Clean Hands Essential To Communion With God

“I will wash mine hands in innocency: so will I compass Thine altar, O Lord.”—Psalm 26:6

Three of the great blessings to be tasted in measure here, and enjoyed immeasurably hereafter, by the saints of God, are salvation, sanctification, and communion. Salvation frees from the damning consequences of sin; sanctification from its domination and pollution; and communion is, getting beyond its hindering power.

The first of these blessings is so complete that there is no adding to or diminishing from it. “It is finished,” and always the same to every child of God. In the knowledge of salvation there may be, and is, great variety amongst the people of God; but with regard to the thing itself, there is no difference. The feeblest soul that, with the most trembling and dim faith, has fled to the cross, and there rested for salvation, is no less fully saved than the strongest, most intelligent, and most triumphant believer.

The second of these blessings, sanctification, as it is in Christ, is a complete, unchanging thing. By virtue of her union with Christ, God sees the Church as holy as ever He will see her. “As is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.” “As He is, so are we in this world.” Sanctification, as an individual thing, or the amount of grace or holiness possessed actually by the different members of Christ, greatly differs, and by each child of God in the different stages of the path. Some branches in the Vine abide in Christ to their fruit-bearing more fully than others, and the same branches bear more at one time than another. Some of the good-ground bearers bring forth “thirty-fold, some sixty- fold, and some an hundred-fold;” and with all, it is “first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.” Grace as it is in Christ for us can never be more nor less; but, as received from Christ by us, it is capable of growth; hence the exhortation to “grow in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ.”

Communion, too, like personal sanctification, may be more or less clear and near, unbroken or hindered, steady or by fits and starts; and, like sanctification, in its personal acceptation, will never be entirely complete until we got above. Then, and not till then, is the saint as holy and happy as he is safe. Then will he be free from sin and hold unchanging, unhindered fellowship with God. Then the heart of God in Christ will be unveiled to him, and then shall every power of his soul flow in a full, unhindered stream into that Ocean of felicity, his covenant God in Christ.

The people of God may be sometimes too much tempted to make salvation the centre and circumference of their religion; but for any one to go on through his days only troubled about his own safety, and knowing no other joy than the getting above doubts of his salvation, is a dark mark upon his religion. All Balaam desired was enough religion to save him at last. He wanted not a religion to sanctify him, and bring him into fellowship with God, as well as, to save him from hell. If you are true Christians, you have not only implanted in your heart the love of your own safety, but the love of holiness, and the love of communion with God. “I would be holy” is made as truly the cry of your heart as “I would be safe.” Communion with God is desired by you, as well as deliverance from wrath.

If you listen to the sighs of true Christians, you will find they are about sin and distance, as well as about doubts and fears. To be undoubtedly saved, completely holy, and everlastingly nigh to God, is the heaven the true Christian desires.

True believers in all ages have loved communion with God, and in distance have cried, “When wilt Thou come unto me? when wilt Thou comfort me?’’ “Oh, send out Thy light and Thy truth; let them lead me; let them bring me unto Thy holy hill; then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy,” or “the top of my joy.” Yes, it is in meeting God at His altar that the soul gets peaceful communion. And what is the altar of the New Testament saint? Is it not Calvary? What was the ancient altar of burnt-offering but Golgotha in type? The priests, after placing the sacrifice on the altar, are said to have walked round it, and surveyed it on all sides, as the holy fire of God fed gratefully upon it; and it is in allusion to this, perhaps, that the Psalmist cries, “I will wash mine hands in innocency: so will I compass Thine altar, O Lord.” Oh, then, this is communion with God indeed, to tread around the cross of Calvary, and view, with intelligent, loving, believing eyes, the blessed Sacrifice offered there in all its different aspects, and enter into God’s thoughts of His dear Son, and have in measure our hearts beating in full sympathy with the Father’s loving heart, who exclaims of Jesus, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” But such a privilege is not our constant lot below; and why? One great reason is, defiled hands. I hope to be enabled to show this more fully in endeavouring, by the Lord’s help, to explain to you—

I. What it is to compass the Lord’s altar.

II. What it is that often hinders this compassing the Lord’s altar, namely, unwashed hands.

III. What is necessary to restore us to unhindered fellowship—washing the hands.

We notice, then—

I. What it is to compass the Lord’s altar.—To compass the Lord’s altar is, to get to Calvary, and to be able to tread adoringly around that wondrous cross where sin was made an end of, reconciliation was made for iniquity, and everlasting righteousness was brought in, and to view that amazing scene in the various aspects that are presented by the work finished there. It is—

1. 1’o behold sympathetically the Sufferer there.—How sadly hard are our hearts naturally towards an agonizing Christ; and, even after we have the heart of flesh given us, how often we seem utterly unable to sympathize with an agonizing Saviour, and find cause to complain, with Hart—

“To read the sufferings Thou hast felt, 

Dear Lord, an adamant would melt; 

But I can read each moving line,

And nothing move this heart of mine.”

