“Just as I am, without one plea, but that Thy blood was shed for me, and that Thou bid’st me come to Thee, O Lamb of God, I come! I come!” I can hear this familiar tune and recall the times as a child it was sung as an alter call at my church growing up. The glorious truth found in this lyric reminds us that we can do nothing and it is only through Jesus Christ that we can be made holy. We are in need of His shed blood to cleanse us of all unrighteousness and we merely must come to the Lamb of God for salvation.
The cleansing of the temple, at the time of the Passover in John 2, shows a side of Jesus that is far from the Sunday School images of a meek and mild man. He was zealousness to maintain the holiness of His Father’s house and indignation toward the greed of the religious leaders moved Him to clear the temple. The Passover Lamb entered the temple and rid it of the sinners sitting at the merchant tables.
The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
When we respond to the Lamb of God and come, just as we are, full of sin and greed, the Holy Spirit enters us, we are cleansed and we become His temple. We are washed by the blood of the Lamb and our lives become His. The seriousness of sin was dealt with on the cross and we are saved by His perfect work and not our own.
As we are now the temple of the Holy Spirit, purchased by the inestimable sacrifice of Jesus Christ, He will continue His work in our lives, sanctifying us, setting us apart as holy, and driving out those things in our lives that make His temple unclean. He is zealous for us and in His zeal and great love for us, He will continue the work He began at Calvary and will complete it, presenting us spotless to the Father.
For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him (Colossians 2:21-22).
When Jesus shows us something in our lives that needs driving out, allow Him the space to do so. It is for our good and His glory that He continues the work of holiness in our lives. We are His bride and He will present us to the Father “without stain or wrinkle or any such blemish, but holy and blameless (Ephesians 5:27).