Cavities and the Gospel

My dad taught me to love brushing my teeth.

I have my first cavity.

(insert depression)

Is it weird that I had a life goal of never having a cavity?

Probably.

But I did.

“This is not a cavity that was caused by anything you did or didn’t do,” my dentist said. “Usually I have to tell people to brush their teeth more or stop drinking as many sodas, but that’s not the case for you. You did all the right things, but no matter how much brushing you did this [cavity] still would have appeared sooner or later because it’s how your tooth was made.”

The importance of dental hygiene was “drilled” into my sister and I from birth.

No matter how hard I tried to prevent this from happening (and I definitely tried; I brush my teeth at least three times a day, don’t drink sodas and try not to eat much sugar), it still happened because my tooth was made with a pit in the side of it that became a little baby cavity. Like the dentist said, it was inevitable. 

So it is with sin.

We can try to be perfect our whole lives and do all the right things, but sooner or later our real condition (sin) is going to show itself. Why? Because that’s how we were made.

“For I was born a sinner–yes, from the moment my mother conceived me.”
-Psalm 51:5 (NLT)

Sin is our nature. We were born with it. And no matter how hard we try to deny it, fight it, cover it, brush it off, scrub it down and make it white, it’s there. Black and ugly, corrupting and destroying our lives.

But there is hope.

Just as my dentist is going to drill out my cavity, there is a sinless Savior who can remove our old nature and give us a new one. When we repent and believe in Him, yielding our lives to His sovereign and glorious will, He replaces our old, stony, corrupt-from-birth heart with a new fleshy one that desires and embraces Jesus and all He is for us through the cross.

Unlike my tooth that’s only on its way to death, as sinners we were already dead (in our trespasses and sins, Eph. 2:1)  and in desperate need for a way to bridge the gap our sin created between us and the holy Father.

Jesus did that.

He died our death.
Paid our debt.
Took our sin.
Gave us His righteousness.

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” -Ephesians 2:4-7 (ESV)

I wonder if Jesus planned on cavities showing us our need for Him? Of course He did.

How does a cavity show us our need for the Gospel?

I mean, come on people, we can’t even keep our teeth healthy on our own. What’s that say about our lives? We need Him desperately. 

“And to the one who does not work but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.” -Romans 4:5