My role at the Bible camp was to teach the Bible story each day to the campers. Before our trip, I had spent some time thinking about how to explain the gospel to them and especially the cross. Why did Jesus die on the cross and what did His death mean for us? I started thinking about how Jesus took all of our sin on Himself when He went to the cross and an idea started to form about using garbage bags to demonstrate what that looked like and what it meant. As a result, what I like to call “The Trash Bag Gospel” was born.
I chose three volunteers from the class to join me up front. These three represented all of humanity and I put black garbage bags over their heads for them to wear. Don’t worry – I cut holes in the bags and made sure they didn’t suffocate! The black garbage bags represented our sin. A couple of days prior, we had talked about Adam and Eve and how they sinned. They had learned that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” through their Bible memory verse that day (Romans 3:23). So every one of us has this black stinky, smelly, gross garbage bag of sin that we have to wear in life.
Then I asked for another volunteer – this volunteer represented Jesus. I told the kids that Jesus was the only human who ever lived who did not sin. He lived a completely perfect life and so I gave “Jesus” a white trash bag to wear. Because Jesus had never sinned, He was the only one who did not deserve the punishment for sin which is death. But evil people had Jesus arrested anyway and Jesus was sentenced to death on the cross. Satan thought he had won, but this was all part of God’s plan.
Since Jesus was without sin and did not deserve to die, God was able to take our sin and place it on Him on the cross and Jesus was able to pay the penalty that we owed. As I explained what Martin Luther called the “great exchange,” I took the black trash bags off of the three students and placed them all, one at a time, on “Jesus,” covering his white trash bag with our sins. I explained that Jesus died and was placed in a tomb and my “Jesus” volunteer walked out of the room.
While some assistants helped “Jesus” outside, I told the class that Jesus’ disciples were heartbroken. Jesus was dead and they could not understand what had happened. But on the third day, Jesus rose from the dead! My “Jesus” volunteer re-entered the room wearing the white trash bag and we all applauded and celebrated. Then I told the class that the awesome part of the story was not just that Jesus had taken our sin and rose from the dead, but that because Jesus had paid the price for our sin, we were able to be completely righteous again. That’s when I showed them that “Jesus” had returned not just wearing a white trash bag but wearing four white trash bags – and I took them off of Jesus and put one on each of my three original volunteers. Now Jesus and the other three all wore clean white trash bags representing their righteousness.
The great thing about what Christ did on the cross is that when I place my trust in Him, I get to replace my stinky old sin garbage for a nice white robe. I don’t need to feel any more shame and guilt over my sin because it has all been paid for. I can live in freedom from that sin because Jesus has given me His own perfect righteousness. That doesn’t mean I won’t mess up and sin any more, but I will know that those sins were all forgiven on the cross as well. And now I am restored to a right relationship with God because Jesus has made me clean. That’s good news!
“For our sake, God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21) I really enjoyed being able to present this truth in a visual way to these young people and I’m sure I will use this illustration again soon!
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