What would you call a wicked, bad deed? "Oh, I should call it black." But God calls sin "scarlet and crimson." Now shall I tell you why? The dye that produces scarlet and crimson is the only ineffaceable dye.
Anciently taken from a little shell-fish called the Purpura, in modern times from the Cochineal. It is also the only animal dye.
Chlorine, which bleaches all other 'dyes and makes black white, cannot remove scarlet and crimson. You may send your scarlet and crimson to the dyers and have them dyed any dark color you please, but the application of chlorine will entirely obliterate the covering dye, and your scarlet and crimson will be scarlet and crimson still. Send scarlet and crimson rags to the paper mills, and pink blotting paper will be the result. Then scarlet and crimson are twice dyed-dyed in the warp and dyed in the woof. Now do you not see God's wisdom in choosing this simile for sin. Sin is ineffacable as far as all our efforts are concerned. We are twice dyed in sin, being sinners by nature and sinners by practice, and it is only the blood of the spotless Lamb of God, which was shed for us, that can make us like Jesus—even as white as snow.