The Purging of Dross

Seemingly unaffected by her anguish, the dragon continued. “Now for another question.” As the sizzle and stench of her burning flesh permeated the room, he turned on his lasers and focused the beams on her eyes. “You say that you now know why you must be set aflame.” He paused for a moment as if to let his words add to her suffering. “Why?” “I … I …”She couldn’t speak. The flames climbed to her waist and slowly crawled up her back, onto her wings, and up to her chest. Heaving, gasping, panting, she tried to force out an answer, but the words wouldn’t come. Were they even in her mind? Did she really not know after all?
“Bonnie Silver!” Abaddon shouted.  His call echoed throughout the chamber, repeating again and again. “Why must you be set aflame?”
Even as he finished his question, her name continued to echo.  Bonnie Silver … Bonnie Silver.
She spat out her words, each one a torture. “My … my name … is Silver. All dross … is purged… and my body … is a living … illustration.”
“But you must have some dross remaining. Hidden lies in secret places?” His eyebeams brightened. “Envy? Lust? Or do you seriously want me to believe this notion that the dross is already gone? Is your mask one of pride after all?”
“No!” she screamed. “Not a mask. … God purged … my dross … long ago."

This quote from one of my favorite books, The Bones of Makaidos, by Bryan Davis.  The passage above illustrates to a great extent the life that we live in Christ if we are believers.  So often the devil comes back to me, whispering doubts about how I wasn't forgiven, how my sin still remains.

They are lies.

Once God forgives us, we become new people.  The dross we once were—impurities covering the silver of God's creations—gets burned away, killing the person we once were and giving us a new life.  Through the purging of our dross, we are left "blameless and pure, children of God without fault" (Philippians 2:15).  Not only is the sin washed away, but our lives take on a new direction.  Though the temptations of this life still pull us to the wayside on occasion, they cannot overcome us. 

This is why the passage is such a wonderful example of our lives as Christ-followers. Our old bodies died with His when He lay lifeless on the cross, and our new ones rose with Him three days later.  Jesus took all the wrath of our sin, the destructive seeds that we sowed, and killed it, along with the people who sowed the seeds.  Those people were you and me.  We were purged of the dross we once carried like burdens, dragging us down into mud of our own making.  And now it is no longer us who live, but Christ in us (Galatians 2:20).

And I rejoice in that fact, in that simple, childlike solution that paid so incredibly dearly.  With the words, "it is finished" (John 19:30), it was finished.  Death died.  Life sprang up from the dry ground, and filled our hearts with something new, something clean.  Jesus became our life, and death no longer has hold.  And with Bonnie Silver in that passage I can say, "It's not a mask.  God purged my dross long ago."