“Dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” This statement or a similar one is made over every penitent sinner who comes forward on Ash Wednesday during the rite of the Imposition of Ashes. This is a common practice in the Christian Church. It’s a helpful reminder that we are mortal human beings, living in a fallen world and fallen ourselves. Our end is the grave (unless Jesus returns first), as King Solomon writes over and over again in Ecclesiastes.
Yet, Lent is not a hopeless season. Our end in this life may be the grave, but for us who believe in Jesus Christ, there is the assurance of eternal life with God in heaven after our death. Because Christ took our sin upon himself, the grave has been robbed of its victory!
During the season of Lent we focus on Jesus’ suffering and death and the reason for it – our sin. “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” is a quote from Genesis chapter 3. Adam and Eve were the crown of God’s creation. But with their disobedience came separation from God, and the dust of death.
But though our sin separates us from God, it does not separate us from his love. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16). In his great love for humanity, God sent Jesus to be the obedient Son that Adam, Eve, and each one of us are not. Not only was Jesus perfect in God’s sight, but he “bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds [we] have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24). Isaiah writes that “he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors” (Isaiah 53:12). During the season of Lent, we focus on the sacrifice that Jesus made for us.
Notice, too, how the Isaiah passage ends – past tense, “he bore the sin of many,” and present tense, he “makes intercession for the transgressors.” Jesus is at work right now, interceding with the Father on our behalf. In the Old Testament, the high priest would make intercession for the people. He was the one appointed by God to come into his presence with the blood of the sacrifice, to intercede, to stand between a holy God and a sinful people, to turn God’s wrath away from sinners. But not without blood.
This is the work that Jesus is doing for you and for me right now. Our great High Priest is at God’s right hand, having brought into the Holy of Holies his own blood, blood poured out at the cross in payment for our sins. God’s justice has been satisfied. God’s wrath has been appeased. You and I are welcomed back to the Father as dear children.
Very likely for each of us there will be the grave. Our bodies will return to dust. But, thanks be to God and to our Savior, Jesus, there is also resurrection. Our bodies will be raised immortal and incorruptible (1 Corinthians 15:53-54). And then we will live with God in heaven for eternity, in the glorious kingdom of the Son.
It is good that we examine ourselves, that each year we set aside a special time of penitence, a season of sorrow over our sin. It is good to be reminded that we are dust, and that to dust we will return.
And it’s good also, in this season, to contemplate the price paid to redeem us from the dust, what it cost to destroy the power of death, to give us forgiveness and life in God’s eternal kingdom, to make us his children, simply by his grace.
God bless your observance of this season of Lent. May it be for you a time to ponder God’s love and thank him daily for the blessed gift of your Savior.