Have you ever experienced being overly dirty or grimy? Perhaps after a long day working in the yard, as a child playing in the mud, or traveling dusty roads in the sweltering heat, you were sticky and gritty, you knew your body must stink, and you longed to be clean.

What did you do to get clean? Did you ask your brother to walk a similar path, get dirty, and then go bathe—and then you claimed his cleanliness as your own? And from that moment in life, wherever you went in your filthy clothes, smelling odiferous, did you courageously declare, “Yes, I am unclean, filthy, dirty, offensive—but it doesn’t matter because my older brother is perfectly clean and I claim His cleanliness as my own?”

Or, wallowing in your grime, did you go to a court of law where records documented the reality of how polluted, stained, and defiled you are, but you asked a lawyer to plead to the judge to legally accept your clean brother as your legal surrogate and legally declare that you are perfectly clean, even though in reality, you remain nasty? And, what if the judge did make such a legal ruling in your favor—what difference would that make when you are still covered in grime, filth, and sludge?

What if, after getting the judge to legally declare that you are clean, but in reality you remain covered in manure, grime, and dirt, you leave the court and ask your clean brother to cover you in one of his laundered garments? And he kindly drapes a new spotless white robe over your filthy body and clothes—are you now clean? And in reality, what happens to the white robe if it is draped over a filthy person?

Do you think that if you went to Jesus covered in filth and sincerely asked Him to cleanse you, He would take any of these fictional and fraudulent actions that pretend you are clean but which leave you, in reality, filthy?

It is time to recognize reality, that the Father and Jesus are One, they are the God of reality, and if you went to them dirty, asking to be clean, they would, in reality, wash you, cleanse you, purify you, and make you holy and pure! And that is exactly what the Bible teaches: Salvation is reality-based cleansing and purifying of our hearts and minds from every corruption, defilement, deviation, sin—it is purification of us!

A Real Transformation

As David prayed after his great sin:

Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. … You desire truth in the inward parts. … Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me (Psalm 51:2, 6, 10 NIV84, emphasis mine).

David doesn’t pray to have a legal ruling, a record changed, another person cleaned in His place, or a covering over his sin. His entire psalm is the opposite; it is an uncovering, exposure, confession, and acknowledgment of his sin for the purpose of removing sin from him. David doesn’t seek to get an historical fact removed, a deed covered up; he wants the corruption within his own heart and mind washed away and replaced with exact rightness—righteousness. He is praying for inner transformation, not legal pardon. “Truth in the inward parts” is encoding language; it is removing the distortion and writing in wholeness and purity, God’s reality—which is the New Covenant, God writing His law upon our hearts and minds (Hebrews 8:10).

God’s plan of salvation is reality; it is actual cleansing, recreation, purification, regeneration, inside the heart and mind of the sinner, removing from within us lies, distortion, corruption, fear, guilt, shame, selfishness, lust, anger, bitterness, resentment, and, ultimately, distrust of God—everything that deviates from His perfect design for life. As He said through the prophet Ezekiel:

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees (Ezekiel 36:25–27 NIV84).

This is perhaps the single most explicit reality-describing passage in Scripture. Note the sequence: cleansing → new heart installation → Spirit indwelling → behavioral change follows naturally. God’s law is not enforced externally; it arises from within the healed, renewed, recreated, rebuilt, restructured being!

God wants our love, trust, loyalty, devotion, reliability, consistency, and this can never be achieved by imposed law and law-enforcement; it is achieved only by truth and love winning to trust and reshaping (encoding) within the heart/mind (and brain) of the person. It is not by might and power but by the Spirit of truth and love that God wins (Zechariah 4:6).

The Real Problem

And this cleansing is reality! It is salvation; it is the purpose and mission of Christ; it is what living faith/trust produces. Specifically, we are born infected with sin (Psalm 51:5). We are born with the spirit (life/animating, motivation, energy/desires) of fallen Adam, of fear and survival. This spirit of fear (which does not come from God—2 Timothy 1:7) is inherited from Adam and naturally directs our individualities (consciousness) in the formation of life choices, but more importantly, the interpretation and encoding into our brains of our life experiences. And that encoding of life experiences into our brains, when driven by the spirit of fear and survival, is always corrupted with aspects of self-protection, self-security, distrust, suspicion, doubt, guilt, shame, and various beliefs, concepts, and strategies to comfort and empower ourselves.

In other words, our natural selves come into the world seeking to feel safe, valued, loved, secure, but desperately insecure and afraid of abandonment, rejection, and death. Thus, from birth, we begin encoding life in ways and attaching things to our hearts that function to reduce our fear, insecurity, and guilt and make us feel better.

But every “survival” instinct is driven by the spirit of fear and only solidifies the sickness within our hearts and minds. The various coping and protective measures we use are out of harmony with God’s design for life—in conflict with truth, love, liberty, and despite any momentary relief or improved feeling, will always result, ultimately, in disappointment, ineffectiveness, further injury, pain, inadequacy, and failure to bring health, peace, joy, and happiness. Thus, there is no peace, no rest, no security for those outside of a saving relationship with God, only a never-ending searching, wrestling, and struggling to survive.

This condition, which we inherited from Adam, is not our individual fault; it is Adam’s. And we do not need to feel guilty about it, but we must acknowledge its reality. And the reality is that there is nothing we can do by ourselves, in our strength, with our ingenuity, creativity, wisdom, or power, to resolve it. The reality is, everything we do of ourselves is fueled, driven, directed, animated, and motivated by the spirit of fear and survival and, therefore, only strengthens the sickness—even if what we are doing is religious and behaviorally following God’s specific directions.

