Clean Inside

I wash my hands in innocence, and go about your altar, LORD, proclaiming aloud your praise and telling all of your wonderful deeds. LORD, I love the house where you live, the place where your glory dwells.

Psalm 26:6-8 (NIV)

The ceremonial hand washing of which David speaks illustrates the reality of repentance and cleansing. Hands are the appendages through which we act and work in the world. Hands come into direct contact with objects and substances. They are used symbolically to stand for the point of contact between God’s people and sin. That sin might be in thought or attitude or speech, but the hands symbolize where the pollution of sin has intersected our lives: “Who may climb the mountain of the LORD? Who may stand in his holy place? Only those who hands and hearts are pure” (Psalm 24:3-4).

Clean hands can come only from pure hearts. This “hand washing” comes from the inside, not the outside. In today’s verse, David says, “I wash my hands in innocence.” The word translated “innocence” has a root that means to be poured out or emptied: emptied of sin and purged of sin’s poison, to be filled with the fullness of God’s Spirit. In that state, David comes to the altar to offer worship.

God promises that sins confessed are sins washed away: “If we confess our sins . . . he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness” (1 John 1:9). Now we can worship with abandon. Now we can give ourselves over to the joy of his presence.

To be cleansed from the inside out frees us from the toxins of sin and spiritual free radicals that silently wreak havoc. Confessing our sins and receiving the cleansing power of the indwelling life of the Spirit let us experience the state of purity that God has made available to us. We don’t have to live in the grime of sin. We can have clean hands and pure hearts and revel in the presence of the Lord, for whose pleasure we were created.

Create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me.

The Pharisees minded what God spoke, but not what He intended. They were busy in the outward work of the hand, but incurious of the affections and choice of the heart.

Jeremy Taylor(1613–1667), English cleric