Have you heard the phrase “cleanliness is next to godliness”?  The saying suggests that being physically clean is almost as important as being morally righteous before God.  Cleanliness is important from a physical health and hygiene perspective, but I don’t think there’s anything spiritual about it and in fact it might hurt us spiritually if we view it the wrong way.  Here’s why.

Our Lord Jesus met a lot of opposition during His time here on earth, much of it from the strictest sects of Judaism.  Often Jesus angrily cast aside as unimportant things that people like the Pharisees saw as absolutely essential to a relationship with God.  They didn’t like that.  One such example comes from Luke 11:37-41.

“While Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him, so he went in and reclined at table.  The Pharisee was astonished to see that he did not first wash before dinner.  And the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness.  You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also?  But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you.”

Key to understanding this story is knowing that the Pharisees weren’t talking about simply washing your hands as you and I would before a meal.  They were referring to an elaborate washing ritual developed over centuries as part of a system they thought made someone presentable to God.

Here is a partial description of this ceremony: “water was poured on both hands, which must be free of anything covering them, such as gravel, mortar, etc. The hands were lifted up, so as to make the water run to the wrist, in order to ensure that the whole hand was washed, and that the water polluted by the hand did not again run down the fingers. Similarly, each hand was rubbed with the other (the fist), provided the hand that rubbed had been affused.”[1]  There were also requirements for how much water to use, and so on.  I recently learned that some still follow this practice today.

Jesus’ rebuke comes across differently when we know about this washing ritual.  Jesus isn’t angry because they were dirty and unsanitary; He was angry because the Pharisees were more concerned about appearing righteousness than they were with actually being righteous.  The Pharisees may have had cleaner hands than Jesus on the outside, but “inside you are full of greed and wickedness” He told them.

To a perfectly just God, any “greed and wickedness” requires judgement regardless of how clean your hands are, but the Pharisees thought their system could please God based on their works.  But as long as they believed in this system, the Pharisees would be unable to believe that the only way to be presentable before God is through the blood of Jesus shed for our sins.  When we accept Jesus, God does not view us as our sinful selves, but as He would His sinless Son.  No amount of ritual is needed beyond what Jesus already did.  Most of the Pharisees were blind to this truth.

This story in Luke also reminds me of Ex 37:2, “And [Bezalel] overlaid it with pure gold inside and outside, and made a molding of gold around it.”  “It” – the ark – was completely overlaid with gold inside and out.  No surface was left uncovered, and I think the order of “inside and outside” was also important and intentional.  Bezalel probably covered the inside first and then covered the outside as a picture that holiness begins on the inside of God’s people and then flows through to holy living on the outside.  Not the other way around.

Only once we rid ourselves of all “greed and wickedness” on the inside, which only Christ can do, are we acceptable to God on either the inside or outside.  Fortunately for us, Christ did all that is needed to cleanse us of sin.  Even if our hands are dirty.

“But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you.”

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[1] Edersheim, Alfred.  The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1886).  P. 482