This week I had a new experience that I hope I never have to repeat—cleaning the drainpipe under the kitchen sink. When water was draining very slowly out of the sink, I knew that something was wrong. After an initial attempt to clear the pipe was unsuccessful, I brought out the big guns—a 15-foot plumbing snake and a PVC pipe cutter. Working from the basement, I opened up the pipe and began searching for the clog. After a little while, the clogged material was out of the pipe—some of it was on the floor and some of it was on me. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that the smell was simply wretched—one of the worst smells I have ever smelled.

While working on the drain, I thought of Isaiah 64:6—“All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.” In the same way that working on that pipe was gross and made me feel unclean, my sins make me unclean in the sight of our pure and holy God. And this sin problem is universal: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (Rom. 3:10-12) and “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). So when Solomon asks in Proverbs 20:9, “Who can say, “I have made my heart pure; I am clean from my sin”?” the answer is clearly no one.

But someone might claim that we can also do a lot of good things to win God’s approval. Can’t the good just outweigh the bad and make us acceptable to God? Such a view falls woefully short of the Biblical teaching about the extent to which our sin has infected us. Isaiah corrects such a misunderstanding when he declares that “all our righteous acts are like filthy rags”! Even our best is not good enough to earn God’s approval. Paul, speaking of the human condition apart from Christ, gives us words to express our anguish when we realize that even what we would call our “righteousness” can never do anything to restore God’s favor or earn his salvation: “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out… Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:18, 24).

Your sin makes you unclean and your righteousness is like filthy rags, but there is one who gave his life in order to make you clean and give you his perfect righteousness. So we do not despair, because Jesus came to die for sinners. Praise God that “…he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy…” (Titus 3:5).