The fact is, it is quite one thing to read of Calvary, and think of Calvary, when at a distance from that sacred spot, and another thing really to go on the foot of a living faith to that scene of unexampled suffering, and have an agonizing Saviour set before the eye of our faith and affection by the Spirit of God. Oh, then the heart melts with contrition and self-abhorrence, and goes out til the dear Man of Sorrows in feelings of sympathetic grief and gratitude—sees and detests sin as that that furnished the weapons of torture to the persecutors of Jesus, and as that that called down the fiery wrath of God upon His holy soul.

I know of nothing more ardently to be desired than such visits to Calvary as fill the heart with indignation against sin, and make the soul run over with soft and tender sympathy with our suffering Substitute. Surely there is not a believing heart present but cries, “Oh, that I knew more of this! Oh, for such loving views of a suffering Saviour as shall break my heart with godly, sympathetic grief and gratitude to Jesus, and indignation against sin and self!”

“There that sweet mixture would I prove 

Of holy grief and heartfelt love;

Mourn o’er the Saviour’s matchless smart, 

And sing His love with all my heart.”

2. In compassing Calvary, there is a beholding believingly the triumph there.—Eden is the place where we see the triumph of sin, Satan, death, and hell. There man’s enemies exult, and he lies covered with wounds, a conquered captive. But Calvary is the place to behold the triumph of Christ over all these, the foes of His people. And oh, how unspeakably blessed for a soul that has realized anything of the might of his spiritual foes, to reach Calvary, and there behold his glorious Captain struggling with all His potent enemies, and gaining a complete victory over every one of them, treading Satan underfoot, spoiling principalities and powers, overcoming the world, despoiling death of its sting and the grave of its victory; and doing all this in such union with the Church as makes them sharers in His victory, and as much conquerors as if they themselves had crushed all their spiritual enemies! Oh, Calvary is not only the place to lay the soul low in contrition and godly sorrow, but it is the place to lift it high in godly triumph over all its foes! There is no conquering these dreadful foes but through the blood of the Lamb, and by getting the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

3. Calvary is the place to see confidingly and thankfully our own safety and redemption.—Here the price was paid for the Church’s rescue from the claim and curse of the holy law. Here salvation’s work was completed. The soul at Calvary realizes that “the Son has made it free.” It is, therefore, “free indeed.” Free from debts, for all are paid; free from curse, for all has been borne; free from condemnation, for righteousness without works is imputed to the believer; free from guilt, for here is full remission; free from stains by the cleansing fountain; free from disease, for by Jesus’ stripes the believing soul is healed; free from sin, for it is borne away by the great Scapegoat, and atoned for by the great Sin-offering; free from bonds, and safe from wrath, is the song of the happy soul may sing at the cross.

Oh, have you ever been lost at Mount Sinai, and saved at Mount Calvary? You are in an unsaved state, if you never fled to the cross. Your soul is saved, if you were ever led by the Spirit of God to look confidingly to the sacrifice of Christ. There is no salvation without faith in Christ. There is certain salvation for all who, through grace, believe in Christ. “Look unto Me, and be ye saved.” “He that believeth shall be saved.” Living faith in a dying Christ must be known by you in this life, or, in the life to come, you will perish for your sins.

4. Calvary is also the place, to behold unexampled honour done to all the divine attributes.—God’s honour is made dear to the soul, as well as his own safety and happiness; and the safety of a sinner can nowhere consist with God’s honour, excepting at the cross. At Golgotha, not only can God’s honour consist with the safety of the believer, but the two are so linked together that

“God’s honour and His name’s at stake

To save him from the burning lake.”

