“CLEAN OR DIRTY?”
Have you ever looked at some of your clothing and wondered “Is it clean or dirty?” Maybe it is a dish or utensil laying on the kitchen counter that makes you wonder if it is clean or dirty. What about your car, is it clean or dirty? That’s a little trickier because it could be clean on the outside but not on the inside or vice versa! That’s a whole different spiritual lesson in and of itself!
There have been many television commercials for a variety of cleaning products that have used this “clean or dirty” scenario. They would show you something and by looking it would appear to be clean, then they would rub a white rag or something on the surface and the rag would have dirt on it. The carpet cleaning ads like to show you the bottom of the carpet because “Most cleaners only clean the surface.” Anyway, I think you get the point, things can appear clean but when in reality they are still dirty.
Thinking of this got me to thinking about our lives. Do we consider our lives clean or dirty? Do we do all we can to keep them clean? How can we tell? Keeping our lives clean takes effort. It is just like you may have room in your house that is closed off and you never go in. Just because you aren’t in there, things in the room are still going to get dusty if you don’t keep up with it. It is not necessarily hard work, just something we have to put our minds to and keep up.
The first thing we have to do is control our thoughts. Paul says in II Corinthians 10:5-…we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. That means when thoughts that are contrary to Christian thinking enter our mind, we need to control them and put them into submission of Christ. We need to change them so that they are Christ-like.
This is important because James reminds us that sin starts with our own evil desires, which originate with our thoughts. (James 1:14, 15- But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.) Notice the progression, the idea, conception of the idea, sin, death! If we just learn to control our thoughts, we don’t have to worry about the rest!
Next, we need to fill up our lives with spiritual things. It does no good to empty ourselves of evil if we don’t fill ourselves with goodness! Jesus gave us warning about spiritually cleaning house and not filling the void with goodness in Matthew 12:43-45. We don’t want to end up worse in the end than we were in the beginning!
Learning to have a clean life is as simple as looking at God’s word and applying what we learn to our lives. God did not give us impossible tasks to accomplish. He gave all we need to know and through His power, the ability to accomplish it!
Read James 1:21-27