If you would open your Bibles
to 1 John, the epistle of 1 John, and I want to read a few verses
beginning in verse 7. John writes, But if we walk in
the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another. And I might mention here that
the word fellowship here is a word from the same root word that
we have translated as partaker. You remember I mentioned to you
in the message dealing with that, partakers of the divine nature. Well, this word fellowship here
is close akin. We have fellowship one with another. and the blood of Jesus Christ
His Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no
sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned,
we make him a liar and his word is not in us. The generation
in which we live is most likely the cleanest generation that
has ever lived. We take more baths, we have more
cleaning products, we have more personal hygiene products. As a matter of fact, I believe
that it would be admitted by many doctors that we have become
so clean that our immune systems are less than they ought to be. And so we have come up with such
terms now as this one. We say something is not just
clean, but it is squeaky clean. But although that is the way
that we are physically, that is not the way that we are by
nature spiritually. And the reason is because sin
has made us unclean. And we are, as God pictures us
in the Bible, spiritually, when he speaks of the leper. The leper was shut out of the
camp of Israel and had to go everywhere he went with his hand
over his mouth, crying out to everyone that passed him, unclean,
unclean. And that is the description of
us spiritually that God gives us through the prophet Isaiah
in the first chapter. He says, why should you be stricken
anymore? You will revolt more and more. And this is the reason why, spiritually,
the whole head is sick and the whole heart faints. From the sole of the foot, even
unto the head, there is no soundness but wounds and bruises and putrefying
sores. They have not been closed, neither
bound up, neither mollified with ointment." That's the picture
of a spiritual leper. That's every one of us by nature,
every one of us in Adam, and he goes on later by the same
prophet to describe us like this, but we are all as an unclean
thing. And all our righteousnesses,
what we would imagine to be all our good points or our best features,
all our righteousnesses, are as filthy rags, and we do all
fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us
away. And the very fact that we are
of ourselves unclean, that makes everything that we think and
every motive that we have and every deed that we do, everything
unclean. Why? Because it is tainted with
sin. Because it is done by the sinner. And so everything is because
of what we are, sin, thus we have this expression and term. We are totally depraved. If you don't believe that, turn
over to Romans chapter 3 and listen to the apostle in Romans
chapter 3. If there were ever a universal
and all-inclusive statement declaring what we all are in ourselves,
it has to be here, beginning in verse 9. What then? Are we better than they? Jew or Gentile? No, in no wise,
for we have before proved, both Jews and Gentiles, that they
are all under sin. As it is written, there is none
righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth
There is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of
the way. They are together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good,
no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre,
a grave. With their tongues they have
used deceit. The poison of Asp is under their
lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their
feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in
their ways, and the way of peace have they not known." That's
God's way of peace, which is the only way of peace that there
is. They have not known. There is
no fear of God before their eyes. Now, who is the one that determines
the actual state and condition that every one of us is in by
nature? Well, the same one who described
and determined whether or not a man or a woman was a leper
or not. In Leviticus it says, And the
priest shall look on the plague in the skin of the flesh, and
when the hair in the plague is turned white, and the plague
in sight be deeper than the skin of his flesh, it is a plague
of leprosy. And the priest shall look on
him and pronounce Him unclean. And therefore, that being a picture
of this very thing, that God, who knows us and who looks upon
us and who knows what sin is, has looked upon us and pronounced
us unclean. Because the plague that we have
is worse than any plague in our flesh It is the plague of sin,
and it is definitely deeper than the skin. It is a matter of the
heart. Our Lord said, out of the heart
comes all of these various wicked things. All, Paul says, have
sinned and come short of the glory of God. And we all, he
says, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by
sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned
in the sight of God. And just like that leper who
was found leprous and cast out of the camp of Israel, Every
one of us in our Father Adam sinned and were constituted sinners
in the sight of God and cast out of His presence as unclean. And not only this, not only are
we unclean, but we can't cleanse ourselves. We only in our efforts
make ourselves to be worse in the sight of God. You ever notice
a small child when they get into some paint or into some mom's
lipstick or something like that, and they know immediately that
something is wrong, and so they begin to clean themselves up. And boy, is that a mess. Yesterday
when I was running the bulletin, the little light that came on
