How Do You Know If You Are Too Clean - A follow up.

After yesterday's post, I feel it may be appropriate to offer some ways of assessing whether we are "too clean" or not.  These two posts are based on Christ's indictments against the Pharisees in Matthew 23:25, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence."

The Pharisees were very good at diagnosing the world, but they were very poor at identifying with the world - with "sinful" Gentiles.  Because of their ethnicity and their facade of moral superiority, these men brought a condemning curse to a world that was supposed to be blessed through them (Gen 12).

We must fight to avoid doing the same.  Here are some symptoms to be watching out for.

We may be too clean if we spend more time fighting for our innocence than confessing our sin.  What do you do when confronted by someone concerning your sin?  Do you immediately disregard their concern and fight for your innocence?  I am not saying that we must always be guilty; but I am saying that it is dangerous to think we are always innocent when confronted about how we may be guilty.

Be careful to insist that you are not a sinner.  Christ died for sinners.

We may be too clean if we don't have friends who are willing to confront our uncleanliness.  Sin makes us hide.  Be weary of only having acquaintances (who only affirm your cleanliness), and not having any true friends. True friends will confront uncleanliness in a godly way.  Do you have anyone who loves you enough to confront you?  Did you have someone in your life like this?  Did you push them away by wrongly fighting for your innocence (see #1)?

We may be too clean if we distance ourselves from those who are "too dirty."  We can either do this geographically, verbally, or morally.  For example, we may say something like, "I don't like to be around (geographically) fags (verbally) because they are sinful (morally)."

We may be too clean if we spend more time, money and effort on the "outside of our cup" than the inside.  Do you spend more time assessing how you look on the outside rather than how you are on the inside?  This should not be.

We may be too clean if the problem with life is everybody but us.  We must pay attention to our language when we enter or assess conflict.  Do we use more third person pronouns (he, she, they, them, their) or first person pronouns (I, me, we, us, our)?

We may be too clean if we have reduced Christianity to merely following a set of rules in order to be perfect.  We often think we are a good Christian if we can assess whether or not someone is right or not. Christianity is not about being perfect, but about being united to the Perfect One.  Those with the truth must always be confessing the truth that we are sinners saved by grace.  When we confess our uncleanliness, God is faithful to robe us in the Cleanliness of Another.

This is our Gospel that we must humbly proclaim to a fallen world.