Cleansed for the Resurrection

 DEVOTION

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES

CLEANSED FOR THE RESURRECTION

Acts 24:17-21

17 "After an absence of several years, I came to Jerusalem to bring my people gifts for the poor and to present offerings. 18 I was ceremonially clean when they found me in the temple courts doing this. There was no crowd with me, nor was I involved in any disturbance. 19 But there are some Jews from the province of Asia, who ought to be here before you and bring charges if they have anything against me. 20 Or these who are here should state what crime they found in me when I stood before the Sanhedrin— 21 unless it was this one thing I shouted as I stood in their presence: 'It is concerning the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial before you today.'"

NIV

Paul finished his defense knowing that he was innocent of all the false charges brought by the high priest and the elders. Two thoughts occur to us in Paul's defense. First, he said that he was ceremonially clean. The Greek word used means to be made clean, or sanctified, which we use to say that we have been set apart, made holy. We think there is a major difference between how Paul became ceremonially clean and how we have been made clean. Paul would have needed to follow the laws prescribed in Leviticus; it depended on his actions, his work, and his adherence to the established rules. We cannot make ourselves clean by doing anything. We have been set apart and declared holy by God because we accepted his grace. That is all we can do, accept what Jesus did for us. In the vernacular of Christianity, we have been washed in his blood, although that is in the spiritual sense. However, the fact remains that we are not just ceremonially clean; we are clean as pure white snow. Do we live a clean life? No, we still deal with sin, but the grace of God covers over our sin, and we have been made clean. Secondly, it is all about the resurrection that caused the uproar in the Sanhedrin. Does the resurrection cause any disturbance in our lives? Do we live with the confidence of the resurrection? We wonder just how much we actually believe in life after death, or the words of Jesus when he said that although we die, we will live? Have we come to terms with our mortality in the sense that we make every possible effort to stay alive, to stay here in this fallen world? We do live in a perishable body; it will wear out at some point. Our days are numbered by God.  According to the Psalmist, God's eye saw our unformed body. That all the days ordained for us were written in his book before one of them came to be. Yet, we think we have something to say about how long we live based on what we eat, or exercise, or follow some regimen, or some prescribed course of action given to us by men?  Do we think that we can change the plan that God prescribed for us? What we know for certain, what we have complete confidence in, is that we will see the resurrection. Whatever our days are, we will try to live according to God's plan and look forward to the day we will see Jesus face to face. We can be assured that we have been cleansed for the resurrection.