PURIFICATION & POLLUTION

 Purification & Pollution

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‘Now a river went out of Eden to water the garden’ (Gen. 2:10a). Imagine how pristine both the river out of Eden and Adam in the garden were until he disobeyed and thereby declared humankind’s war on the Creator; after which the LORD God said to him, ‘Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life’ (Gen. 3:17b). 

How many rivers and lakes have been polluted ‘in the sweat of your face’ (Gen. 3:19a) by industrial man, down through the ages? Whether a river or humanity, that which is polluted needs to be purified. For, ‘Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening? … no spring yields both salt water and fresh’ (James 3:11-12), and ‘Man decays like a rotten thing, like a garment that is moth eaten’ (Prov. 13:28). So the question is: ‘Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? No one!’ (Prov. 14:4). Yes, no one but God!

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How does God purify that which has been polluted by mankind? He passes it through His ‘Filter’, i.e., His Son, Jesus Christ. The end result being that that which had been polluted is being and shall be purified. ‘Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb… And there shall be no more curse’ (Rev. 22:1, 3a). So, we see that God cursing the ground was part of His plan to thwart ‘the best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men’ (Burns). ‘For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the One who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time’ (Rom. 8:20-22).

Perhaps you’ve never thought of Jesus as being God’s ‘Filter’ for purifying the polluted? ‘For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time’ (1 Tim. 2:5-6). A mediator, as you know, is a go-between. Jesus said, ‘No one come to the Father except through Me’ (John 14:6b). Therefore, if you or your religion, including your so-called non-religion, are not going through Jesus, you are swimming in polluted waters and will be drowned therein – unless Jesus is your ‘Filter’ of purification. ‘And we all have become like the unclean, and all our deeds of justice like a menstrual cloth’ (Isa. 64:6a, LEB). ‘But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin’ (1 John 1:7).

Humanity is descended from disobedient Adam. He was our representative before God, and it’s our collective sin and our personal sins that pollutes us and the creation in which we live. However, God has graciously revealed a new Representative, a new Adam, an eternally obedient replacement, the Man Christ Jesus. He lived the perfect life that Adam failed to live, and He died to save believers from hellfire. ‘For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Rom. 6:23). It is because of our pollution that we have so much trouble seeing our dire need for God’s gift of His Son. We tend to think that we are not as polluted as others. We may be heard to say, ‘No one is perfect’ or ‘To err is human’ or refer to ‘a white lie’ as opposed to a ‘black lie’ to help diminish how polluted we really are as we try to justify why we do not need Jesus. However, only Jesus is the purification for your pollution. Trust only in Him.