At Sinai, God’s honour could not be supported but by cursing the law-breaker; but at Calvary, God’s honour cannot be maintained but by saving the believer. God is just in His law, and therefore damns the sinner; God is just to His Son, and therefore saves the believer. At Calvary, not only are those attributes on the sinner’s side that are usually appealed to as grounds of hope for wretched man, but those perfections are for him that are the great objects of a sinner’s dread. At the cross, justice as much speaks up for the sinner’s salvation as mercy. Righteousness is as much on his side as love; truth as much secures his happiness as grace; and the holiness of God can as honourably embrace him as the compassion of God. Indeed, God gets unparalleled glory at the cross. Hell shows His hatred of sin, but not in colours so wondrous as Calvary, where God poured out His vindictive ire on His well-beloved Son, because He took upon Him the sins of others. Heaven shows the love and profuse benevolence of God, but not like the gift of His own Son. It cost the Maker but a word to build the brilliant dome of heaven; but it cost Him the gift of His equal Son to ransom His Church. Creation shows the power and goodness of God, but not as Calvary does. It was no effort to Omnipotence to make worlds, but redemption cost the groans of a Man that was Personally God. At Calvary, God unveils His whole Self. His mercy flows freely, while His justice smiles complacently. His love embraces its objects, while His truth maintains its integrity. His grace brings out its boundless stores, while His holiness takes infinite delight in grace’s channel. It is in the face of a dying Christ that the glory of God is seen—

“Here the whole Deity is known, 

Nor dares a creature guess

Which of the glories brightest shone, 

The justice or the grace.”

The awakened sinner at Sinai shrinks from God. His flesh trembles for fear of God. His dread terrifies him, and His highness makes him afraid. Indeed, “the law worketh wrath.” But let the law-condemned sinner be led to Calvary, and his heart’s affections run out towards God. Indeed, he can then joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Do you know the difference between looking upon God out of Christ, and shrinking from Him with awe and dread and terror, and looking upon God in a bleeding Christ so that all His harmonized perfections have appeared to you in the most amiable and blessed light, drawing out your affections, and making you love Him because He has first loved us? Those who think they love God, and yet never fled to the cross, are loving some creature of their own imagination that they have clothed with the name of God. A truly enlightened sinner can but shrink from God until he meets Him at the cross. If his heart yearns after God, it is after the Deity, as the good news of the Gospel testifies of Him at Calvary. Indeed, it were a boundless subject to show the various lights in which the work of the cross is to be appreciated by the soul who believingly and lovingly treads around that sacred scene—who compasses the Lord’s altar. Christ crucified is the Centre to which believing hearts are drawn on earth, and Christ glorified is the Centre to which the spirits of the just are drawn in heaven. The cross of Christ is the soul’s comfort here; the crown of Christ is the soul’s joy there.

It is at the cross that the world is put in its right place, and we take our right place towards it. Here it is the believer is crucified to the world, is dying to earth; and the world is crucified, is dying, to him. It is at the cross the conscience is purged from dead works, to serve the living and the true God—is cleansed from all that hinders the soul serving in the true tabernacle of God. The cross fills the priestly laver that cleanses from all hindrances to the fulfilment of our priestly functions. The cross furnishes the grand heal-all for the wounds of sin. “With His stripes we are healed.”

Oh, have you ever had a torn, bleeding, ulcerous conscience, that only grew worse and worse under all treatment, till you came to the cross, and there had all its wounds healed by the “sovereign balm for every wound” that only the cross can furnish? Sin is a malady that must be your eternal death, if it is never healed, by faith, through the redemption wrought at Calvary. Calvary is the place to lay us too low for pride, presumption, levity, and vanity, and to raise us too high for despondency and dejection. Calvary gives motives for obedience, and sets us free to obey. “Ye are not your own; ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” It is when the conscience is purged from dead works by the blood of the cross that we can serve the living and true God. The cross is a refuge for a sinner, but no cloak for sin. It is a remedy for our unholiness and a spring of holiness. It is there that Toplady’s hymn is answered—

“Let the water and the blood,

From Thy riven side which flowed, 

Be of sin the double cure—

Cleanse me from its guilt and power.”

This is the place from which to look back to our predestination to life before time, and to look on to our glorification and bliss beyond time. In a word, here is the place to learn the meaning of “fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.”

