Made Clean In God’s Sight
On one of our adventures to Ireland, Steve and I traveled over eight miles of rough seas to explore the ancient monastic island of Skellig Michael.
Waves splashed over the side of the boat and drenched us. My wool hat was flattened to my head and salt stung my chapped lips.
When we stepped onto the rocky hills of Skellig Michael, I was cold but anxious to get started hiking and exploring.
We had about two hours to wander and climb on this breathtaking island that is home to monastic ruins dating back as much as fifteen hundred years.
I did the wandering and Steve did the climbing. But wherever either of us went, the ground was muddy.
Our hiking boots kept our feet dry, but the grooved bottoms of the boots were caked with muck.
As soon as we landed back on the mainland, we headed for the nearest pub to try and dry off a little and get some of the junk off our boots. It was a useless endeavor. We were a mess.
We drove back to our bed-and-breakfast, eager for a hot shower and clean clothes. It took a lot of scrubbing to get the salt out of my hair and off my face.
The next day I picked the dried mud out of the crevices of my boots with a knife, but my wool cap was a total loss. It was loaded with salt and grime and no amount of scrubbing would save it.
I think of this passage in Jude when I remember how filthy Steve and I were on this adventure.
We are all full of filth on the inside. Even when we look our cleanest, our hearts harbor the vestiges of sin. God calls us to be perfect (Matt. 5:48), and no amount of scrubbing on our part will accomplish that perfection.
The crevices of our souls, like the crevices on my hiking boots, are full of the mud of life lived in a fallen and dirty world.
Someone has said that the ground at the foot of the cross is level, meaning that we have all sinned and are all filthy. It matters not what sins we have committed.
Even those of us with the least amount of filth are as guilty as those with the most. The “knife” that might have been used to “clean” us was used, instead, on Jesus as he hung on the cross.
None of us are clean as we stand before God, resting on our own efforts. But we don’t rest on our own efforts. As this verse declares, we rest on him who presents us “without fault.”
Father, what a miracle that your Son paid our debt for us, and now we are clean before you.