Dressed in White

Dressed in White
By Richard Bergh

"I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe ofrighteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels."
Isaiah 61:10

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The color white show up again and again through all of scripture. It appears wherever heaven touches earth, wherever the sacred draws near enough to dress us in its light. It's like a thread running through everything, connecting it all together. 

We see it at the waters of baptism. Stepping into the font carrying the dust of our old life, we are reborn in baptism, rising up out of the water clean and new. More than 1,600 years ago, St. Ephrem the Syrian marveled at this transformation: “O Children of the baptismal font, you without spot, who have put on Fire and Spirit: preserve the glorious robes that you have put on from the water.” Though simple fabric, the white baptismal clothes we wear carry the weight of covenant. They represent a promise to take upon ourselves Jesus’s name and always remember Him.

And the promise of the Atonement is that, through Christ, we can be continually restored and made perfectly clean, regardless of the mistakes we make. The words of Isaiah 1:18 are a powerful reminder of this: “Come now, and let us reason together saiththe Lord, for though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” To be clothed in white is not to pretend we have never been stained. It is to testify thatSomeone loved us enough to make us whole again. Rev. Charles Spurgeon marveled at this, writing, “White raiment — that is a pure color, a holy color, a royal color. We put on the Lord Jesus as our joy, our glory, our righteousness. To walk with Him in white is real honor and sure acceptance — it marks us out as victors through Him that has loved us.”

These white clothes again appear at the end of all things, in John’s breathtaking vision of the redeemed standing before the throne. Someone asks, “These who are clothed in the white robes, who are they?” The answer rings across eternity: “These are the ones who came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 7:13–14). The robes are not earned by spotless living — they are washed clean. Every stain, every tear, every threadbare place is restored by a grace we could never manufacture ourselves. The ancient apocryphal text of 3 Enoch poetically described this tender process: “Out of the love which he had for me, the Holy One, blessed be he, fashioned for me a majestic robe, in which all kinds of luminaries were set, and he clothed me in it. He fashioned for me a glorious cloak in which brightness, brilliance, splendor, and luster of every kind were fixed, and he wrapped me in it.” (3 Enoch 12:1–3) That image is not merely poetry — it is a promise. The God who clothes the lilies of the field has prepared garments of light for each of His children.

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