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I. The need of cleansing.
II. Cleansing at the time of redemption.
III. Cleansing at the time of salvation:
А. The cleansing of the blood.
B. The cleansing of life.
C. The cleansing of baptism.
IV. Cleansing after being saved:
А. In the aspect of life.
B. In the aspect of the blood.
V. The result of cleansing.
In this chapter we will consider the matter of cleansing. The Bible reveals that cleansing is a blessing in God’s salvation that immediately follows forgiveness. God not only forgives us but also cleanses us. Forgiveness cancels the punishment of sin, and cleansing erases the trace of sin. When God forgives us, He spares us from the accountability that is related to sin. Then He cleanses us as if we had never sinned. This is similar to a friend paying all our debts. Although we are now exempt from the responsibility of the debts, the trace of the debts may still be in our record. If the trace of the debts is obliterated, it will be as if we were never in debt. This is God’s salvation to us. After He forgives us, He cleanses us, and it is as if we never sinned before Him.
Man’s sin has not only made him a sinner with a record of sin before God, but it has also defiled and dirtied him. Thus, man needs not only forgiveness but also cleansing.
1. “Who can say, I have made my heart clean; / I am pure from my sin?” (Prov. 20:9).
The heart of man is filthy, full of sin and evil. Who has a pure and sinless heart? There is no one whose heart is pure and sinless. Furthermore, there is no one who cleanses his own heart and purifies himself from his sin after his heart has been defiled by sin.
2. “How then can a man...be pure?...How much less a man, a maggot...a worm!”; “How much less a man who drinks wrong like water!” (Job 25:4-6; 15:16 see also 14:4).
All the people in the world are born of the flesh and are therefore filthy and abominable. They love sin, they drink wrong like water, and they are like worms existing in filthiness. How can such people be counted as clean before God without facing the requirement to be cleansed?
3. “Just as you presented your members as slaves to uncleanness” (Rom. 6:19).
All the members of a man’s body have become slaves to uncleanness and are defiled. If a man were to thoroughly inspect all the members of his body, would any part not be a slave to uncleanness or not be defiled by sin?
4. “I am a man of unclean lips, / And in the midst of a people of unclean lips I dwell” (Isa. 6:5).
The filthiest part of man is his lips. Whose lips are clean? Whose lips have not been contaminated by cursing, slander, criticism, lies, obscenity, or babblings? Who has kept his lips clean for even one day without being polluted by unclean words?
5. “All these wicked things proceed from within and defile the man” (Mark 7:23).
Man’s mouth is defiled because his heart is defiled. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matt. 12:34). Since man’s heart is full of all kinds of defilement, filthy and defiling things proceed from his mouth.
6. “In the lusts of their hearts to uncleanness” (Rom. 1:24).
Man not only has a heart that is full of defilement and a mouth that speaks filthiness; he also works uncleanness. Just as the heart and mouth of man are filthy, so is his behavior. Who has clean hands? Whose feet are not dirty? We know the unclean things that our hands have done and the filthy ways that our feet have walked!
7. “All of us became like him who is unclean, / And all our righteousnesses are like a soiled garment” (Isa. 64:6).
All are unclean before God, and all that comes from man is defiled. In God’s eyes not only the things that man deems evil and corrupt are unclean, but even matters that man considers good and righteous are filthy before God. All man’s righteousnesses are like a soiled garment before God.
8. “They have all turned aside; / They are together perverse” (Psa. 14:3).
All men have turned aside from God’s way and have become perverse.
9. “Yet to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure” (Titus 1:15).
Man has fallen into filthiness. Before he believes in the Lord, nothing is pure. What can be pure when man himself is defiled? “Who can bring a clean thing out from the unclean?” (Job 14:4).
10. “The leper...shall...cry, Unclean, unclean!” (Lev. 13:45).
Man’s filthy and unclean condition before God is like that of a leper. Man is totally filthy and desperately needs cleansing.
God’s cleansing can be divided into several stages. One stage of cleansing occurred when the Lord Jesus accomplished redemption, another takes place when we are saved, and still another occurs after our salvation.
When the Lord Jesus accomplished redemption, He completed the work of cleansing. On the cross the Lord Jesus finished a perfect cleansing on our behalf and placed it before God. Such a cleansing can be applied to us at any time.
