Admit it - sometimes you don't either. You know that day, the one where you're in a hurry to get out the door, kid or dog or coffee in one arm, bag or trash or computer in the other, fifty things on the to-do list for the day, and you're just glad that your head is physically attached to your body or you'd forget that too!
Surely that's not just me?
...
Anyone?
Okay, regardless of how busy (or not) your life gets, I was driving down the road the other day and I realized as I swiped my tongue across my newly brushed teeth that I had missed a substantial amount of...well, junk. They felt clean all along the front. But the backside of my teeth, the hidden places, felt as dirty as if I hadn't brushed. I honestly thought, "Wow, I might as well not have brushed my teeth..."
It's funny, though. Even on the days when it is obvious how poorly you've brushed, you still can't know exactly how well you clean your teeth until you actually go to the dentist. Then, to your horror and surprise, as the hygienist picks and digs and flosses all the areas you've been missing since your last visit, you realize that what you thought was a good overall attempt at keeping your teeth clean was really amateurish at best.
And then what happens? Your dentist tells you to do a better job, to actually floss (because it's obvious you haven't been...), and "We'll see you again in six months!" Right? Or is that just me?
It occurred to me as I pondered the whole process of dental hygiene that brushing teeth is like trying to be righteous apart from Christ.
Think about it. Justification is being declared righteous, spotless, clean before God. We all do our best to clean ourselves up. We dress it up nicely. We make excuses to justify the things we know are wrong but don't want to admit to. Sometimes we're even blinded to obvious sin because of our bias in our own favor. The average person would never see the sin that we commit on a daily basis. They would never notice just how bad of a job we do at making our lives pure.
But God sees.
He sees the sin and the brokenness. He sees the hurt and the pain. He sees our attempts at doing good things and how we hide it all behind a mask of personal strength or holiness or whatever else we put up to hide just how broken we really are. The problem is that anything "good" that we do is like filthy rags compared to the perfect righteousness of God. Within that problem lies yet another problem: because of how sinful we are, righteousness based on anything that we do apart from Christ is impossible.
No matter how hard I try I will never clean out all the nasty sin that is hidden away in the crevices of my heart. But God, like dentist does with our teeth, comes in and cleans house. I am so thankful for the work that God does! And I will praise God for the rest of my days because Jesus stepped in and made a way where there was no way. He gave up His life so that we could live. He became our righteousness for us.
I know the analogy isn't perfect, but I couldn't help being reminded as I thought about my dirty teeth that no matter how morally I try to live, no matter how strong I try to be, nothing will ever measure up to the standard of perfection that God's holiness requires. It's an endless cycle of cleanliness and filth - an impossible task for us as humans on this earth.
And that's okay. Because Jesus stepped in and did it for me.
Does it mean I'm perfect and I'll never do anything wrong the rest of my life? No! Does it mean that I can live however I want? Absolutely not. But it does mean that we can have a restored relationship with God. It means that as we grow in our walk with Him that God will continually make us more holy as He Himself is holy. And it means that we can rest in the joy of abundant life with Him and hope of the future in heaven.
That you might know Christ,
