Kingdom Bites

As you wipe the sleep from your eyes and enjoy your morning coffee, many of you, if you haven’t already, will soon make your way into the shower; starting your day off feeling clean and fresh. One product has built a fifty year legacy on the assumption that each of us desires to feel clean and fresh. In 1958 Procter & Gamble introduced a brand new product named “Zest.” They did so with the slogan "For the first time in your life, feel really clean." This idea quickly morphed into the popular and catchy Jingle: “You’re not fully clean unless you’re Zestfully clean!" 

As I boy, I remember watching these commercials and telling my mother that she needed to buy Zest so we too could be clean. Instead, my mother insisted that the bold claims of the television were simply not true, and the “bargain” soap we bought cleansed our bodies quite well. My mother may have been right, we probably did not need the expensive Zest brand of soap in order to wash the dirt off our bodies. However, there is one thing that our soap could never clean; one that even Zest can not clean. Our sin. 

Hebrews 10:1-4 says, 

For hundreds of years, God fearing Jews would travel to the temple to offer up sacrifices to atone for their sin. However, this act of repentance and worship was unable to fully cleanse them of their sins. It still remained. Instead Hebrews 4 says, “those sacrifices actually reminded them of their sins year after year.” Ironic, isn’t it?  That the thing which they did in hopes of cleansing actually brought more guilt upon themselves. 

Hebrews continues this thought with the in verse four, “For it is not possible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” On this side of the cross, this statement seems extremely obvious. Not only is ritual sacrifice a crude and violent practice (one most of us could not stomach) but is not what God requires, nor could anyone receive forgiveness in doing such an act. 

Nevertheless, many people are caught up in the same basic belief today. That they can somehow, in some way offer up something that will please God. That in some small (or big) way they can please God with their Good Works; either by what they do, give, or what they abstain from. However, this is simply not true! Nothing we do is ever good enough to take away our sins. 

The prophet the Isaiah said “all our righteous acts are like filthy rags” and filthy rags can’t clean anything.  I believe one Christian Songwriter said it best, “you wash, and wash, and wash, and wash, and you will not be clean.” No matter what we do or do not, we will never be clean. 

Hebrews 10 delivers the solution, namely Christ. Verse five states, “That is why, Christ came into the world” and verse ten continues, “For God’s will was for us to be made holy by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ.” 

Jesus Christ came, lived, shed His Blood, giving His body, and His life to fully atone for our sin. It is through Him and Only Him where we find forgiveness, where we are made holy, where we are cleansed, where our sins are taken away, making us Christ-fully clean! Not even Zest can do that.