Adonai Reigns

"Righteousness": the quality of being morally right or justifiable.

This phrase "clean hands" means to describe one who has not acted in a way that defiles their moral conscience. Because a newborn's hand has not yet performed any action, it is morally justifiable - free from blame and reproach. All of us are born clean, pure and righteous - we are undefiled until such thoughts and actions take place that give right for us to be condemned. Further, it is not every action a person takes that is able to defile their moral conscience. 

So, if we are born with clean hands and only some actions are able to defile us, how do we come to be defiled - and how is it defined? It is because our conscience bears witness against us whenever there is an accusation toward us. If our hands are clean, we have done no wrong and our conscience bears witness that we are morally justifiable - we have righteousness to withstand false accusations.

St. James seems to be describing a person who consciously chooses to not do the right thing; but, his statement can also describe the moral conviction of a person's conscience who has not learned that they were doing wrong until after they had already done it. This creates two categories of sin: 

• Consciously choosing to do sin
• Doing sin in ignorance

So, we see that someone who has a pure heart does not desire to do sin consciously; yet they might from time to time (by not knowing better) do things that defile their moral conscience, because they are still learning and growing in their knowledge of morality.

The one who is pure in heart is remorseful when they learn of the wrong they do, whereas impurity in our heart causes us to not embrace the true knowledge of morality. A person's impurity makes them consciously oppose The Holy Spirit when He brings a new knowledge of moral truth, deceiving themselves so they can feel comfortable about not doing the good that God has taught them.

What causes impurity in the heart?

It is a corruption/depletion/compromise of an essential element of love: that is, "goodness" (do unto others as you would have done to yourself - Matthew 7:12). This impurity entices us to act in ways that our moral compass would naturally condemn. 

Why does this happen?

It is essentially a Superiority Complex that establishes a lesser entitlement for one than another. A person who chooses to act immorally in good knowledge, determines another to be inferior and less entitled to a reasonable standard of treatment. This is a widespread social dysfunction on a range of observable measures, and in a lot of examples, it is considered "normal". (Eg: sexism, racism, abortion, cruelty, corruption, favouritism, etc). 

These double-standards can be formed in three ways:

• A habit is formed from what is popular in a surrounding culture (Motivations: pride, sloth, gluttony)
• A resentment is formed toward a stereotype that has caused us to suffer (Motivations: pride, wrath, envy)
• It is a means to an end, an unjust solution to an unrelated problem (Motivations: pride, lust, greed).

Jesus was explaining to His disciples that after His resurrection, He was going to be with The Father in heaven. He would send The Holy Spirit to be with His disciples, to help them as they continued the work He began. Jesus said that The Holy Spirit would convict the world, and so it is that wherever His disciples are exercising Holy Spirit, there is conviction upon those who are wrong (Romans 8).

But conviction is not present with all Christians this day.. indeed, as 2 Peter 2:2 warned, many have followed false teachers, engaging in depraved conduct, bringing the way of truth into disrepute.

For a Christian to exercise Holy Spirit, they must remove all of their own selfish interests and choose only to honour whatever is right according to truth: first for God's sake (because with Him there is no partiality) and secondly, for the sake of those who depend upon our faithful representation of Him - for we are made to be the image of God toward creation.

Wherever there is righteous conviction, there is persecution, because people love to do wickedness and they do not desire to know it (John 3:19-21). This love of wickedness is what drove them to extinguish the Christ - the one who spoke only perfect truth and love. 

Why did they do this?

It is because The Holy Spirit who was speaking through Jesus was convicting them of their sin. These ones were unable to corrupt Jesus' righteousness that He would become subject to them (Matthew 22:15), likewise they were unable to repent of the error of their ways to escape conviction (John 8:39-40). 

It is because His own did not receive Him and indeed they cut Him short (Daniel 9:26), that He was unable to fulfil all Messianic prophecies at that time. This has established His righteousness in God's sight, to resurrect Him to life so long as it takes to complete His Messianic mission (Psalms 110, Hebrews 10:12-13). 

It is because God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten son, that we need not perish forever. Instead, because He continues to reign from heaven (Hebrews 7:25) while we represent Him to earth, we can forever have life through believing in Him (Romans 5:17-19).

Too many Christians do not really know Jesus.

They have found a satisfactory belief system to ease their anxieties about death, and they assign coincidence as signs - but they do not yield to The Holy Spirit's conviction to obey Him that He may reveal Himself to them; they never recognise Him when He is in their midst (Matthew 18:20, John 14:17). 

Instead of yielding to The Risen Lord, they have yielded the authority of their faith to human masters whom they believe to be appointed teachers. They have fixed their mind to a distant hope of seeing Jesus one day, but never coming to know and learn from Him in the present (2 Timothy 3:6-7). 

Such ones only see the carnal realm but they do not perceive the spiritual.

Jesus warned that many would come to Him in the end, claiming inclusion because of the good things they had done in His name. But He would say to them "I never knew you. Get away from me, you are a worker of iniquity." (Matthew 7:21-23). 

This is intense! He calls them workers of iniquity, and says He never knew them. So, what exactly makes them believe that they have any right of association? .. it is as they said, that they "had done many good things in His name". 

Doing good is itself not enough to merit God's favour, because Jesus' Messianic objective depends upon our obedience (1 Corinthians 12:26). According to John 14:21, He would have revealed Himself to them if they had obeyed Him, but because He never knew them, we must necessarily deduce that they did not obey Him. These are the children of disobedience (Ephesians 5:5-6).

Therefore, their worship in His name amounts to a vain pursuit: