If I wash myself with snow water.
An estimate of the morality that is without godliness
In the eyes of the pure God, the man who has made the most copious application in his power of snow water to the visible conduct, may still be an object of abhorrence; and that if God enter into judgment with him, He will make him appear as one plunged in the ditch, his righteousness as filthy rags, and himself as an unclean thing. There are a thousand things which, in popular and understood language, man can do. It is quite the general sentiment, that he can abstain from stealing, and lying, and calumny--that he can give of his substance to the poor, and attend church, and pray, and read his Bible, and keep up the worship of God in his family. But, as an instance of distinction between what he can do, and what he cannot do, let us make the undoubted assertion that he can eat wormwood, and just put the question, if he can also relish wormwood. That is a different affair. I may command the performance; but have no such command over my organs of sense, as to command a liking or a taste for the performance. The illustration is homely; but it is enough for our purpose if it be effective. I may accomplish the doing of what God bids; but have no pleasure in God himself. The forcible constraining of the hand may make out many a visible act of obedience; but the relish of the heart may refuse to go along with it. The outer man may be all in a bustle about the commandments of God; while to the inner man God is an offence and a weariness. His neighbours may look at him; and all that their eye can reach may be as clean as snow water can make it. But the eye of God reaches a great deal farther. He is the discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart; and he may see the foulness of spiritual idolatry in every one of its receptacles. The poor man has no more conquered his rebellious affections than he has conquered his distaste for wormwood. He may fear God; he may listen to God; and, in outward deed, may obey God. But he does not, and he will not, love God; and while he drags a heavy load of tasks, and duties, and observances after him, he lives in the hourly violation of the first and greatest of the commandments. Would any parent among you count it enough that you had obtained a service like this from one of your children? Would you be satisfied with the obedience of his hand, while you knew that the affections of his heart were totally away from you? The service may be done; but all that can minister satisfaction in the principle of the service, may be withheld from it; and though the very last item of the bidden performance is rendered, this will neither mend the deformity of the unnatural child, nor soothe the feelings of the afflicted and the mortified father. God is the Father of spirits; and the willing subjection of the spirit is that which He requires of us--“My son, give Me thy heart”; and if the heart be withheld, God says of all our visible performances, “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto Me?” The heart is His requirement; and full indeed is the title which He prefers to it. He put life into us; and it is He who hath drawn a circle of enjoyments, and friendships, and interests, around us. Everything that we take delight in, is ministered to us out of His hand. He plies us every moment with His kindness; and when at length the gift stole the heart of man away from the Giver, so that he became a lover of his own pleasure rather than a lover of God, even then would He not leave us to perish in the guilt of our rebellion. Man made himself an alien, but God was not willing to abandon him; and, rather than lose him forever, did He devise a way of access by which to woo and to welcome him back again. The way of our recovery is indeed a way that His heart was set upon; and to prove it, He sent His own Eternal Son into the world, who unrobed Him of all His glories, and made Himself of no reputation. If, after all this, the antipathy of nature to God still cleave to us--if, under the power of this antipathy, the service we yield be the cold and unwilling service of constraint--if, with many of the visible outworks of obedience, there be also the strugglings of a reluctant heart to take away from this obedience all its cheerfulness, is not God defrauded of His offering? (T. Chalmers, D. D.)
Washed to greater foulness
The similitudes of grief are here piled up in heaps, with what an old author has spoken of as the “rhetoric of sorrow.” Physical sufferings had produced a stain on Job’s mind, and he sought relief by expressing his anguish. Like some solitary prisoner in the gloomy keep of an old castle, he graves on the walls pictures of the abject despondencies which haunt him.
I. At the outset we observe that quickened souls are conscious of guilt. They know it; they feel it; and they blush to find that they are without excuse for it. All men are sinners: to most men, however, sin appears to be a fashion of the times, a necessity of nature, a folly of youth, or an infirmity of age, which a slight apology will suffice to remove. Not till men are quickened by Divine grace do they truly know that they are sinners. How is this? Some diseases are so insidious that the sufferers fancy that they are getting better, while in very truth they are hastening to the grave. After such manner does sin deceive the sons of men: they think they are saved when they are still unrenewed. How is this, you ask again? Few give themselves the trouble to think about these matters at all. Ours is an age in which men’s thoughts are keen upon politics and merchandise, practical science, and economic inventions. To natural ignorance we may attribute much of the ordinary indifference of men to their own sinfulness. They live in a benighted age. In vain you boast the enlightenment of this nineteenth century: the nineteenth century is not one whir more enlightened as to the depravity of human nature than the first century. Men are as ignorant of the plague of their own hearts today as they were when Paul addressed them. Hardly a glimmer of the humbling truth of our natural depravity dawns on the dull apprehension of the worldly wise, though souls taught from above know it and are appalled by it. In divers ways the discovery comes to those whom the Lord ordains to save. Sometimes a preacher sent of God lets in the dreadful light. Many men, like the false prophet Mokanna, hide their deformity. You may walk through a dark cellar without discerning by the eye that anything noisome is there concealed. Let the shutters be thrown open! Bid the light of day stream in! You soon perceive frogs upon the cold clammy pavement, filthy cobwebs hanging on the walls in long festoons, foul vermin creeping about everywhere. Startled, alarmed, horrified, who would not wish to flee away, and find a healthier atmosphere? The rays of the sun are, however, but a faint image of that light Divine shed by the Holy Spirit, which penetrates the thickest shades of human folly and infatuation, and exposes the treachery of the inmost heart.
