You’re reading ACTS: LESSONS IN FAITH, by Eric Elder, featuring thirty inspiring devotionals based on the lives of the very first followers of Christ. Also available in paperback and eBook formats in our bookstore for a donation of any size!

Scripture Reading: Acts 15

If you’ve ever read Macbeth by Shakespeare, you may remember the scene where Macbeth’s wife rubs her hands together over and over, trying to wash out an imaginary stain.  What she was really trying to do was to “wash her hands” of a plot that she and her husband had planned to kill King Duncan.  Even though the stain is imaginary, it represented something very real that she had done.

Many people have felt what Lady Macbeth felt.  They’ve done something they can’t take back.  No matter what they do, they can’t get clean.  They can’t purify themselves.  Maybe you’re in that situation yourself today, or know someone who is.

The truth is, you can’t purify yourself.  You can’t wash, cleanse or save yourself from your own sins.  But the good news is that Jesus can.  And the way He does it is through faith.

It might seem odd that a mere thought―putting your faith in Christ―could open the floodgates of cleansing that you need.  But it’s not just the thought that brings the cleansing.  It’s Christ who brings the cleansing.  It’s Christ, who died on the cross to take your sins upon Him so you could be clean, if you’ll just believe Him and put your faith in Him.

Some people wring their hands over what they can do to be clean.  The earliest Christians made it clear that of all the things someone might try to do, the one necessary ingredient is faith.

One of the times the disciples had to address this issue head on is recorded in Acts chapter 15.  Here’s a portion of how the issue came up and how the disciples responded:

“Some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers: ‘Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.’  This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question…. Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, ‘The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to obey the law of Moses.’ 

“The apostles and elders met to consider this question. After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: ‘Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. God, who knows the heart, showed that He accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as He did to us. He made no distinction between us and them, for He purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are” (Acts 15:1-2,5-11). 

When it came down to it, Paul, Barnabas, Peter and the elders agreed:  it is “through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved” and that God “purified their hearts by faith.”

I remember when my wife Lana was baptized.  As she came up out of the water, she said that as the water dripped off her, she felt like her sins were being washed away.  That’s the kind of cleansing that Lady Macbeth longed for, but never experienced, because she never put her faith in Christ.

If that’s the kind of cleansing that you’re longing for, you don’t have to wring your hands over and over.  You can experience it, too, when you put your faith in Christ.

Confess your sins to Him and let Him wash you in His grace, removing your sins “as far as the east is from the west” (Psalm 103:12).  As the Bible promises:  “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

Let Him purify you today, by faith.

Prayer: Father, I confess my sins to You and put my faith in Christ, asking that You would  cleanse me, wash me and purify me from all unrighteousness. In Jesus’ name, Amen.