October 18th, 20

 How Do We Get Clean? 

Job 5, Psalm 108, and Acts 10-11

Are you clean?  The voice from heaven said, 

“Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean.” (Acts 10:15 NLT)

Well, that would be you, my friend.  Others might look on us and think us unworthy and undeserving of God’s life, but how about you?  What do you think?  How do you see yourself?  Are you clean?  Do you know it or are you just hoping for it - hoping that maybe you’ve done enough good works before God, to make up for the stuff that you regret?  Are you hoping that you can be in the same category as this Cornelius, and find favor with God by your piety and good works?  Well, let’s be clear.  Cornelius was not made clean - saved - because of his piety and his heart for the poor.  In fact, he was told by an angel to summon Peter so that Peter could tell him how he and everyone in his household could be saved.

He told us how an angel had appeared to him in his home and had told him, ‘Send messengers to Joppa, and summon a man named Simon Peter. He will tell you how you and everyone in your household can be saved!’ (Acts 11:13-14 NLT)

It wasn’t his good works or piety that made him clean before God.   It was the message that peace with God comes through Jesus.  It was the message that salvation only comes through Christ’s death, and his abiding life.  And this is offered to all people without favoritism - Jew or Gentile alike, pious God-fearers or the rebellious rabble, the obviously lost.  God has come to make them all clean.  As it says in Acts 10:15, 

 “As I began to speak,” Peter continued, “the Holy Spirit fell on them, just as he fell on us at the beginning. 

God makes them, and us, clean.  We all need to be made clean, and God alone is the one who does it.  Are you clean?  If God has done that work in you, because of His great love and mercy, and you’ve trusted in Him to do that, then you are clean.  You have been baptized into the Holy Spirit and identified as His, as new - as clean - and alive.  And you must stop despising yourself and allow the Holy Spirit to come and heal those areas in your life and your past, that cause you to think of yourself as unclean. 

Peter hears a voice from Heaven.  Do you?  It’s the voice of God that says, don’t call something unclean if God has made it clean.  Are you clean?  If you are in Christ, my Friend, than the answer is a resounding, YES!  Live in the joy of it.  Rest in the completion of it.  Rejoice in this clean life today.  It’s all because of Him and it’s a gift to be received and lived in.  

You are loved!