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by Charlie Wolcott

Who can say, “I have made my heart clean,
I am pure from my sin”?
~ Proverbs 20:9

When I came across this verse a few months ago, it leapt out with a whole new level of depth that I had not seen before. On the straightforward reading, this verse is a rhetorical question. Who can say they made themselves clean and pure from sin? Answer: no one. No one except God. But when I meditated on this verse, I saw something else with it. The only way you can get clean is by using an authority or something greater than that which made you dirty. The ramifications of this reality are huge.

Jesus said, “A servant is not above his master.” A student can only do and learn what his master teaches him, and a master is never truly able to share everything he has learned to a student, because masters have lived longer lives and thus have more and different experiences. Those experiences are also different and teach lessons that no one else can learn.

I am both a fencer and a coach for the sport. As a fencer, I can only learn up to my coach’s level. If I want to improve beyond those skills, I need another coach who has different skills and knowledge or greater skills and knowledge. As a coach, I have no delusions of grandeur that I will be able to train Olympic-level fencers. Not only do I not have the skill set to do that, but I don’t even have the heart or mind to do such things. I have told my fencers that I am never going to hold them to “top tier” fencing standards, but rather I will hold them to the standards where they are at. I will help them improve and raise their personal level and personal ceiling, but my main goal is to let them have fun and worry only about their personal abilities. Part of that comes from my own approach to the sport. I have never taken the sport seriously enough that I really want to be #1 all the time. I actually don’t care about that, and I just want to have fun with the sport. So as a result, my coaching is not going to produce “top level” fencers, and that’s perfectly fine. If one of my fencers wants to advance beyond what I can teach them, I know how to point them places to do that.

But no one can improve himself by himself. As a fencer, there is nothing I can do alone to make me a better fencer. What do I mean by that? If I want to improve, I need to submit myself to a coach who will train me to do better. That does not mean I don’t do anything independently, such as drills and exercises, but everything I do for practice and drills has to come from someone higher than me, someone better than me.

In academics, it is very hard for someone to make a clear case that they learned something completely by themselves. Usually, they had to read books of those who had gone before them. One could argue that science is a field where people discovered things that were never known before, but it really is interesting how the majority of those who actually did that learned from a source, or rather Source, much greater than they were. George Washington Carver is often ignored by U.S. history courses these days other than as mere side reference, yet he created 300+ recipes for the peanut that put it on the Farmer’s Almanac as a feasible crop and literally delivered the South from slavery to cotton. How did he do that? He actually went into his prayer closet and asked God to show him what he made each part of a peanut for, and God answered his prayers. So even in science, man is not above his Master.

In physics, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is often considered the most fundamental law of all science. This law essentially states that all things will tend towards a state of lowest energy and disorder. The amount of usable energy is always decreasing in any exchange. Another application of this is that there is no such thing as a 100% efficient machine, which is basically the break-even point. But this law brings up a valuable point in this topic: in order to bring more order out of lesser order, or to be able to make energy useful for something productive, you need someone with a greater authority and greater force to make that order come about. Your room is not going to clean itself; it’s going to take you, someone with an intelligent mind greater than the room, to put it back in order. There is a certain level that a child can clean and then mom comes in with an even greater authority and can clean it to a much greater level.

Now to apply this spirituality. We cannot clean ourselves. I have news for you: all those “self-help” books that profess to be Christian do is tell you how great you are and how awesome you are and all you need to do is change your attitude about yourself; those are utterly worthless. You may be able to put on a façade of bettering yourself, but you aren’t actually dealing with the real issues. The real issue is not your view of yourself; it is your sin. When you take a shower to clean yourself, you can’t just rub the dirt off and get it clean. You need a greater agent than the dirt to clean yourself – soap. Likewise, we cannot clean our sin because we ourselves are sinful. Any tool we use is cursed by sin. That’s like trying to wash off your muddy body using both a muddy sponge and muddy water. You aren’t going to get clean that way; you are going to get dirtier. You cannot use the same level of agent to eliminate something. You need something greater.

No man can say he had cleaned himself. He doesn’t have the right cleaning agent. There is only one thing that can wash us clean of sin: the blood of Christ. It took Jesus Christ to give His life and shed His blood so that we can be washed clean. Your mother didn’t let you walk into the house with muddy shoes, did she? Especially those with mothers who would say, “I brought you into this world; I’ll take you out!” Come into mama’s kitchen with dirty shoes after she just cleaned it, and that’s almost a death wish. How much more so with the God who is “Holy, Holy, Holy” where even the slightest bit of contamination triggers the “death stare”? Our problem is that we are dirty from head to toe, and all our efforts to clean ourselves only makes us dirtier. The only hope we have is to come before God, fall at His feet, and beg us to make us clean. Only He can do it, and without Him doing that, we will face Him in His wrath.

God doesn’t need you to make yourself clean before coming to Him, because you cannot do it. And even if you could, you would be so corrupted with pride that you’d ruin it. You need to humble yourself, fully acknowledge your current status, desire to be cleaned and to be rid of that sin, and then God is able to clean you. But if you get clean, don’t rush back to the pit and get dirty again. Repentance means staying out of the pit. Purity is even further than that which lets you be in the pit but not getting dirty while in it. Come to the cross and get cleaned from your sin. Then sit at the feet of the greatest Master, the One whose knowledge can never be exhausted. We’ll never surpass Him, but we’ll also never stop growing as we learn from Him.

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