Are Your Hands Clean Enough?

I’m a compulsive hand-washer. I was that way long before Covid. After that happened, it grew to the point that I have to use moisturizer at least twice a day to keep from scrubbing my hands raw. I lather for at least 20 seconds each time- sometimes 40. In the course of following this habit, I was well-placed to pick up on an interesting bit of Biblical symbolism.

Psalm 24 says, “Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart” (v. 3-4, KJV). In Psalm 73:13, when the Psalmist is despairing because he is suffering while the wicked are prospering, he expresses his exasperation as, “Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain and washed my hands in innocence” (v. 13, KJV). Isaiah opens his book with a woeful curse on Israel, proclaiming on God’s behalf: “‘And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you. Yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear; your hands are full of blood” (1:15, KJV). God spends much of the first 5 books of the Bible telling His people how to be “clean” and set apart rather than “common.” Clearly, clean hands are a powerful symbol of righteousness before God, while dirty hands represent wickedness.

This leads to an interesting dichotomy in the New Testament. Jesus’s opponents are fervent about hand washing. His staunchest foes, the Pharisees, obsessively wash their hands, cups, pots, and anything else they can think of, as Mark informs his readers in 7:3-4. At the moment he is condemning the most innocent man who ever lived to the most excruciating form of death ever devised, Pontius Pilate washes his hands in front of everyone and says, “‘I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves’” (Matthew 27:24, KJV). On the other hand, the Pharisees are offended to observe first that Jesus’s disciples do not wash their hands before eating (Mark 7:1-5). Then, even worse to them, Jesus Himself eats without washing His hands (Luke 11:38)! This all seems so topsy-turvy.

That is, unless you grasp how the cleanness of hands in Old Testament Law refers to spiritual hands rather than physical. In both Psalm 24 and 73 quoted above, a clean/pure heart is listed right up there with the clean hands. Spiritually speaking, Jesus has the cleanest hands in the universe, however dirty they might have been from his carpentry or whatever. And likewise, His disciples and followers, when they put their faith in Him, have their spiritual hands cleansed by His blood such that they become part of His Church, a bride He “might sanctify and cleanse with the washing of water, by the word, that He might present to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:26-27, KJV). It’s noteworthy that Jesus’s way of marking someone as belonging to His Church is baptism. This symbolizes so much, but here we’ll just focus on the cleansing nature of the sacrament, a symbol for complete purification from sin.

Which was Jesus’s opponents’ problem. They wanted to keep clean through their own efforts. The Pharisee in Luke 18 feels that he is already “not as other men are” (v. 11, KJV), and the washings are to keep any external pollution from messing up their purity. But, as Jesus tells them in His rebuke, it’s not physical uncleanness God is ultimately getting at in the Law: “Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter, but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness” (Luke 11:39, KJV). The Pharisees, “measuring themselves by themselves” (II Corinthians 10:12, KJV), and only looking at physical matters and the show they can put on, cannot see how horribly defiled they are. “All these evil things come from within, and defile the man” (Mark 7:23, KJV). Compared with God’s holy standard of Himself, pure in action and thought, they fall hopelessly short.

And Pilate’s attempt at deflecting blame doesn’t hold any water either. Here is a magistrate trying to absolve himself of the greatest dereliction of duty the world has ever seen, and yet the Apostles classify him as having “wicked hands” (Acts 2:23). This should make us think twice about blaming parents, society, peer pressure, or anything else for our failings. Those who lead into sin, Jesus says, would be better off with being thrown into the sea with a millstone around their neck, but the action they tempt to is still an “offense” in God’s eyes (Luke 17:1-2). The Serpent beguiled Eve, but she still ended up bearing the curse for it (Genesis 3:13, 16).

As an aside, I have wondered why Jesus didn’t teach His disciples to wash for pure hygienic reasons. Good health is good enough reason to do that, right? Well, I suspect a couple of things. For one, since Christ’s human and divine natures are united without mixture or confusion, Jesus in His human nature cannot be omniscient since that is a divine trait alone. He several times expresses that He doesn’t know something in the Gospels; maybe microorganisms was another one of those things. More than that, though, I suspect it means that He knew the damage a cold or a virus could inflict was next to nothing compared to the spiritual havoc wrought upon His disciples’ souls if they should buy in to the Pharisees’ line of reasoning. In an analogy of taking away a foot wart and replacing it with cancer, C.S. Lewis observed that the Devil is perfectly happy to let us get rid of small sins and problems if we end up bolstering our pride. That is the most dangerous sin of all.

So, spiritually speaking, having clean hands before God is the only way to enjoy Him for all eternity. Dirty spiritual hands God casts into the outer darkness and the lake of fire. But there’s no way we can make our hands pure on our own. Only purification by Christ, the only one who’s ever had truly clean hands, will do. And once He washes us, we are clean.

Are your hands clean enough?