the copy machine, it said add toner. And so I went and I began
to shift things around to try to get enough toner left in the
cartridge to make sure I had enough to run the bulletin. And
when I took my hands off of that, I looked and there were all my
fingers covered with toner. And I began to try to dust it
off, that idea, because it just got worse and worse and worse. And that's the way all our efforts
are. no matter how sincere they might
be, no matter how we are advised of men and especially of religion
to do, all our efforts to clean ourselves and cleanse ourselves,
they always fail because only God can cleanse a leprous sinner. You see, as it was with this
priest, Only God, who has pronounced us unclean, only He can determine
and pronounce us that we are clean. And not only that, being
unclean, we can in no way deserve cleansing. And if we get cleansing,
it will have to come from God, who not only cleanses and saves,
but does what He will. We are cleansed and made clean
in the sight of God, and by God, it will be by His free mercy
and His sovereign grace. That's what Christ Himself made
us to know. He went back to His own hometown,
and He stood up there in the synagogue in Nazareth, and after
He read the Scriptures, He went and spoke words to them in light
of that that made everyone there very angry. But what he said
was true. He said, and many lepers. Many lepers were in Israel in
the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed,
saving Naaman the Syrian. God didn't send a prophet. to
cleanse not one of those lepers in Israel, but rather he freely
and sovereignly cleansed the one leper that all the people
in Israel probably despised above all others, Naaman, the captain
of the host of Syria. And if you and I ever know this
cleansing, if we are ever cleansed by God Almighty, we'll be brought
to acknowledge that it is He who did it, and He who did it
purely by free, sovereign grace and mercy in the Lord Jesus Christ. But you know, that's the good
news of the Gospel. That's the good news that the
Apostle John declares here afresh and anew in this seventh verse. He says, the blood of Jesus Christ
his Son cleanseth us from all sin." Now, who's he writing that
to? He's writing these words being
led by the Spirit of God to the believers that this letter is
meant to be received by, and not only to them, but to everyone
who by God's grace and by the work of His Spirit is brought
to believe the gospel. He writes and he says, in this
matter of cleansing, in this matter of cleansing sinners,
God has cleansed them. He puts Himself in that group. And he writes these words to
other believers just like himself and to the Lord's people in every
age and time. And he says this, the blood of
Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin. Now, what I love about that,
as I end up making that statement with John, are those two last
words, because there is no cleansing, and we are certainly not clean
in the sight of God unless He has cleansed us from all sin. Now, I know what we do. And we
do this with the help of our natural deceived hearts, and
we do it with the help of religion, we do it with the help of everybody
in the world. We have your big sins, your medium
sins, and your little sins. And we have a notion that God
is going to deal with each of them on a different basis, and
that if we have not but just little sins, we are in a better
state somehow than those who have big sins. But I'll surely
agree with the old preacher who said this. He said, there are
no little sins because there is no little God to sin against. And the work and the blood of
the Lord Jesus Christ is such that He cleanses His people from
all sin so that His people are in His sight Now listen, and
in their sight, which is the sight of faith, squeaky clean. That's what they are. That means
that they are holy. That means that they are perfectly
righteous in His sight. That means that they are pure
because of this work that the Lord Jesus Christ has accomplished
and because, he said, because he said so. I said that they
are clean to him and they are clean to his people because this
cleansing is spoken of in a two-fold manner in the Scriptures, both
objectively and subjectively. And we have problems when we
get the two crossed up. But when we talk about this,
When we talk about this cleansing, when we talk about us being made
clean and clear from all sin through the blood of Jesus Christ,
lest we fall into the error of some who take this to be something
that they do, and therefore we have the birth of perfectionism. Look back at verse 8. If we say,
that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not
in us. Now, wait a minute here. Didn't
he just say that the blood of Jesus cleanseth us from all sin? Absolutely. But that doesn't
mean that you and I do not still have sin in us. It means that
we do not have sin on us as believers in Christ. Don't ever fall into
that false notion that you have arrived at a state of perfectionism,
or as some teach, that you can get a further dip in this blood,
if you will, and by a constant re-dipping yourself in this blood,
you arrive at a state of sinless perfection. He's telling us here
that's not the case. Look at verse 10. If we say we
have not sinned, we make him a liar. And His Word is not in
us. If we ever imagine that we arrive
at a state that we say we've not sinned, or that we are not
sinning, we make Him a liar. Therefore, we have to be careful
that we measure Scripture in the light of Scripture, that
we take what God says in the light of the whole, in the light
of the context. so that we see and are enabled
to see more clearly and fully, which is what faith does, what
