Being clean ...

Tuesday, April 12, 2011. There are many religions in this world which have rules about what food is clean and what food is unclean. But also beyond the religious realm we have ideas about what you would eat and what you would not eat. For example, meat from hourses is usually not eaten in the western world. Meat from dogs is not eaten. But meat from cows and pigs is.

Jesus talking about being clean …

Jesus picks up the topic of clean food. But he does not stay with food alone. He talks more generally about what makes you clean. Lets read the original in the gospel of Matthew:

15 Peter then asked him to explain what he meant about things that make people dirty. 16 Jesus replied: “Don’t you understand either? 17 Don’t you understand that what you put in your mouth goes into your stomach, and after that into the toilet? 18 But the things that come out of your mouth (i.e. what you talk about) start off in your heart, and those things make you dirty. 19 Out of people’s hearts come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries and sexual immorality, stealing, telling lies about people, and speaking evil against God. 20 It is things like these that make people dirty, but eating food without washing hands does not make someone dirty.”

Clean people …

God wants us to be clean. He wants us to be clean in the sense which Jesus describes here. It is not about food. We might eat what ever we like and avoid what ever we like. That is not the key point!

But he wants us to be free from evil thoughts. He wants us to be free from murder and adultery. He wants us to be free from sexual immorality. He wants us to be free from stealing, from telling lies, from speaking evil against others and against God.

The bible names a source of clean water. It names a source of power which can enable us to life as Jesus describes it. It talks about Jesus himself, his cross, his death and resurrection. This makes people clean. It provides forgiveness. It provides a new start, a new birth for our life. It provides a new existence, in which we can learn to live in a way which God considers as good. A lifestyle which is clean. A life which has a future. ... more texts