There is no human cure for sin except for Jesus’ death on the cross. However, Jesus’ death provides the complete cure for sin. Jesus provided the complete cure in his one sacrifice on the cross.
Hebrews 9:25-26 NIV
Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.
Jesus died only once. It was all God needed. His death on the cross became the altar God uses for all sinners, for all time. Jesus does not need to die again and again to cure our sin. Human religious rituals can become a substitute for faith. We can find ourselves trusting in the human action of a ritual, an altar of the present, rather than trusting in the altar which God provided at the cross. As Baptists, we believe that the cross is the only altar we need for faith. This one sacrifice is sufficient for all times. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, when the Lion overcame the sacrifice, the stone altar was broken. It was needed no more. The one sacrifice was sufficient for the rest of the story.
Faith in Jesus brings us the cure, not faith in the church, nor our church rites, not even having faith in ourselves. We Baptists are no more free than others from this temptation to put our faith in our religious deeds rather than Christ. Sometimes we will assume God accepts us because we tithe, or attend church regularly, or because we don’t drink or swear. We should hear what Oswald Chambers once said,
“We trample the blood of the Son of God if we think we are forgiven because we are sorry for our sins. The only explanation for the forgiveness of God... is the death of Jesus Christ... There is absolute reinstatement into God by the death of Jesus Christ and by no other way, not because Jesus Christ pleads, but because he died. It is not earned, but accepted... The atonement is a propitiation whereby God, through the death of Jesus, makes an unholy man holy.”
We cannot cure ourselves from sin. Yet, Jesus can. When he does, he cures us completely. He gives us a complete pardon. We are like Eustace in that we are pardoned from having the old dragon-skin nature. Where we are different, is that Christ is still tearing away at our old skin through the rest of our story, our life.
Put your faith in Jesus alone for salvation.
We have all sinned and come short of what God desires (Romans 3:23). We are incurably sick in our sinful selfish souls. No matter how hard we try, no matter how religious we get, no matter how sorrowful, no matter how many good deeds, none of this makes any difference for our sin. We are still captured in the dragon’s skin of our selfish souls. We need Jesus to set us free. He is willing if we are willing.
We must quit looking to ourselves for the cure. When we look to Jesus, by faith trusting in his grace, we will discover the painful joy of our release. He will cut deep, deep into our hearts. Yet, in that painful cleansing, he will remove the old nature and birth a new nature within us.
