Cleaning the Inside
July 27, 2008
Last weekend I was washing my wife’s car with a little assistance from my two year old daughter Anna Ryan. I explained to her how she needed to rinse the car while daddy washed it. She quickly complied and was doing a marvelous job, a little too marvelous. As I was scrubbing the driver’s side I looked through the window and to my horror she was washing the inside for the car. She had opened the passenger’s door and commenced to soaking the seats, radio, floor and everything else that did not need water on it. I became irate and immediately began towel drying the water after I scolded her.
A child will always expose hypocrisy. She was right, the inside of the car needed cleaning but I didn’t want to deal with it. If we commit our ways to the Lord, He will often use our kids to clean up our character. It may go unnoticed until it comes into contact with Christ. Have we allowed sin to be finely ground into the carpet of our lives? If we do not allow Christ to totally cleanse us, there will be a musky smell to our lives that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. Like my wife’s car, once the word of God comes in contact with an area of our lives it will create a stink until we allow Christ to have His complete way.
Rather than hate the sin many Christians hate the agent that exposes their sin. Jesus declares with power, “Woe, to you scribes, and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self indulgence. Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also…. Even so you also appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness” (Matthew 23:25-26; 28). Christ continually cleans our inner man. Has God opened the door to your life and exposed anything recently? To refuse Him is to embrace hypocrisy and lawlessness while denying and preventing His power from working in our lives.
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