But I must go on to show you—

II. What it is that hinders the thus compassing the altar, namely, unwashed hands.—There is no communion between light and darkness, and no concord between Christ and Belial. You cannot defile your hands with allowed evil, and at the same time live near to the cross. If the hands are polluted, communion with God must be broken. Evil around us, and evil in us, are different from evil handled by us. When the Lord Jesus walked in the midst of evil, He never touched it with His hands, for He had nothing in Him to prompt Him to do so. To defile His hands was an impossibility. But it is not so with us. All kinds of evil around us have corresponding evils within us; so that, when external temptation puts some filthy thing before us, internal temptation pushes us on with wicked desires to touch that abominable thing, and the fear and grace of God within us cry out against the defiling touch; and, if grace prevail, then the soul escapes with undefiled hands; but, if corruption gains the mastery, the evil is handled, if only in the affections and imagination, and the hands are defiled, and communion is stopped.

Oh, if you are allowing yourself, in thought, word, or deed, in what your conscience witnesses against, grace shrinks from, and the word of God condemns, you cannot be having communion with God! Your heart is condemning you, and will not smile upon you. Much more is God, who is greater than your heart, condemning you, and refusing you His smile.

I need not particularize the many evils that may defile a Christian’s hands. Every Christian knows, more or less, to his pain, what inward and outward mud-holes he is surrounded with, into which he is but too prone to thrust the hand of his thoughts, his imagination, his eyes, his ears, his tongue, or some other power of body or mind, or both, so as to get that dirt in his palm that breaks his communion with God. God will save His people from sinning cheaply. He will not smile upon us in wrong paths. If we regard iniquity in our heart, He will not hear us. Israel cannot stand before their enemies whilst there is an Achan in the camp. The accursed thing cannot be hidden in the tent, and the heart have such communion with God as shall strengthen it for battle.

The holy God will not smile upon unholiness. If an Israelite touched a defiling thing, he was to be shut out of the camp until he was cleansed from that defilement. We learn at first we can never get salvation until we “forsake our way” of sin, and “our thoughts” of self-righteousness; and we learn afterwards that we can never have fellowship with God in Christ while our hands are defiled with allowed sin. There must be a “washing us, a making us clean, a putting away the evil of our doings,” before we can realize what it is to come again and reason with the Lord, and experience His forgiving love blotting out our scarlet and crimson sins. If sin can never separate the believer from union, it can from communion. I should not value any religious happiness that you might profess, while regarding iniquity in your heart.

This leads me to show—

III. What is necessary to restore us to unhindered fellowship.—Some of us have known more than one conversion. Peter’s turning from the Lord had to be followed with a re-turning to the Lord—“When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.” This new conversion is called in this text, “washing the hands in innocency.”

Now, surely this is a branch of our subject that excites the anxiety of some, because, if I rightly handle it, you will get an answer to the anxious question of your heart. You were once asking, “What shall I do to be saved?’’ and that question was answered by, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved;” and, through grace, you have believed, to the saving of your soul, so that this is not at present the great question of your heart. Your language is, “I am at a distance from God. I have no communion with God at the cross. My conscience tells me that my hands are polluted with sin. How shall I get restored communion?” The answer is in the example of the Psalmist. You must be led by the same Spirit he was led by, to do the same thing that he did. You must “wash your hands in innocency,” and so will you find the hindrances removed to compassing the Lord’s altar—to holding communion with God in a crucified Christ.

This ”washing the hands in innocency” is—

1. Departing from the evil you have been clinging to.—lt is common amongst men to say, when entangled in some foul business, “I must wash my hands of that dirty matter.” When Pilate would pretend innocence, he took a basin and washed his hands, professing, though falsely, that he was clean from the innocent blood of Jesus. The Lord, by Isaiah, calls to backsliding Israel, when their hands were defiled with blood, and says, “Wash you; make you clean; put away the evil of your doings;” and James, to the unfaithful spouse of Christ—to those “adulteresses” who had defiled their hands with the “friendship of the world”—says, “Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; purify your hearts, ye double- minded; be afflicted, and mourn,” &c. And when the Corinthians washed their hands from the evil that they had allowed, Paul speaks of their “clearing themselves.”

