2 Corinthians 7:1 (NLT) Because we have these promises, dear friends, let us cleanse ourselves from everything that can defile our body or spirit. And let us work toward complete holiness because we fear God.

When you are taking a bath, it's the soap that makes you clean. After we take a bath or shower, we believe that we have cleansed ourselves, but in reality, it's the soap that made us clean. In the passage of scripture above, the Apostle Paul tells us something that may seem a little foreign to us as followers of Christ. We know that it is by grace that we are saved and that our sins have been washed away by the blood of the Lamb through no help or effort of our own other than repenting and asking God to forgive us. So what did Paul mean when He wrote that we should "cleanse ourselves from everything that can defile our body and spirit?"

Perhaps we can understand this a little better if we use the cleaning with soap analogy. After you have be made clean using the soap, the last thing that you would want to do is go out and play in the mud or do anything that would introduce dirt and grime back onto your body. If you had to do anything that was considered dirty work, you would do it before you bathe. In the same way, after Christ Jesus has cleansed you from all your sin, you stay clean by "cleansing yourself," or in other words, staying away from the things that made you filthy. As Christians, we many times are sloppy in the way that we live after having been washed clean by the blood of Jesus. We may go back to some of the things that we were cleansed from, thereby defiling our body and our spirit.

 In life, we know exactly what things or activities would make our bodies dirty, and if we were going to meet a very important person after having taken a bath, we would be very careful not to get dirty again. If we would only have that same mindset in our walk with Jesus, we wouldn't experience all the heartache and turmoil that we do when we engage in activities that make us unclean again. We should do everything on our part to stay clean, because we are not merely going to meet an important person but are going to be living in intimate fellowship with our Lord Jesus who is pure and holy. Let us be mindful of the way that we live, including where we go, what we do, how we speak and what we listen to. Let's do what the Word is telling us to do and cleanse ourselves from all the things that were leading us on a path of destruction, so that we can provide a holy vessel for the Lord Jesus to reside in. After the spiritual cleansing that Jesus provided for us, let's stay clean by the power of the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Pastor Joey Vazquez