In this chapter we will consider the matter of cleansing. The Bible reveals that cleansing is a blessing in God’s salvation that immediately follows forgiveness. God not only forgives us but also cleanses us. Forgiveness cancels the punishment of sin, and cleansing erases the trace of sin. When God forgives us, He spares us from the accountability that is related to sin. Then He cleanses us as if we had never sinned. This is similar to a friend paying all our debts. Although we are now exempt from the responsibility of the debts, the trace of the debts may still be in our record. If the trace of the debts is obliterated, it will be as if we were never in debt. This is God’s salvation to us. After He forgives us, He cleanses us, and it is as if we never sinned before Him.
Man’s sin has not only made him a sinner with a record of sin before God, but it has also defiled and dirtied him. Thus, man needs not only forgiveness but also cleansing.
1. “Who can say, I have made my heart clean; / I am pure from my sin?” (Prov. 20:9).
The heart of man is filthy, full of sin and evil. Who has a pure and sinless heart? There is no one whose heart is pure and sinless. Furthermore, there is no one who cleanses his own heart and purifies himself from his sin after his heart has been defiled by sin.
2. “How then can a man...be pure?...How much less a man, a maggot...a worm!”; “How much less a man who drinks wrong like water!” (Job 25:4-6; 15:16; see also 14:4).
All the people in the world are born of the flesh and are therefore filthy and abominable. They love sin, they drink wrong like water, and they are like worms existing in filthiness. How can such people be counted as clean before God without facing the requirement to be cleansed?
3. “For just as you presented your members as slaves to uncleanness” (Rom. 6:19).
All the members of a man’s body have become slaves to uncleanness and are defiled. If a man were to thoroughly inspect all the members of his body, would any part not be a slave to uncleanness or not be defiled by sin?
4. “I am a man of unclean lips, / And in the midst of a people of unclean lips I dwell” (Isa. 6:5).
The filthiest part of man is his lips. Whose lips are clean? Whose lips have not been contaminated by cursing, slander, criticism, lies, obscenity, or babblings? Who has kept his lips clean for even one day without being polluted by unclean words?
5. “All these wicked things proceed from within and defile the man” (Mark 7:23).
Man’s mouth is defiled because his heart is defiled. “For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matt. 12:34). Since man’s heart is full of all kinds of defilement, filthy and defiling things proceed from his mouth.
6. “In the lusts of their hearts to uncleanness” (Rom. 1:24).
Man not only has a heart that is full of defilement and a mouth that speaks filthiness; he also works uncleanness. Just as the heart and mouth of man are filthy, so is his behavior. Who has clean hands? Whose feet are not dirty? We know the unclean things that our hands have done and the filthy ways that our feet have walked!
7. “For all of us became like him who is unclean, / And all our righteousnesses are like a soiled garment” (Isa. 64:6).
All are unclean before God, and all that comes from man is defiled. In God’s eyes not only the things that man deems evil and corrupt are unclean, but even matters that man considers good and righteous are filthy before God. All man’s righteousnesses are like a soiled garment before God.
8. “They have all turned aside; / They are together perverse” (Psa. 14:3).
All men have turned aside from God’s way and have become perverse.
9. “Yet to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure” (Titus 1:15).
Man has fallen into filthiness. Before he believes in the Lord, nothing is pure. What can be pure when man himself is defiled? “Who can bring a clean thing out from the unclean?” (Job 14:4).
10. “The leper...shall...cry, Unclean, unclean!” (Lev. 13:45).
Man’s filthy and unclean condition before God is like that of a leper. Man is totally filthy and desperately needs cleansing.