Consider the Jews who crucified Christ. They were very religious and behaviorally sought to follow the “rules” that had been given by God, but their hearts were driven by fear and survival, not by truth, love, and trust; thus, their religious observances, even when behaviorally in accordance with God’s direction (like observing the correct Sabbath day), only worsened their condition and hardened their hearts. Why? Because they were seeking external legal solutions for an internal lethal problem—they were seeking actions they could take to make self look and feel righteous so they could deny the reality of their own terminal state and pretend they were clean when they were filthy. They were whitewashed sepulchers, full of death on the inside (Matthew 23:27).

The truth of God’s cleansing from sin is what He does inside the heart and mind of the saved. It is not occurring in a legal court but in living souls. And the records in heaven are simply the “medical” records of every person; just like medical records, they record reality. They accurately document the depth of the sickness within us, but they also record the acceptance and application of God’s remedy provided in Christ, with the subsequent healing, recreation, and transformation that happens within the living being—or, they record the rejection of that remedy and the reality of a soul that worsens from their terminal and untreated sin-condition.

Where Cleansing Occurs

For those who are preoccupied with getting their heavenly record cleansed from sin, the only way for that to happen (because God is the God of reality) is by your cooperation with God for the cleansing of your heart and mind from sin here and now! Why? For what is recorded in your record is you! What are you choosing to encode, believe, value, and attach to your heart? Who are you choosing to trust and love? What methods are you encoding as the foundation of your principles and motives? What spirit have you solidified your soul around—have you been reborn with a spirit of love and trust so that it is no longer your old fear-based self living, but Christ living within (Galatians 2:20)? Or have you been indoctrinated into a fraudulent penal/legal system that has taught you to hide behind an intercessor who pleads for you before a heavenly judge to get you declared to be “clean,” when in reality you remain filthy?

There is no peace, no health, no wellness, and no salvation in the penal/legal fiction—it leads only to Pharisaism, legal religion driven by fear, insecurity, and greater intensity of self-survival. And when God’s messengers come with the truth that would lead to real healing, cleansing, purification—those who have chosen the penal/legal fraud will feel the conviction brought by truth and the Holy Spirit. They will stand at an eternal-life crossroad and will decide to accept the truth, humble self, acknowledge their own sin-sickness, and the reality that no external legal adjustment changes the heart, and open their hearts to Christ for genuine rebirth, healing, transformation.

Or they will reject the truth and, instead of responding with hope, relief, and joy, filter the truth through their encoded corruption and hear threats, criticism, condemnation and become angry, see the voices of truth as enemies who must be destroyed, just like the Jews who crucified Christ and imprisoned the apostles did, and the so-called Christians in the Dark Ages who burned the voices of truth at the stake.

If you have been caught up in the penal/legal fraud, fearful of someone knowing your sin, afraid of punishment, rejection, condemnation and, therefore, are clinging to beliefs that give you the false assurance of records being erased, understand reality—God is not angry at you. God loves you. He knows you didn’t choose to have this corruption, this sin-sickness, and that is why He sent Jesus, not to condemn, but to save (John 3:16, 17). God sent Jesus to reveal the reality of His character of love, but also to provide you with a real remedy that, in reality, will purify your soul, to provide you with a new sinless life, His life, that we each receive when we trust Him.

I encourage you to review the teachings of Scripture, to understand how reality works, to recognize that God’s cleansing from sin is the reality-based cleansing of hearts and minds from the lies about Him that undermine trust and from the spirit of fear that drives us to seek to save self, from all guilt, shame, doubt, and the re-creation within of real righteousness.

Take time and reflect on God’s pleading to you. Hear His voice like the loving Heavenly Physician He is, calling to let Him heal you:

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in (Revelation 3:20 NIV84).

God will not force entry. The door must be opened from the inside by your freewill choice to trust Him. The penal/legal fraud does the opposite; it asks for a mediator to keep your heart hidden from God, to cover over the sickness, to pretend and declare you are not dirty. But God loves us too much to leave us sick and dying, filthy and miserable. His goal is your perfection, your perfect healing and restoration to health and life as He designed it!

Hear God’s calling for you to think, engage, and reason with Him so that He can lead you to surrender the distortions, lies, misunderstandings, and encode His truth into your being:

Come now, let us reason together, … though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow (Isaiah 1:18 NIV84).

God’s invitation to cleansing begins with reasoning together—a truth encounter, not a legal transaction. He is pleading with you from heaven to recognize and choose the truth of who He is and how His kingdom functions, for it is by our choosing the truth that we are changed and transformed:

“You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32 NIV84, emphasis mine).

“Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17 NIV84).

Sanctification, cleansing, is accomplished through truth—the freewill agreement, acceptance, choice, to say yes to the truth about God and surrender in trust to Him. And we cooperate with God for our cleansing by daily ingesting, internalizing, choosing truth and love, living God’s design-law methods for life, and trusting Him with how things turn out!

So if you want real cleansing from sin, then “do not conform to the [penal/legal] pattern of this world [and seek legal declarations that fraudulently cover up your sinfulness], but [instead embrace truth, reality, God’s kingdom of love and trust and] be transformed by the renewing of your mind“ (Romans 12:2 NIV84).