Wash Your Hands You Sinners!
It was a remarkable Easter Sunday.
Despite the loss of our actual physical presence together there is cause to rejoice. God is still on the throne, Jesus is still risen, the gospel of Jesus Christ is still true, and I fully believe that this Sunday more people around the world heard a clear presentation of the gospel than any other day in human history.
Think about that for a moment and rejoice.
Friends and neighbors stuck at home in this virtually quarantined world were watching our services and hearing the gospel more than ever before. We pray the Spirit of God will attend the preaching of His word and that many will come to know the real hope that is in Jesus Christ.
This pandemic will change our world in many ways.
Our world will be forever impacted by what we have endured—in big and small ways. I know one habit that will continue in my life long after the fear of a pandemic has subsided is my hand-washing habit.
I washed my hands appropriately before, but it’s different now. Every time I come in from anywhere, I wash my hands. I think more about what I am touching—not in a paranoid way, but in a more careful way. I know that I can pick up a virus almost anywhere and the sickness I can contract unwittingly has the potential to be mortally destructive. I am acutely aware that my careless hand-washing hygiene can put others at risk, especially those who might have special susceptibility.
All this hand-washing reminds me of James 4:8.
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
Now let’s be clear. James is talking about ceremonial cleansing. The ancients did not understand the concept of a virus being carried from person to person by unwashed hands. Of course, God knew all about it, but that meaning would have been lost on the diaspora to whom James was writing.
What they understood this to mean was that their unwashed hands and feet (as Jesus demonstrated) represented their every day sin-guilt. Just as Aaron and his sons needed to cleanse their hands and feet before they entered the tent of meeting (Exodus 30:18-21), so God’s people need purified hearts as they draw near to the Holy One. There are two ways in which this needs to occur.
We must be positionally cleansed by the Holy Spirit at the moment of salvation (1 Corinthians 6:11). This removes our judicial condemnation before God and gives new life in Christ. We also need daily cleansing to maintain fellowship with our Lord and guard our spiritual health.
Dirty spiritual hands are dangerous (to us and others), and deprive us of intimacy with our Holy God.
In James 4:8, the writer is addressing believers. When Jesus washed the disciple’s feet He was also communicating truth to believers (John 13:1-17). Believers live in corrupt human bodies and a sinful world. Believers sin in spite of the new life that is in them. When Jesus approached Peter to wash His feet, Peter would have no part of it. When Jesus said that without His feet being washed Peter could have no fellowship with Him. Peter then wanted a complete washing, but Jesus said that was not necessary. He only needed his feet washed.
He who is bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you.
All the disciples were already cleansed (saved) except one—speaking of Judas (see verse 11).
James uses hand-washing to teach a similar truth. It is about the importance of daily cleansing—of keeping our sin accounts short with God. Most of the time we commit those sins against one another (John 13:14-16, James 4:9-11), and so the one another aspect plays an important role in both passages.
Using hand-washing as a moment for a spiritual health check.
My constant hand-washing has been a great occasion for me to quickly take stock of my spiritual state. Have I sinned against a brother or sister in Christ? Am I walking humbly before my God? Am I remaining pure before my God? Am I faithfully fulfilling my responsibilities to my spiritual family and to the world around me? I have started thinking about this every time I wash my hands.
How about you? Will James 4:8 go through your mind the next time you wash your hands?
Wash your hands, you sinners!
Why do you think that James is writing to believers in 4:8? It doesn’t seem from the context (4:1-5) that believers are in view. At what point do you think he transitions to believers from “adulterers and adulteresses,” from “friends of the world” and “enemies of God?”
The entire book is addressing believers. He repeatedly uses the term “My brethren” (1:2, 2:1, 3:1, 4:11, 5:9) in more than just a Jewish sense. James even identifies his audience. They are Jews scattered, but they are also believers–brethren who need to have the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ in the correct way (1:1 and 2:1). The subjects that he deals with are issues of believers: joy in trials, wisdom, temptation, partiality, the tongue, conflict with others, presumption, sins of omission, prayer, sickness, etc.
In a sense, most of Scripture is addressing believers. This does not mean there are no examples where the writers turn their attention to unbelievers. I concede that much of James is written to Jewish believers who were part of the Christian diaspora from Jerusalem. However, I think there are places where James turns his argument to non-Christians. I don’t mean that he is directly addressing non-Christians, but that his argument is against non-Christians. 5:1-6 is a good example. Other examples could be: 1:10-11, 2:14-26, 4:1-5, 13-17.
Personally, I think that the way James writes is indicative of our Lord’s teaching that within the Church there are both wheat and tares, those who believe and those who don’t. By writing about non-believers, James clarifies some of the way we think about life in the Church. By the way, Lightner uses the same argument, “this is written to believers,” to conclude that 1 John 1:1-10 conveys the idea that we can lose fellowship with God because of sin, kind of a parallel track to your line of thought. It’s also not a good interpretation of that text.
I have one other question–sorry this is so long–but why do you apply the situation of Peter’s foot-washing in a way that is different from the application that Jesus makes Himself?