"Who can say, I made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?" asks Solomon (Proverbs 20:9); and we must all answer, "Not I." The sad and terrible picture which our Lord Jesus draws of the human heart, and therefore also of our hearts, is only too true. He says, Matthew 15:19-20: "For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: These are the things which defile a man:"

But thanks be to God, Jesus can do what we cannot do, what no man can do - He can purify our sinful hearts; and He does so through His converting and sanctifying Gospel. Whoever repents of his sins, of his original sin and of his actual sins, and learns to trust implicitly in the gracious Gospel promises of his Savior, has found forgiveness for all his sins - original and actual - in the sight of the holy God. He "...is clean every whit:" (John 13:10), and sees God, not with physical eyes, - for that is impossible, since God is a spirit - but in faith as his loving and reconciled God in Christ Jesus, his Savior.

And the more he grows in faith, the more such a pardoned sinner sees of the wonderful goodness and soul-elating mercy of his God and Savior. Every day of his earthly existence sees the Sun of Righteousness, [Malachi 4:2] with healing in His wings, rise brighter and brighter on the horizon, until He reveals to him His golden fullness and undiminishing glory in the land of perfect day, the land of the blessed that knows no night. [Revelation 22:4-5] There we shall see our God and Savior face to face, as John declares, 1 John 3:2: "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is."

[devotion text by Rev. F. W. Herzberger (1920) -
from the Family Altar - CPH (1957 edition)]
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