The Gospel On An Air Filter

It was a simple statement made in passing.
My car has a funny smell when I first start it up in the morning.
So said my high school daughter talking about the little car she drives to school each day.

She has an air freshener attached to her vent.
Cinnamon pumpkin, her favorite scent.
The air freshener was not helping.

It seems like it is coming from the engine.
She keeps her car very neat and clean.
There was nothing, upon a cursory glance, that could be causing the problem.

My husband had been away so I made a mental note to mention it to him.
Always the engineer, he loves “puttering” as he calls it.
He enjoys fixing things, building things, and doing car repair.

He went out into the garage to investigate.
As I am cleaning up the kitchen after dinner, he came in with something in his hands.
It was dirty and filled with leaf debris.
I couldn’t understand why he was bringing it into the kitchen.

I found the problem, he said as he held the dirty something in his hands.
Baby mice!
Sure enough, there on the dirty air filter were two baby mice that had died.

Since we had such a terrible winter, the mother probably wanted a warm place.
She used the air filter, in the small car, in our garage, to have her babies.
There they were, tiny, perfect, dead.

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions, it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
(Ephesians 2:1-10)

We are dead in our transgressions.
We look just like the little mice on the air filter.
There is nothing we can do to save ourselves.

Dead.
Smelly.
Lying there with no life in us whatsoever.

But God…

Two all important words!
God does the work of salvation.

No piece of cheese was going to entice those mice to come alive again.
They were dead!

No amount or work on our part is going to bring us back to life.
We are spiritually dead.

Something from outside ourselves, greater than ourselves, has to save us.

Lazarus, come out! (John 11:43)
Talitha koum! (Little girl, I say to you, get up!) (Mark 5:41)
Young man, I say to you, get up! (Luke 7:14)

For the Lord Himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.
(1 Thessalonians 4:16)

There is nothing we can do on our own to save ourselves.
Dead men and women do not walk out of tombs unless the Lord Jesus calls them out.
Young men and little girls do not come back to life unless Jesus commands it.

The baby mice were dead with no chance of resuscitation.
We, unlike the mice, are dead, but can be born again.
Born again, as we hear the call of Jesus and respond in faith.

I saw the baby mice and thought of the many people who are just like them.
People seeking warmth and comfort in the wrong places.
People needing to hear the Gospel, desperately.

God’s grace is a life-giving gift.
There is nothing we can do on our own to bring ourselves back to life.
But God…

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. (John 3:16)