Listen, again, to the stern moralist and preacher of holiness, "Cleanse
your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double minded." Here,
again, we can but thankfully admire the perfect accuracy of the Holy
Ghost, as regards the method of full salvation. To cleanse the hands is
to obtain pardon and absolution for what we have done, and it is always
the first work of the unsaved man to repent and seek the forgiveness of
his sins. When this forgiveness has been obtained, then his hands are
cleansed, but he may still be double-minded. He may still be unstable
in all his ways. His spiritual course may still be zig-zag. His life
may still be a series of sinning and repenting, and sinning again and
repenting again, till he cries out in his misery, "O wretched man that
I am, who (not what) shall deliver me from this body of death?" And
then James's prescription comes home to him, "Purify your hearts, ye
double-minded." Seek and obtain the blessing of entire sanctification,
and, henceforth, with one mind and one purpose, run joyfully in the way
of Christ's commandments. Justification first and entire sanctification
afterwards. First cleanse your hands, then purify your hearts. And with
this agree the words of the Psalmist, "Who shall ascend into the hill
of the Lord? or who shall stand in His holy place?" "He that hath clean
hands," that is, whose sins have been pardoned, "and a pure heart,"
that is, who has been sanctified wholly. The teachings of the Holy
Ghost are marvelously harmonious in the Old Testament and the New.
Finally, James assures us that the "prayer of faith shall save the
sick, and the Lord shall raise him up." And not only physical but
spiritual blessing may be received in the same way for "If he have
committed sins, they shall be forgiven him." His conclusion is that
"The supplication of a righteous man availeth much in its working,"
R.V., but I prefer to regard the Greek participle in the original as in
the passive voice, and then the meaning would be, as suggested by Dr.
S.A. Keen in his Faith papers, "The prayer of a righteous man being
energized" (by the Holy Ghost) "availeth much."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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