“How to be Clean on the Inside"
Mark 7:1-23
“When He had called all the multitude to Himself, He said to them, ‘Hear Me, everyone, and understand: There is nothing that enters a man from outside which can defile him; but the things which come out of him, those are the things that defile a man.’” – Mark 7:14-15
Holiness means clean on the inside and the outside, and that was Jesus. Jesus, the Servant “did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many” [Mk 10:45]. The Servant, however, was holy and fully set apart. He was sinless, He was perfectly clean.
There is an inherent desire for us to be clean because we are made in the image of God. The problem, however, is our sin nature inherited at birth. If you do not think that we are born with a sin nature, observe a newborn baby. Adorable for sure, but with an obvious self-willed nature. No one needs to teach him the, “me, myself, and I” nature, He is born with it.
Therefore, we find ourselves with a bit of a dilemma, an inherent desire for something that is impossible to attain. We may want to be clean, but it is impossible with our sin nature. And so, what do we do?
Well, what we often did before meeting Christ was change the rules. Relativism is what it is called. We adjust God’s precepts to ours. We make everything relative to us and our wants. It is the “everything is relative” deception.
But there is another deception that is even more deceptive after Christ, a religious list of do’s and don’ts. It is the con of outward works, an appearance of being clean. It is wrong religion that changes the outside look and is in contradiction to right religion that changes the inner heart. The two are entirely different works and yet oftentimes confused under the cloak of “religion.”
And that is where Jesus comes in to make the distinction. By His work on the Cross, you can be declared clean on the inside. When you call upon the name of the Lord and are saved [ref. Ro 10:6], the better blood and better sacrifice of the Servant cleanses you from within, even your conscience of sin [ref. Heb 9:13-14].
Our part is to receive that work by faith, and that declares us righteous! God now sees us pure to the core through the righteous blood of the Servant.
It is from that inner work that our Lord’s righteousness permeates outward. It is an inside out washing, and the only true and lasting one for perpetual cleansing.
