Who can say, “I have cleansed my heart,
I am pure from my sin”?

Proverbs 20:9

We are still in the chapters of Proverbs that use comparisons and contrasts to state God’s wise expectations and sound biblical principles. Solomon was surely gifted by God to use the extra portion of wisdom given to him to write each proverb in a way that every human can ‘get it’! Every person who reads these proverbs can, if reading with any integrity at all, understand what has been written. We smile at the beautiful imagery, laugh at funny animal references and then nod our heads in agreement to the common-sense truth these animals bring to the human experience. 

And in it all, Solomon asks the sobering question found in our key verse for today. I can imagine Solomon at his desk diligently gathering the hundreds of proverbs God has inspired within him and writing them down. Did he know then that 3000 years later his God-breathed words would still bring a smile to me one minute and a deep sadness to my heart the next? Did he know it would be 1000 years before his Messiah would come to earth and die on a cross for his sins, which were many and rise again giving him eternal life? Did he believe this sin-ravaged world would still be moving toward Christ’s second coming sustained only by God’s grace until then? 

I wonder these things, but can’t possibly know, but I do plan to ask him and the other Bible authors these questions one day. What I do know is that Solomon somewhere in the process of writing these many wonderful proverbs, he pondered a very Ecclesiastes’ style question. Maybe it was the question that prompted him to write the book we know by that name. That would actually be pretty cool, and I will ask him if I’ve guessed correctly. 

Who can say, “I have cleansed my heart, I am pure from my sin”? Proverbs 20:9

What I can know is that Solomon struggled with his own sin problem! Not just his sins, but with his sin problem. You see, I commit, and you do too, many sins throughout each day, week, month and year. I steal, I act jealously, I lie, I hate (murder in my heart) and on and on. And these sins are terrible! But my real problem is my sin nature, the one I was born with thanks to the first Adam. 

Jesus didn’t die to take away my sins. (Don’t throw stones, please!) He died to save me from my sin problem! The sin debt that, from conception, is my heart! Being sanctified from each individual sinful thought or act I have or ever will commit is the amazing result of being freed from my sin problem; my debt being paid for by Jesus Christ’s shed blood on the cross!

No doubt Solomon read his father David’s song; the one we call Psalm 51. And he concluded, as David did; he didn’t just commit sins. Solomon’s heart was sin! And he also concluded that his ‘sin heart’ needed a whole and complete cleansing and that was something he, even as the wisest man who ever lived, could not make his heart pure. He could not make his heart new!

This was the great struggle Martin Luther faced 500 years ago and probably why we are here today as 21^st Century born-again believers! It is why we have the 95 Thesis! Luther spent half his life trying to cleanse his heart from each individual sin-thought or sin-action he committed, but he couldn’t deal with his sin problem…his sin debt…his sin heart!

But! And this is the biggest “But” ever…But, Jesus can give me a new heart! For David, For Solomon, For Luther, For Me, For You!

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.
He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

1 Corinthians 5:17 and 5:21