A Ribband of Blue

Speak unto the children of Israel, and bid them that they make them fringes in the borders of their garments throughout their generations, and that they put upon the fringe of the borders a ribband of blue. NUMBERS 15:38

A Ribband of Blue is perhaps the most practical of Hudson Taylor’s addresses. It is an exposition of the end of Numbers 15, where God tells Israel to put fringes on the borders of their garments with a thread of blue, so that they would look upon it and remember all the commandments of the LORD, and do them. Taylor found in that small detail a whole theology of everyday holiness.

Sins of ignorance and presumption

He begins with a sobering context. The chapter distinguishes between sins committed in ignorance, for which God appointed a sacrifice, and presumptuous sin, done deliberately in the face of God’s known will, for which there was no sacrifice. Taylor draws two lessons.

First, sins of ignorance and forgetfulness are real sins. Our knowledge and consciousness do not make wrong right. Even when we walk in the light, we are not beyond the need of atonement; our fellowship with God continues unbroken only because the blood of Jesus Christ keeps cleansing us.

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. 1 JOHN 1:7

Second, deliberate sin is deadly. The one who presumes on God’s forgiveness and does knowingly what he knows to be contrary to God’s will will find, Taylor warns, spiritual dearth and spiritual death inevitably follow. It is possible not merely to grieve and resist the Spirit, but to quench Him.

Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression. PSALM 19:13

It was on the heels of a judgement for presumptuous sin that God gave the ribband of blue. The badge was meant to keep His people from forgetting.

The colour of heaven

Blue, Taylor says, is the colour of heaven. The sea reflects it and is as blue as the cloudless sky. Only when clouds come between is the deep blue lost. It is God’s will that there should never be a cloud between His people and Himself, and that, as the Israelite carried his thread of blue wherever he went, so Christians should carry a heavenly spirit and temper everywhere.

He paints the picture with obvious enjoyment: the farmer carrying his ribband into the field, the merchant to his place of business, the maid-servant into the innermost rooms as she did her daily work. Is it less important, he asks, that the Christian today should be manifestly marked by the Spirit of Christ, not only on special occasions but in the smallest details of life?

Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us. EPHESIANS 5:1–2

A perfect needle

Taylor then takes up the command, Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. He knows the difficulty it raises for tender consciences, and he answers with an illustration that is both homely and wise.

God’s perfection is absolute; ours at best is relative. A needle, he says, may be a perfect needle, exactly fitted for its work. Under a microscope it becomes a rough, honeycombed poker with a ragged hole for an eye. But it was not made to be looked at under a microscope. Being fitted for the purpose for which it was made, it may properly be called perfect. “So we are not called to be perfect angels, or in any respect Divine, but we are called to be perfect Christians, performing the privileged duties that as such devolve upon us.”

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. MATTHEW 5:48

This is a gentle and freeing reading. It does not lower the standard; Taylor lists the demands of the Sermon on the Mount in full, from the refusal of anger and impurity to love for enemies. But it removes the despair of those who think Christ requires of them a flawlessness that belongs to God alone. He asks us to be what we were made for, fully.

Glorify God in your handwriting

Then Taylor becomes wonderfully specific. God makes the least thing He makes according to His perfection: the tiniest fly, the dust on a butterfly’s wing, however highly magnified, is perfect. Should not the little things of the Christian’s daily life be relatively perfect in the same way? “Ought we not to glorify God in the formation of each letter that we write,” he asks, and as Christians write a more legible hand than the unconverted can be expected to?

And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men. COLOSSIANS 3:23

He goes on. We should be thorough in our work, not simply doing well what will be noticed, but doing all we can, as under His eye, as God makes many a flower bloom unseen in the desert. We may take our rest and recreation to please Him. We may lay our clothes aside neatly at night, for He is in the room. We may wash and dress and brush our hair with His eye in view.

Some readers smile at this, but not for long. Taylor had spent years among people who judged the gospel by the lives of those who preached it, and he knew that a slovenly Christian is a poor advertisement for a holy God. More deeply, he believed that there is no part of life too small to be done for Christ. Holiness is not reserved for Sundays and crises. It is carried, like a thread of blue, into every room of the house.

Not a new legalism

There is a danger here, and it should be named. A chapter like this can produce a fussy, anxious perfectionism that polices handwriting and folded clothes and loses the joy of the gospel. Taylor did not mean that. The ribband of blue was given to help Israel remember, not to give them one more rule to fail. His own image for the result is not strain but gladness: he hopes for “tell-tale faces, and glad hearts, and loving service,” reflecting the very hue of heaven.

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. MATTHEW 5:16

The point is not that God is watching to catch us out. It is that He is present, everywhere and always, and that love wants to please Him in small things as well as great.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Ask whether you treat sins of forgetfulness and neglect as real sins, and confess any you have excused.

2. Examine yourself for any deliberate sin you have been presuming God will overlook, and turn from it today.

3. Choose one ordinary task this week and do it thoroughly, as for Christ, whether or not anyone will notice.

4. Replace any despairing view of perfection with Taylor’s needle: ask what God made you for, and aim to be that fully.

5. Find a small, private reminder, your own ribband of blue, to recall you to God’s presence during the working day.

A PRAYER

Heavenly Father, You make the smallest things perfectly, and You are present in every room of my life.

Forgive my sins of ignorance and neglect, and keep me back from presumptuous sins. Let no cloud come between us.

Teach me to do little things well for Your sake, in my work, my home and my rest, not anxiously, but gladly.

Make me a perfect Christian in the sense You intend, and let my face and my service reflect the colour of heaven. Amen.