Please visit our website at:

Cedar Grove Church of Christ

Do You Have Skeletons In Your Closet?

By Eddie Boggess

            Recently, in Sweden, a unique house came onto the market.  The house is located in Visby on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea, and it was built in 1750.  It is a five-bedroom townhouse, but what makes it unique is the skeletonin the cellar.  Apparently, the house was built on the foundations of a Russian church, and the kitchen, with a cellar underneath, was built right on top of the tomb of a Russian man who died 800 years ago.  His remains are actually visible through a glass panel in the cellar.1

             Most of us would not want to own a home containing the tomb of a long dead Russian or anyone else for that matter.  We would not want a skeleton in the cellar; however, most of us do have skeletons in our closet.  We have those things that we have done in the past of which we are not proud, which we would rather forget, and about which we would rather others not find out.  The problem is that whether we forget them or not and whether others find out about them or not, those skeletons are still in the closet.  We need a way to get rid of them.

             In Christ we have the means to get the skeletons out of our closet.  He took our sins, including every skeleton in every closet, to the cross with Him.  He bore the burden of those sins and gave His blood to pay the price of our redemption from them.  "Knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot." (1 Peter 1:18-19).  

 Thanks to Jesus, we do not have to live with skeletons in our closet.  We can come to Him and receive His forgiveness.  Of course, for Jesus to get rid of the skeletons, we may have to take them out of our closet.  Often the skeletons in our closet represent secret sins that we have hidden from the world. In order to receive the forgiveness of Jesus, we must repent of all our sins�even the secret ones (Luke 13:3). To repent means to turn from the sin. It means, if possible, to make restitution for the wrong we have done.  Thus, if we have wronged someone else, even in secret, we will need to take the skeleton out of the closet and make it right.  Even so, the difficulty of restitution is far less than the burden of keeping the skeleton hidden in the closet.

Thanks be to God for Jesus Christ, who truly enables us to get rid of the skeletons in our closet!  If we will have faith in Him, repent our sins, and submit to baptism, He will give us a new, fresh start, having removed the sins of our past. If we will remain faithful to Him, He will continually cleanse our sins (1 John 1:7).   With Jesus we can have a life without the burden of sin�a closet without skeletons!