Chocolate Chip Cookies and Jesus

A couple of days ago I had some friends over to my apartment. I love hosting people and I love cooking for them. Seriously, my favorite thing. I have a signature dessert which most people at my church know me for and its my chocolate chip cookies. Nothing special, just regular, from-scratch cookies with walnuts. I decided to stick with this classic food item for when they came over. So I poured my flour, cracked my eggs, softened my butter, etc. Side note: I have started to use pink salt instead of white because its supposedly healthier. The only problem is that pink salt tends to clump more in my experience. Or maybe its super humid in my apartment. Either way, when I went to pour out my ½ teaspoon of salt, I got WAY more than I bargained for. The perfectionist in me became extremely distraught. I immediately started shoveling out salt and flour. Some of the salt had landed on the butter so there was no removing that salt. I frantically pulled as much out as I could. While I got most of the excess out, I was still left with much more than the called-for ½ teaspoon. I mixed together the ingredients I had because I had no extras to start over. I tasted the batter and almost gagged. I frantically called my mom who instructed me to just keep adding flour and sugar. I did which helped a little but it still didn’t taste like my famous cookies. I am such a perfectionist in the kitchen that I didn’t even want to serve them but one of my guests had been over the day before and knew I was making them. No backing out now. I cooked them and prayed for a baking miracle. While they didn’t taste terrible, they certainly weren’t what they were supposed to be.

So why do I tell you about my cooking debacle? Because like it or not, we are those cookies.

When God created Adam and Eve, He made the perfect cookie. The world was exactly as it should be, living in harmony and community with Christ. In Genesis 1:31 it says that “God saw everything he had made, and behold, it was very good”. And then comes along the serpent who says that the salt that we have is good but what about just a little more salt. So we silly, sinful humans take more and thus sin enters the world, forever ruining that perfect cookie. What we had was perfect, yet we still were not satisfied with that. Thus a separation was created between us and God, our perfection now tainted.

Thankfully the story doesn’t end there. Jesus enters the picture and is the flour and sugar for the mess of a concoction we’ve made. He is the perfect cookie, the perfect ingredient. He completes a broken and destroyed cookie. He died in our place for our sin so that the unity and community that we once had with God are possible again.

Yet day in, day out we continually add salt to our mixture. We daily sin, forgetting the huge and undeserved sacrifice that was made for us on the cross. The “little” sins like lying or coveting. Or even the “big” sins like murder and sexual immorality. They all are adding salt to a mixture that has been made whole and new by God. (Side note: sin is sin. All sin is wrong in God’s eyes but there are different earthly punishments/repercussions for our sins. And thankfully Jesus died for all of them, the “little” and the “big” sins). And those sins that you think no one knows about? The ones that are deep down, secret sins? They are adding salt as well. They are destroying relationships. They are making what was meant to be perfect and tainting it. You may look like a warm, delicious chocolate chip cookie but no one is fooled when they take a bite and eat oatmeal raisin!

The good news? When we accept Christ into our hearts, our slates are wiped clean. We are clean, brand-new! 2 Corinthians 5:17 says “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” All the salt from our past is sifted out and we are brand new ingredients, clean, unblemished. There is nothing you have done that can’t be removed and forgiven, if only you ask. The not-so-good news? We keep sinning. We keep adding salt even though we know that it taints our ingredients. We must strive for holiness but realize that only one human in history has ever fully achieved it. And that human died for us so that we could commune with the Creator of the world! Our continual waxing and waning of saltiness has proven one thing: we long for the day when we will be whole, complete, without blemish forever. I have had a taste of heaven and now I crave it. One day, thanks to the sacrifice on the cross, I can stand complete, face-to-face with my Savior and unashamedly worship Him with everything in me. I can’t wait! So while we “groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling,” (2 Corinthians 5:2), we must not waste this time here. We must strive for righteousness and let our lives be a continual act of worship to Christ.

Whether my friends were being gracious or were just ravenously hungry, all the cookies were gone by the time they all left. They weren’t my best work but I was thankful of the reminder that despite my “saltiness”, someone loves me and desires me to be the whole, unblemished version of myself.