God has made us through the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because
if you'll read verses 7 and 9 again, you'll find that the apostle
speaks of the Lord's people as being clean and as being cleansed. And you know what? Neither aspect
of this is in something we do. No, no. If you'll turn back,
this is exactly what the Lord Jesus Christ taught. And this
is exactly what He is saying here in the Gospel of John, John
chapter 13. The Scripture says that the Lord,
after supper, got up, ungirded Himself, took a basin of water,
and began to wash the disciples' feet." And Peter was hesitant
for that to happen. I can imagine that I might have
been a little hesitant, couldn't you? The Lord Jesus Christ, He's
going to wash my feet. And Peter said, no, that can't
be. And the Lord said, if I don't
do this to you, you don't have any part in me. And look at what
He says in verse 9, Simon Peter saith unto Him, Lord, not my
feet only, but also my hands, in my head. Now you listen to
what Christ says. Jesus saith to him, he that is
washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every
whit, and you are clean. But not all. He's talking about
Judas. But what does he say about the
rest of them? He said, you're clean. You're clean. And yet
at the same time, saying that they are clean by this symbolic
washing here that he performs on their feet, he shows them
also, you need to be cleansed. You see, every one of God's elect,
it's all right to use that term, isn't it? That's what he uses.
Every one of God's elect, being all whom the Father chose in
Christ before the world was, being those for whom Christ went
to that cross and died the death of the cross, and those who also
are at some point in time born from above by the Holy Spirit
of God, they are described in Scripture as twice clean. First of all, we are legally,
judicially clean before God through the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus
Christ. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth
us from all sin. That's a plain statement. The
shedding of His blood before divine justice, which is what
the cross was all about, amounted to the full satisfaction of God. The sin that separates, gone. The justice the righteousness
of God, so against our sin, satisfied by the shedding of His blood,
by the giving of His life, by the paying of that price, and
cleansed us from all sin. He said, you're clean. They didn't
look so clean, did they? Peter, he's still so impetuous
and so emotional, so disobedient? What did our Lord say to him?
You are clean. Every one of you except one is
clean. And you don't need in that sense
to be washed again and again and again. You are clean. He
hath by one offering perfected forever them that are sanctified. He entered into the holy place
once and put away our sins. And this has nothing to do with
faith. This is a fact of history. He
entered in once, made an end of our sins, put away sin by
the sacrifice of Himself, finished the work, brought in that everlasting
righteousness, the basis upon which God justifies us, and accomplished
the work. Hebrews 1. when he had by himself
purged." You know what that word means? Cleansed. When he had
by himself purged our sins, he sat down on the right hand of
the Majesty on high. Our same Apostle John in the
Revelation, he says, Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness and
the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of
the earth, unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins
in his own blood." He did it. He did it. One old writer said,
the blood of Jesus so cleanses sinners that they are sacrificially
clean. Legally, there is nothing against
their character. All our sins were transferred
to Him, and their penalty borne by Him. Thus the church as a
great objective whole stood purified from all guilt, just as Israel
was clean on the day of expiation. No reproach can be brought against
us. The blood that is in this great
sacrificial sense has removed all that is offensive to God
in us. Do you believe that? If you don't,
you don't believe the gospel. If you don't, you couldn't have
a moment's peace in this world. Apart from this sacrifice, there
is no cleansing. The ground of the leper's cleansing
was the sacrifice of blood, but on that basis, He was pronounced
clean. You see, the sacrifice is the
cleansing. But that sacrifice, or the word
of it, or the knowledge of it, the pronouncement of it to us
has a cleansing effect. You see, every sinner that God
saves was cleansed through the sacrifice of Christ outside of
Himself, and therefore they are all in that sense before God
clean. But, or I don't mean to use the
word but, I mean to use the word and. And. Because of that work,
they all shall be cleansed in their mind and heart and conscience
in their experience of God's grace. And this work is the work
of the Holy Spirit using one instrumentality, the truth. the truth. What did our Lord
say? You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. We don't know the truth. We are
at least in our experience in bondage. The truth, the word
of the truth of the gospel of this very sacrifice, in other
words, the blood of Jesus Christ shed on that cross purged our
sins and the realization of it, the knowledge of it, faith in
it, brought into our hearts and minds and consciences by the
Spirit of God, taking the gospel of this sacrifice and this crucified
Christ. That is the cleansing power in
us. Paul says, belief of the truth. What else would a statement like
this mean in Acts 15, verse 9? It says, purifying their hearts
by faith. Now, I know what men make that
to be. I know what religion would make it to be. It would be like
you taking a bar of soap and somehow you doing something.
