Clean hands

Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. – James 4.7-8

Submit to God – resist the devil – draw near to God. All of these are vital for the believer.

But along with that there must be action. Something must be done. Submitting to God must be seeable.

I suppose J.C. Ryle, a 19^th century Anglican bishop must be one of my favourite authors. I can read him like I read an unputdownable novel. He had a real grasp of holiness and the practical application of holiness. He said this about genuine conversion.

High or low, rich or poor, gentle or simple, we all need a complete change,—a change which it is the special office of the Holy Ghost to give us. Call it what you please,—new birth, regeneration, renewal, new creation, quickening, repentance,—the thing must be had if we are to be saved: and if we have the thing it will be seen. – J.C. Ryle

So James tells us, in addition to submitting to God and drawing close to Him and resisting the devil we need to do. It isn’t enough to just ‘let go and let God.’ Our faith must be seen in action.

Cleanse your hands and purify your hearts. James writes that those who fall short of that are ‘double-minded.’

Cleansing our hands and purifying our hearts mean that there is both an outward and in inward cleansing. We clean up our outside – but we can’t really do that till our hearts are purifying.

Psalm 24.4 describes the man who wants to walk close to God – ‘He who has clean hands and a pure heart, Who has not lifted up his soul to an idol, Nor sworn deceitfully.’  Drawing close to God requires inward and outer cleanliness. It will be seen on the outside as we live holy lives in the presence of our holy God.