Who Can Say That?

 

Proverb of the Week

Who can say, “I have made my heart pure; I am clean from my sin”?                           – Proverbs 20:9 (ESV)

 

To most of us this is a rhetorical question; a question that needs no reply because the answer is so obvious. Scriptures come to mind such as “None is righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10) or “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), or even “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.” (Isaiah 64:6)

However, there is one man who had no need to make his heart pure because it was never impure.  The same who has no need of being made clean from sin because he never sinned; Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, in whom lies all our hope. “For our sake he [God] made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)  It is that act of Jesus in taking our sin and bearing the punishment for it onto himself, while giving us a share in his righteousness in its place, that delivers us from justice and allows God to see us as though we have a clean heart, pure from sin, when we are in Christ.