Bulletin Articles
“What rubs off?”
Categories: Iron sharpens iron“Thus says the Lord of hosts: Ask the priests about the law: ‘If someone carries holy meat in the fold of his garment and touches with his fold bread or stew or wine or oil or any kind of food, does it become holy?’” The priests answered and said, “No.” Then Haggai said, “If someone who is unclean by contact with a dead body touches any of these, does it become unclean?” The priests answered and said, “It does become unclean.” (Haggai 2.11-13)
From a very early age, everyone becomes quite familiar with the concept of physical defilement. Consider the baby with a summer squash and turkey purée covering his face, hands, chest, and perhaps even a little making its way down his throat. He has very little command of his own fingers, and is still incapable of feeding himself, but he begins to offer his hands to Mom when the towel comes out, knowing through well-established habit that he’s going to be cleaned off at the close of another day’s filthy attempt at eating. He wouldn’t clean himself if it were left up to his discretion, any more than a toddler would choose to change his own diaper, or a five-year-old to take a bath after a long day of making mud pies. But parents clean them up routinely, and then teach them how to clean themselves, often before the children can even understand exactly why cleanliness is important.
The chief reason for physical cleanliness is that germs love messes, and just as God in the Law told the Jews, what is unclean easily rubs off on what is clean, but not the reverse. The state of cleanliness—in this case a freedom from germs, contaminants, or other impurities—doesn’t transfer upon contact with, for example, a used hypodermic needle. Its contamination rubs off on everything else, though! This seems unsustainable, requiring constant, diligent efforts just to prevent contamination. A lasting, sterile environment appears out of reach, as we all were made keenly aware during COVID.
Sin is very similar. It takes one transgression to ruin a flawless individual—and for most of us, that threshold is laughably low. We’ve made ourselves amply unclean, and when that uncleanness touches something else pure, it renders it unclean also, and around and around we go. It seems hopeless, and in the absence of some extremely powerful outside influence, it would be. Blessedly, we’re not left in this wretched state.
In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1.4-5)
Whereas uncleanness rubs off and contaminates everything it touches, causing an ever-growing cascade of defilement, light has a similar, but opposite effect. Just as purity is the absence of imperfection, darkness is the absence of light. One of these is a good thing and other bad, but they share the quality of fragility. If an unclean item comes into contact with a clean one, there’s no battle between the two states. No one conducts an assessment of whether purity or impurity is more broadly represented over the entire surface of the item. Even if the impurity is small and subtle, it’s still an impurity, and therefore the whole item is impure.
But light works the same way, in the opposite direction. Even a small and weak source of light pierces through the darkness and can be seen at a great distance. On a dark night, a single candle flame is visible to the human eye more than a mile and a half away. It takes a lot of light to utterly banish darkness, of course; but the darkness is powerless to smother the light once it begins to shine.
Jesus is a much stronger light than a candle, stronger than anything man can devise. The closest comparison is found in Revelation 1.16: “his face was like the sun shining in full strength.” This is a great comfort to us, since darkness is one of Satan’s tools. The Bible often associates it with sin and judgement, as when Jesus predicts that the condemned will be cast “into the outer darkness” (Mt 8.12, 22.13, 25.30). But we started with uncleanness, not darkness, and it’s not obvious that shining a light on the mess is any help at all. It does expose it for everyone to see, as Jesus tells Nicodemus, saying,
“For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.” (Jn 3.20).
The light seems to chase away those who need it most, as he’d said in the previous verse: “the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.” Jesus, the true light of men, exposes our uncleanness and shows it for what it is. Dedicated sinners don’t like that, so they flee.
Due to the pandemic that was everyone’s main focus for a year, we were all reminded of an interesting aspect of God’s beautiful biological design: sunlight is an astonishingly powerful disinfectant. The germs that cause so many diseases simply cannot survive being subjected to that light for any length of time. The problem of sin and uncleanness plays out in the same way. If we’re willing to admit we’re a mess and draw near to Jesus, he will continue to expose our impurities. This is uncomfortable, and we’re likely to resent it, resist it, and hear the calls of Satan telling us there’s an easier path, and he’ll even make it enjoyable for us if we don’t look too far into the distance and see where it leads. But if we’ll resist that temptation and stay in the light, listening to Jesus, obeying him, and subjecting ourselves to his intense light, he will continually purify us. Reject Satan’s alluring call, and abide in the light of Christ.
Jeremy Nettles