But how is the heart purified by faith? Number one, God gives
faith. So that can't be a work of ours.
But if He gives us faith, what is it about faith that is said
to have a purifying effect on us? Because faith believes the
gospel of Christ and Him crucified. Faith believes the fact that
God says the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin. That's what purifies the heart. Turn over to Ephesians 5. Ephesians
chapter 5. And look down at verse 25. Paul
says, Husbands, Love your wives, even as Christ also loved the
church and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse
it by the blood." Is that what it says here? No, that's not
what it says. It says that He might sanctify
and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word. You see, if the Lord Jesus Christ
shed His blood on that cross, to cleanse us from all sin, the
revelation of that, the message of that, the good news of that,
the power of that will be brought into our hearts and minds and
experience by the gospel in the hands of the Holy Spirit that
it might have a cleansing effect on us. Oh, it will have an effect,
a measured cleansing effect on us in our lives, but that's not
what he's talking about here. He's talking about cleansing
us from hope in every and any other one. Cleansing us from
fear of self-righteousness, of the very things that we count
as acceptable in God's sight. He says that He might present
it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or
any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. This Word. is going to find every
one that Christ shed that blood for. And just as that blood cleansed
us from all sin, the effect of us when He brings this truth
to bear in our hearts and minds is going to have a cleansing
effect. The sacrifice on the Day of Atonement was the blood
that was sprinkled on the mercy And it was the one appointed
means by which sin was removed. But listen to what it says. For
on that day shall the priest make an atonement for you to
cleanse you that you may be clean from all your sins before the
Lord. You see, they were not only had
their sins atoned for in this picture and type by the sacrifice
of blood. It was announced to them on the
basis of that sacrifice, you're clean. They're believing them,
didn't make them clean, did it? But what in the world kind of
an effect do you think it had on their minds, on their whole
lives when they found out that the priest said, you're clean.
Lee, you're not a leper anymore. Well, I still kind of smell those
old rags. I see some of those old rags
of self-righteousness and all. They're all hanging on. Yes,
but he said, you're clean. And every time we come and we
hear the gospel of this crucified Christ, every time we read his
precious Word, it's like taking a spiritual bath clean again. Well, you never were dirty in
God's sight. In my own mind. The devil's been
whispering in my ear all week, you dirty dog. You're just a
common, low-down, loathsome creature. And I have to agree with him.
