Let’s imagine the following... - All The Good Seed Daily Devotionals for 2025

But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags.
Isaiah 64:6

Let’s imagine the following situation. A housewife arrives at a surgical clinic with a pack of sparkling clean cloths – all freshly washed and ironed and, in her opinion, perfectly suitable for the operating room. And yet the cloths must be rejected. They are simply not clean enough for this purpose and are therefore unusable, even if the eye doesn’t detect the slightest blemish.

What is used in the operating room must be absolutely sterile. No one with the present-day knowledge of infection control would consider this regulation to be excessive.

However, the standard that God applies with regard to good and evil is considered by many to be too extreme. God says in His Word, “They have all turned aside; they have together become unprofitable; there is none who does good, no, not one” (Romans 3:12). This is God’s judgment of man as he is by nature. The whole man and everything he wants to offer to God fall under the judgment of “unclean” or “unsterile”.

This does not at all mean that God doesn’t recognise honest efforts to do what is good. But even our very best efforts do not result in the purity and holiness necessary to stand in the immediate presence of God.

What needs to happen? How can we become pure enough that God can accept us and we can gain access to heaven? We have to say goodbye to the illusion that we can bring about our eternal salvation ourselves – for only by acknowledging God’s standard, admitting our transgressions, and relying in faith on Jesus Christ and His work of redemption, will our souls be purified so that we are fit for the glory of God.

Today’s reading: Isaiah 45:14-25 · Hebrews 9:19-28