‘Wash your hands’ and ‘eat your greens’ were frequently said by my dad when I was growing up. Fortunately, he instilled more in me than good hygiene and healthy food choices, like a love for the Carolina coast, Carolina Beach music, the importance of communication and heritage, and how to throw a football, read a baseball box score, and swing a golf club. I never thought as a child the imperative of ‘wash your hands’ from my dad would become global when I was in my forties due to a pandemic.
I know we’re doing a lot of hand washing right now, and we should. Washing our hands is us being responsible, taking care of others and ourselves. But could you imagine if our world was just as concerned, maybe even more concerned, about washing our hands and our whole selves because of our sin and not just because of the coronavirus?
Did you know that the command to wash your hands is found in the Bible? James 4:8 says, “Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” We are rightly called sinners and double-minded people because as verse 4 points out, we are adulterous people. The greek word for adulterous people in v. 4 is the feminine word adulteresses. Why? Because if we are walking with Jesus, we are his bride. Whether we are male or female, if we are following Jesus, then he is our Bridegroom who lovingly invites us to cleanse ourselves of the world (vv. 4-5, 8), to oppose the pride in our own hearts (v. 7), and to come near to him (v. 8). He understands that our sin pulls us away from him, and he desires to be in relationship with us, like any groom to his bride, so he tells us to wash and cleanse ourselves.
Our sin means we have committed spiritual adultery against our Bridegroom and have separated ourselves from him. So what are we to do?
- Wash our hands and purify our hearts (v. 8). Repent. Turn to our Bridegroom to cleanse us of our adulterous thoughts, feelings, and actions.
- Grieve, mourn, and wail over our spiritual adultery (v. 9).
- Repent of our sin by drawing near to God, and we’re told when we draw near to him, he will draw near to us (v. 8).
- Humble ourselves before the Lord recognizing he is God and we are not (v. 10).
- Submit to God, and resist the devil. This is warfare language used in verse 7. We are in a spiritual war. There is a constant battle for the attention of our hearts. I have given my heart to Jesus, but the enemy, even knowing he can never have me, sure does like getting my attention off of my Bridegroom.
The more we see our sin, the more we see our need for a Savior. I have a creek behind my house. If I was wading across the creek, I could make it on my own. Even if rain came and rose the water level of the creek, I could still walk through it. I might slip and fall, but I could stand back up in that shallow amount of water. I don’t really need to be rescued from a creek. If I see my sin as small as a creek, I don’t really need a Savior to rescue me from that small amount of sin. Now, if I see my sin as a lake, I might need rescuing. But, I can tread water in a lake, maybe even swim around for awhile or find a log to hold onto. I do not know if I really need to be rescued from a lake, but I would need to be more rescued from a lake than a creek. However, if I was in the ocean unable to touch the ocean floor with waves tossing me all around, I could not sustain myself. And, if sharks started circling me, or it was nighttime and I could not see what was circling around me, or if a storm came, I would scream and cry out for help.
When we begin to see the depth of our sin like an ocean, our Jesus becomes bigger and our need for rescue becomes more significant. I need to be washed (not just my hands but my entire being – heart, soul, body, and mind) when I see my sin like an ocean. And the washing brings me back to my Bridegroom, my rescuer, my Savior.
Wash yourself, grieve, repent, submit, humble yourself, and resist the devil. Your marriage to Jesus is worth it.