We are not only filthy in our conduct before God, but our nature is also defiled. Our outward behavior is filthy, and our inward nature is defiled. Thus, there is not only the aspect of the blood but also the aspect of life in the cleansing that God has prepared for us in His salvation. The aspect of the blood stresses the removal of the filthiness in our behavior before God, His law, and our conscience; the aspect of life stresses the removal of defilement in our nature. Therefore, the cleansing of life is absolutely subjective and inward.
1. “The washing of regeneration” (Titus 3:5).
Regeneration is a washing. However, this washing does not cleanse our defiled nature, because regeneration does not change our corrupt nature. The washing of regeneration means that we obtain God’s life and nature in addition to our original life and nature and that God’s life and nature deliver us from our own life and nature and, thus, from the filthiness that belongs to our life and nature. Our original life and nature were defiled when Adam first sinned. Our original life and nature are not only filthy but filthiness itself. To be in our life and nature is to be in filthiness. Since regeneration causes us to obtain God’s life and nature and to be delivered from our filthy life and nature, it also delivers us from filthiness itself. Thus, regeneration is a washing of our being, a very subjective washing.
2. “Cleansing their hearts by faith” (Acts 15:9).
In God’s saving way, He does not cleanse our heart by the Lord’s redeeming blood. Rather, He purifies our heart with His Spirit of life because of our union with the Lord by faith. That is, He replaces our old stony heart, which is incurable and full of various kinds of defilement (Jer. 17:9; Matt. 15:18-20), with a pure and pliable new heart (Ezek. 36:26). Thus, He causes us to be cleansed in our hearts.
3. “Purified your souls by your obedience to the truth” (1 Pet. 1:22).
Our soul, that is, our self, our person, includes our mind, emotion, and will. Originally, because of our rebellion against God, every part of our soul, whether the mind, the emotion, or the will, was defiled. After repenting and returning to God, our souls are purified through our obedience to God’s truth by faith. This means that the Holy Spirit, as the living water in us, cleanses every part of our soul with God’s truth and God’s life, eliminating all that opposes God, all that rejects God, and all that is not for God, according to God, from God, or of God. Thus, our entire soul, our whole person, is cleansed.
4. “You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you” (John 15:3).
The Lord’s word cleanses us like water. When we were sinners, there were improper things in every part of our being, and there was filthiness that was opposed to God. Some things were of sin, some were of the world, and some were of fleshly lusts. All these things were displeasing to God. When we believed, the Lord removed these things from our being through His word so that we might be clean.
5. “Washed...in the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:11).
The washing of regeneration, the purification of our hearts by faith, the purification of our soul by the truth, and the cleansing of the Lord’s word are all accomplished by the Spirit of God in us. Through God’s truth and the Lord’s word, the Holy Spirit does the work of cleansing in all the parts of our being by God’s life, delivering us from all filthiness and making us clean, based on our faith and obedience.
6. “Purify to Himself a particular people as His unique possession” (Titus 2:14).
God cleanses us by His word through His truth and with His Spirit and life to make us a particular people as His unique possession. Originally, we were worldly people, following the same course of uncleanness. Then God separated us from the filthy heap of the world by His purifying work, delivering us from worldly lusts, sin, and corruption with all its filth, and making us distinct and special to be His pure people for His unique possession in the polluted world.
God cleanses us not only with the blood but also with life. The blood washes away all our ungodly and unrighteous defilement before God through its effectiveness in making propitiation. Life causes us to put off the old creation with its filthiness through life’s resurrection power. In typology, the cleansing of the leper in the Old Testament reveals these two aspects of cleansing (Lev. 14:1-20; Matt. 8:2-4). Sprinkling and putting the blood on the leper speak of the cleansing by the propitiating blood; the healing of leprosy illustrates the cleansing of life. The defilement of sin upon us is like leprosy on a man’s body; it corrupts and defiles our nature and causes us to be unclean and condemned before God. God’s way of salvation is to make propitiation for our sins by the Lord’s blood in order to remove our uncleanness before Him and to work in us by His life to cleanse us from our corrupt nature and its filthiness.