1. “Purified by blood” (Heb. 9:22).
Since the filthiness of the universe and man came from sin, it can be cleansed only by the redeeming blood. There must first be the shedding of blood for redemption and then the cleansing of the filthiness from sin. Since the Lord Jesus shed His blood on the cross to accomplish redemption, His blood cleanses away all man’s defilement that results from sin.
2. “Who...having made purification of sins, sat down...on high” (Heb. 1:3 see also Lev. 16:15-17, 30).
After the Lord Jesus shed His blood on the cross to accomplish the cleansing of man’s sins, He sat down at the right hand of God on high. He shed His blood once and accomplished an eternal cleansing. According to the typology in Leviticus 16, He brought His own blood into the Holy of Holies in the heavenlies and sprinkled it before God (Heb. 12:22, 24) to make propitiation for our sins so that we might be cleansed and “from all...sins...be clean” before God (Lev. 16:30).
The cleansing we experienced when we were saved is the very cleansing that the Lord Jesus accomplished and that God applied to us. The cleansing accomplished by the Lord on the cross is an objective fact before God; at the time of our salvation it becomes a subjective experience to us.
The cleansing we received at the time of our salvation has three aspects. The first aspect is the cleansing of the blood, the second is the cleansing of life, and the third is the cleansing of baptism. We obtain this threefold cleansing once we believe and are baptized and saved.
The Lord’s blood is a fountain for sin (Zech. 13:1) that cleanses us at the time we are saved. Comparatively speaking, this aspect of the cleansing of the blood is outward, objective, and stresses what occurs before God. Although the Lord’s blood also cleanses our conscience, this cleansing is surely not as subjective and inward as the cleansing by the Lord’s life. Furthermore, though the Lord’s blood cleanses our conscience within, the cleansing is for our standing before God.
1. “Who...has released us from our sins by His blood” (Rev. 1:5).
Once we believe that the Lord died and shed His blood on the cross to make propitiation for sins, the Lord’s blood causes God to forgive us of our sins and to spare us from the punishment of sin; it also washes away our sins and removes the filthiness of sin from us.
2. “Washed...in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 6:11).
To be in the name of the Lord is to be one with Him. When we become one with the Lord by faith, His name causes us to share in the cleansing of His redeeming blood. The Lord’s blood cleanses us because we have believed in His name and are one with Him. Once we believe in the name of the Lord and are one with Him, His blood cleanses us.
3. “How much more will the blood of Christ...purify our conscience” (Heb. 9:14).
Many people say that the Lord’s blood cleansed their heart. This is wrong and not according to the Bible. According to the Bible, the Lord’s blood does not purify our heart; rather, it purifies our conscience. In God’s way of salvation, God cleanses our conscience, not our heart, with the Lord’s blood. Our conscience is the most vital part of our spirit, and our spirit is the very faculty with which we contact God. It is the conscience in our spirit that allows us to hear God and to know His intention. However, our conscience was defiled and lost its function because of our sins. When we were saved, God cleansed our sin-defiled conscience with the Lord’s redeeming blood, making it clean and transparent and recovering its original function so that we may serve God according to our purified conscience.
Furthermore, the conscience in us also represents God, especially the law of God; it reflects God and His law. Whatever God condemns according to His law, the conscience reflects and condemns. Since the Lord’s blood satisfied God and the requirements of His law, washing away our sins so that God and His law no longer condemn us, our conscience, which represents God and His law within us, will not condemn us. Just as our sins are cleansed before God and His law, they are also cleansed before our conscience. Consequently, our conscience enables us to serve God with boldness.
We are not only filthy in our conduct before God, but our nature is also defiled. Our outward behavior is filthy, and our inward nature is defiled. Thus, there is not only the aspect of the blood but also the aspect of life in the cleansing that God has prepared for us in His salvation. The aspect of the blood stresses the removal of the filthiness in our behavior before God, His law, and our conscience; the aspect of life stresses the removal of defilement in our nature. Therefore, the cleansing of life is absolutely subjective and inward.
1. “The washing of regeneration” (Titus 3:5).