Oh, wanderer from the Lord, now made sick of your own ways, and wretched because you have no communion with God, do you ask your way back? I answer—these wandering steps of yours must be retraced; that goodly Babylonish garment and golden wedge must be given up; that Achan must be stoned; that a’llowed sin must be forsaken; that offending right eye must be plucked out, or right limb must be cut off, and cast from you. “Surely it is meet to be said unto God, I have borne chastisement: I will not offend any more; that which I see not teach Thou me; if I have done iniquity, I will do no more.”

2. There must be a penitent confession of sin at the footstool of mercy.—You must “humble yourself in the sight of the Lord” before you will be “lifted up.” That lofty head of yours must sink in the dust. Those cherished evils must be repented of, confessed, forsaken—“Whoso confesseth and forsaketh his sin shall find mercy.” It is when the returning one comes with self-abhorrence to say, “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in Thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son,” that he is met with the kiss of forgiving love. “I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sins.”

Oh, polluted Christian, go and cast yourself before a God of mercy and grace in Christ, and uncover your leprous sores, confess your heart-wanderings and sins! “Only acknowledge thine iniquity, that thou hast transgressed against the Lord thy God, and hast scattered thy ways to the strangers under every green tree; and ye have not obeyed My voice, saith the Lord.” ‘’O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity. Take with you words, and turn to the Lord: say unto Him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously: so will we render the calves of our lips. Asshur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses: neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, Ye are our gods; for in Thee the fatherless findeth mercy. I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for Mine anger is turned away from him.”

But this cleansing of the hands comprehends also—

3. Self-judgment.—“If we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged.” It may seem paradoxical, but it is true, that, in order to cast off offences, we must take them upon us—that is, we must empannel ourselves before the tribunal of God in our own consciences; we must load ourselves with irons; place ourselves in the dock before ourselves, and pass sentence upon ourselves; be our own judges—that is, we must judge ourselves worthy of God’s ire as a God of justice, and of His sorest displeasure and chastisement as a Father. We must thus have our “uncircumcised hearts humbled, and accept the punishment of our iniquities,” to escape the punishment of our iniquities.

And with all this there must be—

4. A cleansing our ways, by taking heed thereto, according to God’s Word.—This is the “washing of water by the Word.” “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto, according to Thy Word.” While we are doing evil, we shun the light of the Word; but, when there is a real willingness to do truth, to be sincere and real, and to sacrifice our darling evils rather than the sweet smile of a God in Christ, there is a coming to the light of the Word, however that Word may make us tremble, manifest our filth, and fill us with shame and confusion of face.

But—

5. Above all, there must be, in order to free the hands from defilement, a coming to the blood of the Lamb.—lt is nothing but the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s dear Son, that “cleanseth us from all sin.” God made provision against Israel’s defilement in “the water of separation,” made of the ashes of the burnt heifer, and against the priest’s hindering pollutions in the laver at which he was always to “wash his hands and his feet when he went in to do the service of the sanctuary”—both typifying the cleansing blood of Jesus, that precious fountain “opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness.” “For if the blood of bulls, and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who, through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?’’ Polluted believer, you must get your renewed cleansing where you got your cleansing at first—

“If guilt removed return and remain,

Its power may be proved again and again.”

Nothing but renewed faith in the cleansing blood can give renewed peace. Reformation, repentance, self-judgment, humble confessions, seeking to depart from evil by the light of the Word—all are necessary; but all will leave the heart aching under its load, and the hands uncleansed from stains of guilt, until there is a flying afresh to the open fountain of Jesus’ blood, and once more, as a black sinner, by faith, of the operation of the Spirit of God, casting one’s self beneath the droppings of Immanuel’s blood—

“Oft as sins, my soul, assail thee, 

Turn thine eyes, on Jesus’ blood 

Nothmg short of this can heal thee,

Seal thy peace, or do thee good;

Seek no health

 But in Gilead’s sovereign balm.”

”Should the tears of deep contrition, 

Like a torrent, drown thine eyes;

Still for sin there’s no remission 

But in this great Sacrifice.”

Ah! when the bowed, sin-forsaking, sin-confessing heart is enabled to cast itself afresh upon the atonement of Jesus, and thus dip its defiled hands in the cleansing laver, peace is restored, barriers to communion are broken down, and once more Calvary—the altar of which “they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle”—is compassed with peace, gratitude, and adoring wonder.

Oh, may the Lord use what I have said to the restoration of His wandering sheep, and the godly cautioning of His dear people who are in fellowship with Himself! Believer, you have nothing to fear like sin!