II. We pass on to notice that it often happens that awakened souls use many ineffectual means to obtain cleansing. Job describes himself as washing in snow water, and making his hands never so clean. His expressions remind me of my own labour in vain. By how many experiments I tried to purify my own soul! See a squirrel in a cage; the poor thing is working away, trying to mount, yet he never rises one inch higher. In like case is the sinner who seeks to save himself by his own good works or by any other means: he toils without result. It is astonishing what pains men will take in this useless drudgery. In seeking to obtain absolution of their sins, to establish a righteousness of their own, and to secure peace of mind, men tax their ingenuity to the utmost. Job talks of washing himself “with snow water.” The imagery is, no doubt, meant to be instructive. Why is snow water selected?
1. The reason probably was, first, because it was hard to get. Far easier, generally, to procure water from the running brooks than from melted snow. Men set a high value on that which is difficult to procure. Forms of worship which are expensive and difficult are greatly affected by many, as snow water was thought in Job’s day to be a bath for kings; but, after all, it is an idle fashion, likely to mislead.
2. Besides, snow water enjoyed a reputation for purity. If you would have a natural filtered water gather the newly-fallen snow and melt it. Specimens yet remain among us of piety more than possible to men, religiousness above the range of mortals; which piety is, however, not of God’s grace, and consequently is a vain show. Though we should use the purest ceremonies, multiply the best of good works, and add thereto the costliest of gifts, yet we should be unable to make ourselves clean before God. You may wash yourself till you deny the existence of a spot, and yet you may be unclean.
3. Once again, this snow water is probably extolled because it descends from the clouds of heaven, instead of bubbling up from the clods of earth. Religiousness which can colour itself with an appearance of the supernatural is very taking with many. If I “make my hands never so clean,” is an expression peculiarly racy in the original. The Hebrew word has an allusion to soap or nitre. Such was the ordinary and obvious method anyone would take to whiten his hands when they were grimy. Tradition tells that certain stains of blood cleave to the floor. The idea is that human blood, shed in murder, can never be scrubbed or scraped off the boards. Thus is it most certainly with the dye of sin. The blood of souls is in thy skirts, is the terrible language of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 2:34). These worthless experiments to cleanse yourselves would be ended once for all if you would have regard to the great truth of the Gospel: “Without shedding of blood there is no remission The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.”
III. But as sure as ever quickened souls try to get purity in the wrong way, God will thrust them down into the ditch. This is a terrible predicament. I find, on looking at the passage closely, that it means “head over ears in the ditch.” Often it happens with those who try to get better by their own good works, that their conscience is awakened by the effort, and they are more conscious of sin than ever. The word here rendered “ditch” is elsewhere translated “corruption.” So in the sixteenth Psalm: “Neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption.” Language cannot paint abasement, reproach, or ignominy in stronger terms. “Thou shalt plunge me in the ditch.” Is it not as though God Himself would undertake the business of causing His people to know that by their vain ablutions they were making themselves yet more vile in His eyes? May we not regard this as the discipline of our Heavenly Father’s love, albeit when passing through the trial we do not perceive it to be so? “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.” Perhaps the experience I am trying to describe will come to you through the preaching of the Word. Frequently our great Lord leaves a poor wayward soul to eat the fruits of its own ways, and this is the severest form of plunging in the ditch. While striving after righteousness in a wrong way, the man stumbles into the very sin against which he struggled. His empty conceit might not have been dislodged from its secret lurking place in his depraved nature without some such perilous downfall. Thus do we, in our different spheres, fly from this to that, and from that to the other. Some hope to cleanse away sin by a supreme effort of self-denial, or of miraculous faith. Let us not play at purification, nor vainly hope to satisfy conscience with that which renders no satisfaction to God. Persons of sensitive disposition, and sedentary habits, are prone to seek a righteousness of inward feeling. Oh, that it could turn from feeling to faith; and look steadily out of inward sensation to the work finished once for all by the Lord Jesus!
IV. By such severe training the awakened one is led to look alone to God for salvation, and to find the salvation he looks for. (C. H. Spurgeon.)