Regeneration is a washing. However, this washing does not cleanse our defiled nature, because regeneration does not change our corrupt nature. The washing of regeneration means that we obtain God’s life and nature in addition to our original life and nature and that God’s life and nature deliver us from our own life and nature and, thus, from the filthiness that belongs to our life and nature. Our original life and nature were defiled when Adam first sinned. Our original life and nature are not only filthy but filthiness itself. To be in our life and nature is to be in filthiness. Since regeneration causes us to obtain God’s life and nature and to be delivered from our filthy life and nature, it also delivers us from filthiness itself. Thus, regeneration is a washing of our being, a very subjective washing.
2. “Cleansing their hearts by faith” (Acts 15:9).
In God’s saving way, He does not cleanse our heart by the Lord’s redeeming blood. Rather, He purifies our heart with His Spirit of life because of our union with the Lord by faith. That is, He replaces our old stony heart, which is incurable and full of various kinds of defilement (Jer. 17:9; Matt. 15:18-20), with a pure and pliable new heart (Ezek. 36:26). Thus, He causes us to be cleansed in our heart.
3. “Purified your souls by your obedience to the truth” (1 Pet. 1:22).
Our soul, that is, our self, our person, includes our mind, emotion, and will. Originally, because of our rebellion against God, every part of our soul, whether the mind, the emotion, or the will, was defiled. After repenting and returning to God, our souls are purified through our obedience to God’s truth by faith. This means that the Holy Spirit, as the living water in us, cleanses every part of our soul with God’s truth and God’s life, eliminating all that opposes God, all that rejects God, and all that is not for God, according to God, from God, or of God. Thus, our entire soul, our whole person, is cleansed.
4. “You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you” (John 15:3).
The Lord’s word cleanses us like water. When we were sinners, there were improper things in every part of our being, and there was filthiness that was opposed to God. Some things were of sin, some were of the world, and some were of fleshly lusts. All these things were displeasing to God. When we believed, the Lord removed these things from our being through His word so that we might be clean.
5. “Washed...in the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:11).
The washing of regeneration, the purification of our hearts by faith, the purification of our soul by the truth, and the cleansing of the Lord’s word are all accomplished by the Spirit of God in us. Through God’s truth and the Lord’s word, the Holy Spirit does the work of cleansing in all the parts of our being by God’s life, delivering us from all filthiness and making us clean, based on our faith and obedience.
6. “Purify to Himself a particular people as His unique possession” (Titus 2:14).
God cleanses us by His word through His truth and with His Spirit and life to make us a particular people as His unique possession. Originally, we were worldly people, following the same course of uncleanness. Then God separated us from the filthy heap of the world by His purifying work, delivering us from worldly lusts, sin, and corruption with all its filth, and making us distinct and special to be His pure people for His unique possession in the polluted world.
God cleanses us not only with the blood but also with life. The blood washes away all our ungodly and unrighteous defilement before God through its effectiveness in making propitiation. Life causes us to put off the old creation with its filthiness through life’s resurrection power. In typology the cleansing of the leper in the Old Testament reveals these two aspects of cleansing (Lev. 14:1-20; Matt. 8:2-4). Sprinkling and putting the blood on the leper speak of the cleansing by the propitiating blood; the healing of leprosy illustrates the cleansing of life. The defilement of sin upon us is like leprosy on a man’s body; it corrupts and defiles our nature and causes us to be unclean and condemned before God. God’s way of salvation is to make propitiation for our sins by the Lord’s blood in order to remove our uncleanness before Him and to work in us by His life to cleanse us from our corrupt nature and its filthiness.
The filthiness of our sins was not only before God and within us but also before men. Many of our ungodly and unrighteous acts against God were committed before men, and many of our sinful, evil, lewd, and filthy deeds were known to those around us. Thus, when we believe and are saved, God also, through a particular means, cleanses away the dirtiness of our sin in the eyes of men and before men. This is the cleansing of baptism. Baptism is a silent declaration of our repentance to God. Through baptism we announce the facts of our repentance and believing and of our deliverance from the filthiness of sin before all those around us. This separates us from our sinful defilement in their eyes, and we become repentant, rectified, and cleansed people before them.
1. “Rise up and be baptized and wash away your sins” (Acts 22:16).