But God says, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all
sin. Our Lord said of the Holy Spirit,
I will send the Spirit and He shall take of mine and show it
unto The Word of Truth is the means by which the defilement
of sin is removed from our minds, from our consciences, which condemn
us. Let me read you some verses. Isaiah had just got through saying,
Oh, he said, when I saw the Lord high and lifted up, trained,
filled, woe is me, for I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips,
And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for mine eyes
have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." We all look pretty
good until we see the glory of God in the face of Christ, until
we see the holiness of God. And what did he do? He confessed
himself a leper. What he's doing here, he's putting
his hand over his mouth and he says, I'm unclean. Then flew
one of the seraphims unto me. having a live coal in his hand
which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar." What's a
live coal? That means that something's already
took place here. There's nothing but the coals
left. Sacrifice has already been offered. The innocent victim
has died. The sacrifice has been offered. There's nothing left but the
coals, but they're burning still. They have a brightness to them
to show and to remind what has taken place. He said, one came
with tongs that had coals from off the altar, and he laid it
upon my mouth, and he said, and he said, you hear that? And he
said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken
away, and thy sin purged. It doesn't say anything about
Isaiah being able to be there when that sacrifice was offered,
or seeing when it was done, or anything. But it was done. And
it was done in his behalf. And that seraphim, maybe that's
a gospel preacher, you know, who takes this gospel, this word,
of a finished salvation, of the blood of Jesus Christ having
washed away all our sin, takes that news and brings it to us
and tells us, your sin's purged. That's what I've got to say to
somebody. From the time that the Lord revealed Himself to
me and sent me to preach in His gospel till the time I die, That's
what I'm trying to tell somebody. I don't know who they are, but
I've got good news for somebody. The blood of Jesus Christ has
cleansed your sins. His sacrifice has put away your
sins. And some of you, when you heard
that and the Lord God opened your heart and mind and gave
you understanding, oh, what a cleansing effect it had on you from all
that defilement and burden and condemnation of sin. If you look
in Numbers 19, the red heifer was to be taken and slain and
not only slain but burned. And it says that a man would
then come and take and they were to gather the ashes of a heifer. A clean man was to come and gather
the ashes of this heifer that was burned as an offering and
sacrifice and it was to be saved so that when anybody came in
contact with a dead person or a bone or an unclean animal. When anything happened that rendered
them ceremonially unclean, you know what they did? They took
pure running water and they mixed some of these ashes from the
red heifer in it and sprinkled it on that person that was unclean
and they were clean. Well, didn't they offer another
sacrifice again? No. They didn't take another
red heifer because that pictured that that work of Christ was
done and finished. And here it is, this water of
purification. Here it is, this cleansing gospel,
if you will. Sprinkle again. What did it do? It reminded them, one thing,
that the sacrifice was already offered. It reminds us that the
work of Christ is finished. That's why you have to hear the
Gospel again and again. That's why we come to His Word
and read it and study His Word to be cleansed again. The water
represents the truth. The ashes stand for the sacrifice
long before presented to God, and the Gospel of Christ's finished
work when applied by the minds that we all have contaminated
in this defiling world, removes that defilement and restores
our soul. The Apostle to Hebrews, he says,
if the blood of bulls and of goats and the ashes of an heifer,
sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies to the purifying of the flesh,
They became unclean by this defilement, whatever means it came about
by, and yet they were also purified by that. But listen to the next
verse. How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through
the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge, cleanse
your conscience from dead works? which is simply every other work
except the living work of Christ, to serve the living God. You can't serve the living God. You can't worship God without
your conscience being cleansed of every way except Him who is
the way. Cleansed from pleading any other
righteousness but His righteousness. The same picture we have in Leviticus
14 with this leper. He's unclean. What are you going
to do? Offer the sacrifice. Well, it was done, wasn't it?
Yes. But you know what they did? The priest was to take some of
that blood, put it on the tip of the right ear, the thumb of
the right hand, and the big toe of the right foot. And then they
were to take oil. That's always a type of the Holy
Spirit, isn't it? And they were to take this oil,
and the priest would hold it in the palm of his hand, and
he would take that oil, put it on that blood on the right ear,
on that blood on the right thumb, and on that blood on the right
toe. What did that mean? That means
simply that we are all together cleansed by the blood of that
one offering for sin forever, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth
us from all sin. And the Spirit of God takes that
truth, that blessed gospel truth, and brings it into our minds. We're not saved all over again
in that sense. But I'll tell you what the fresh
revelation of that truth, Christ dying in my place, Christ's blood
shed and cleansing me from all sin, what an effect it has. The Scripture is full of this.
In Ezekiel 47, it says this, Afterward he brought me again
unto the door of the house. What house is that? The temple.
And behold, waters issued out from under the threshold of the
house eastward, where the forefront of the house stood toward the
east, and the waters came down from under from the right hand
of the house at the side of the altar. Here's the picture. Here's this water flowing out
the door of the temple. flowing out from under the altar
of the temple, water. And Ezekiel said, it comes up
to my ankles, and it comes up to my knees, and it comes up
to my waist, and it comes to my chest, and the next thing
I know it's just overflowing me, flooding me, floating me.
