We have a passage about the priests washing before they went into God's presence. We know that under Jesus, we have been made clean - Jesus said to Peter that someone who was already clean did not need to wash his whole body. But this made me remember something that has never quite resolved in my mind. In one sense, Jesus has made us clean and we are fully and completely forgiven, we are justified before God yet we are still called to be Holy and I have heard many people preach that we need a pure heart and clean hands before God when we pray etc. What is the score here? Do I need to wash or am I already clean? Peter was told to wash his feet and it has been said that this represents the cleansing of ourselves from the effects of the world as we live day-to-day. Perhaps we could also say that unholy living does not remove our forgiveness but it does reduce our effectiveness, not out of punishment or malice but out of a simple knock-on effect that occurs between us and God when we allow sin to make it all foggy again.
I guess the best course in life like that old story of "how close can you drive to the cliff" is to answer "not close enough to find out!".
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