These words were spoken by Ananias, who was sent by God to Saul after Saul met the Lord on his way to Damascus. Saul — later named Paul — opposed the Lord, persecuted the church, and harmed the Christians. These actions were well known to all, especially to the Christians. After he met the Lord and repented to Him, he needed to be baptized so that all could realize that such an opposer of the Lord and a persecutor of the church had turned to the Lord to become a Christian. This washed away the sins of opposition and persecution from Paul in the sight of men.
Although we were fully cleansed by God at the time of our salvation, we still need to be cleansed after being saved because we are still living in the old creation, our body is not yet redeemed, and we still fall and sin. On the one hand, we need the Lord’s life to deliver us from the life in the old creation until our body is redeemed and the new creation swallows up all of the old creation. On the other hand, we need the Lord’s blood to cleanse away our trespasses instantly in order to restore our cleanness before God.
At the time of our salvation, God first washed away our sins by the Lord’s blood so that His life might enter into us to do its work of cleansing in order to deliver us from the life of the old creation. If the Lord’s blood had not cleansed us, His life would not have been able to enter into us. Therefore, when we are saved, the cleansing of the blood precedes the cleansing of life. However, after we are saved, the cleansing of life becomes primary and the cleansing of the blood supplementary. After we are saved, the major goal of God’s cleansing is to deliver us from the old creation by His life within us until we are completely transformed into a new creation. Since we often fail and sin in the process, God still cleanses us moment by moment by the Lord’s blood and with His life so that the working of His life in us may not be disrupted.
From the time we were saved, the Holy Spirit has been moving and operating in us by the Lord’s life, causing us to put off all that is of man and not of God and all that is not in agreement with God, until we arrive at a full-grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, through the operation of the Lord’s life (Eph. 4:13).
1. “Cleansing her by the washing of the water in the word” (Eph. 5:26, see also v. 27).
Here word refers to the Lord’s word. The water in the word refers to the life that is in the Lord’s word (John 6:63). Like water, this life has the power to cleanse. The Lord is cleansing the church by the washing of this life-water in the word, freeing her from everything natural, everything of the old creation, every spot and wrinkle of man, and every blemish of the old creation so that she may become holy and glorious, filled with Christ’s divine holiness and expressing the glory of God.
2. “Let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and of spirit” (2 Cor. 7:1).
The Holy Spirit’s cleansing of the believer by the Lord’s life purifies the believer not only from the filthiness of the flesh without but also from any filthiness of the spirit within. The believer should put off all filthiness without and within by following the moving of the Spirit and obeying the sense of life so that he may be increasingly purified.
3. “Purifies himself, even as He is pure” (1 John 3:3).
The Holy Spirit, through the Lord’s life, will cleanse the believer until he is as pure as the Lord. Therefore, a believer should obey the Holy Spirit and put away by the Spirit all matters that do not agree with or match the Lord, until he is pure even as the Lord is pure.
Although we are saved and cleansed by God, and although we have the Spirit of God and the life of the Lord leading us to live a holy life and walk in a pure pathway, we often fall, fail, sin, and become defiled. For this reason God continues to wash us instantly with the Lord’s blood.
1. “The blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from every sin” (1 John 1:7).
From the moment of our salvation until the redemption of our bodies, the Lord’s blood cleanses us from our sins continually to restore the cleanness that we obtained when we were saved. In the original language, cleanses means a constant and continual cleansing.
2. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
If we are defiled by sin — unrighteousness — after our salvation, we must confess our sins to God, who will forgive us and restore our cleanness.
3. “Washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Rev. 7:14 see also 22:14).
Robes refers to the works of the saints after their salvation (19:8). Although our works may be contaminated by sin after we are saved, we can wash them and make them white by the Lord’s blood. We must confess our sins to God instantly at all times in order to seek His cleansing (cf. Psa. 51:2, 7).
1. “They will be as white as snow... / They will be like wool” (Isa. 1:18).
The result of God’s cleansing us is that we become as white as snow and like wool. The whiteness of both snow and wool is natural. This shows that the result of God’s cleansing is to make us not only white but even naturally white, as if we had never been defiled.
2. “Whiter than snow” (Psa. 51:7).
The result of God’s cleansing makes us not only as white as snow but even whiter than snow. How pure and white this is! Hallelujah!
