AN ARITCLE OF FAITH: When our souls and spirits are defiled, how do we clean them?

 Occasionally I do my own work on my vehicles, not because I enjoy it, but because it is cheaper. It fits my budget better. Whenever I do my own work, my hands get very dirty. I usually have some GoJo around to help clean my hands. It takes a while.  

But eventually I get all of the grime off. I know how to clean my hands. We all know how to clean our hands. That is easy. 

Not long ago I was seeing my doctor. While I was there for another purpose, I had a tick bite three days earlier. It was swollen with a severe rash. He examined it and felt it would be wise to go ahead and give an antibiotic to be safe. Usually tick bites, with a rash as severe as this one, take me a couple of weeks to heal. With the aid of the antibiotic, this one was healed within a week. We have medicine to attack some microbes within our bodies. Antibiotics clean the interior parts of our bodies.

But when our souls and spirits are defiled, how do we clean them? But how do we clean the inside of us? Everyone of us, if we are honest with ourselves, have at least one sin that we have struggled with – if not presently then some time in the past. It is something that, try as we might, we just can’t clean it up. There is something inside us that prevents us from doing it.

In Matthew 15:1-20, the Scribes and Pharisees were concerned with keeping the aspects of the law that they could control. Those aspects were the outward observances of the law such as the washing of hands and what foods one ate. Jesus clearly points out that it is not what we do on the outside but what is going on in the heart that defiles us. The heart that produces evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies, etc., is what needs to be cleaned. How does one clean the heart? I can’t reach down my throat with GoJo and scrub it. Even if I could, it wouldn’t do any good. No amount of antibiotics will clean it.

 That is where the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ comes in! He is able to purify our hearts, if we let Him. He’s better than Clorox! He is better than Tide! He even does a better job than fabric softener. He has cleaned my heart of many evil thoughts and things which defile. Has He cleaned yours? Our glorious Lord can and does clean hearts!

John Chaffin is pastor at the Christian Missionary Church in Stillwater.