I began thinking about this word when I read a meditation on Psalm 38 and was struck by the author's statement: "sin is the great solvent of our relationships" (Reardon, Christ in the Psalms). My use if the term just now and his are quite different. My curiosity about the differences led me to the dictionary where I discovered two meanings which appear to be unrelated. One is the ability to pay debts. The other says that a solvent is a substance that dissolves another substance. I wondered, how can those two definitions be related? They appear to be very different.
This question brought me back to Psalm 38 where David is sadly confessing that his sin had separated him from his family and from his God. Sin, like a great solvent, dissolves and destroys relationships. One time Frances had one of the old mercury filled thermometers break in her hand. The mercury rolled out across her fingers, contacted her gold wedding ring, and dissolved much of it. That's what sin does to our relationships. It destroys that which is valuable and precious -- our relationship with spouse, children, friend, or God. And much more.
But there is a positive side to a solvent. In many cases, it cleanses in the act of dissolving. Whether it is paint in a brush or tar on your car, a good solvent will remove it. And so it is with our sin -- a good solvent will dissolve the sin and cleanse us. Thus, we read in 1 John 1:7, "If we walk in the light as he is in the light ... the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin." And we hear Jesus at the last supper say, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, shed for the remission of sins."
Now I know the connection between the two definitions of the word "solvent" -- at least in a spiritual sense. Our debts have been covered and our sins removed through the sacrifice of Christ. We are right with God again. In His eyes we are solvent, all because of the sin-cleansing blood of Christ.