That's the gospel in the hands of God's Spirit, telling us,
revealing to us that that sacrifice that was pictured in the temple
and the tabernacle sacrifice, Christ has cleansed us and washed
us, and that very Word washes us. Here he is in Ezekiel again.
Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean. I thought it was clean by the
blood. The water he's talking about here has everything to
do with the blood, because it's the truth. It's the gospel. It's the water of God's gospel. wherein nothing is spoken of
except the blood of Christ. I'll sprinkle you with clean
water, and you shall be clean from all your filthiness, and
from all your idols will I cleanse you." And the truth of God's
Word about Himself and His Son cleanses our mind from all our
false notions of salvation, from our idols and our gods and ourselves
and our errors. By mercy and truth, iniquity
is purged. Zechariah said in that day, there
shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the
inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness. You say, well, I believe that
the Lord saved me, but you just wouldn't believe some of the
things that come into my mind. You wouldn't believe what I said
in anger last week. You wouldn't believe what I felt
in my heart. I'm afraid I would. But this
fountain was opened up for sin and for cleansing. The blood
of Jesus Christ has cleansed us from all sin. And in our minds
and conscience and hearts where we find ourselves full of guilt
and All such things, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from
all sin. Paul wrote to the Corinthians,
who definitely didn't have their act all together. He says, listing
a name of all these things, he says, you notice, to be put away,
he said, and such were some of you, but you're washed, but you're
sanctified. But you're justified in the name
of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God." Christ said
it pretty plainly. He said, now you are clean through
the word that I've spoken unto you. And you know what? If the Lord Jesus Christ pronounced
me clean, I'm clean. You say, I can't see it. No,
can you believe it though? Because that's what faith is,
it's believing what God says about what he's done. Somebody
said one time, faith is believing that God will do what he said
he will do. Well, yes it is, but it's only that because faith
believes that God has done what he says he's done. When he hung
there on that cross, it says that a soldier thrust a spear
into his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water,
the full cleansing, the actual sacrificial cleansing and the
cleansing that he brings to pass in the heart of his people in
the gospel. John said, he showed me a pure
river of water of life, bright as crystal. going forth out of
the throne of God and of the Lamb." Precious truth concerning
Him who is the truth. Peter was up on a housetop, and
the Lord gave him a vision, showed him a sheet hung from all four
corners full of all the things that a Jew would have said, that's
unclean. He was picturing the Gentiles.
He said, Peter, rise, kill, and eat. Oh, no. Those things are
unclean. He said, let me tell you something,
Peter. What God has called clean, don't you call unclean. And then
about that time, somebody's knocking on his door. Some men had been
sent from Cornelius. He used to go down to this Gentile
in his house, preach the gospel to them. He gets down there,
and they're kind of wondering, I'm sure, why a Jew's been sent
down there to them. But he said, this is what God's
taught me. that when He pronounces somebody clean, you can't call
them unclean. And He has pronounced all His
people clean through the blood, the sacrifice and death of the
Lord Jesus Christ. And He pronounces them clean. He pronounces everyone who is
brought to believe on Him and only Him in their hearts and
mind, He pronounces them clean. And though they would, of themselves
even have to call themselves unclean. They have to remember
what God has called clean. You can't call unclean. And they
are not only clean, they are squeaky clean in His sight. The hymn says, Let the water
and the blood from thy ribbons side which flow be of sin the
double cure. Cleanse me from its guilt and
power. You are in Christ. and brought
to believe on Him, then you're squeaky clean. In God's sight,
as He is, so are we in this world. May God help us to look to Him
and to experience that peace, that cleansing. You know how
it is when you've had a hard day, you've worked hard in a
messy job and all that? Isn't that a wonderful feeling
to get in that warm shower and get clean? That's what believing
the Gospel is, hearing it afresh It's a spiritual bath, it's a
gospel wash, and we need a lot of it, even though we're already
clean. Father, help us to understand the distinction that You've made
in Your Word. Give us understanding and faith
to see and believe what You've said and what Christ has done,
that we might know this purifying of the heart by faith, even as
we appear in Christ. We thank You and we praise You.
For your grace in him, we pray that you make your word effectual
in the hearts of your people. Amen.