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CLEANSED BY JESUS
A. Introduction: Since the beginning of this year our lessons have been based on things that Jesus said and
did the night before He was crucified, at what we know as the Last Supper.
1. It was Jesus’ final meal with His closest followers, the twelve apostles. Jesus said many things to
them that night to prepare them for the fact that He was going to leave them and return to Heaven.
a. The men didn’t understand much of what Jesus said, and they had no idea that He was going to
be crucified the next day. Jesus would explain everything after His resurrection. Luke 24:44-46
b. Near the end of the meal, Jesus took bread, broke it in pieces, gave it to the apostles saying, take
and eat it, for this is my body, given for you. He also took a cup of wine and told them to drink
from it, calling it His blood, poured out to forgive the sins of many. Jesus told them do this in
remembrance of me. Matt 26:26-28; Mark 14:22-24; Luke 22:17-20
1. The men didn’t realize it then, but Jesus was going to offer Himself as a sacrifice for sin the
very next day, and through His death, open the way to eternal life for all who believe in Him.
2. Neither did they know that these emblems (bread and wine) would become visible reminders
of Jesus’ sacrifice, and that generations of believers would continue the practice of eating the
bread and drinking the wine in remembrance of Him—down to our day.
2. We are currently working on a series about what this practice (known as communion) represents,
and why it is important to remember what Jesus has done for us. We have more to say tonight.
B. Instead of looking at the various ways that communion is practiced in different denominations, we are
considering how Jesus’ sacrifice of Himself fits into the big picture, or God’s overall plan for mankind.
1. Almighty God created human beings for relationship—to become His sons and daughters. And He
created us in such a way that He can indwell us by His Spirit and life (eternal, uncreated life). We
can then reflect or image Him (His love, holiness, joy, peace) to the world around us. Gen 1:26-27
a. All human beings have chosen independence from God through sin. We have all put our will
and our way above His will and way, which disqualifies us for God’s family. Rom 3:23; Isa 53:6
b. When Adam, the first human being, Adam, sinned his disobedience affected the entire human
race within him, and human nature was corrupted. Humans are born with a corruption that
inclines us to exalt ourselves above God and others (lessons for another day).
c. God has a plan to recover His family through Jesus. Jesus is God Incarnate—God become fully
man without ceasing to be fully God. Two thousand years ago Jesus took on a human nature
and was born into this world to die as a sacrifice for sin and remove it, so that we can be restored
to relationship with God through faith in Him.
1. II Cor 5:15—(Jesus) died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer
live to please themselves. Instead, they will live to please Christ, who died and was raised
for them (NLT).
2. Titus 2:14—He (Jesus) gave his life to free us from every kind of sin, to cleanse us, and to
make us his very own people, totally committed to doing what is right (NLT).
2. Almighty God desires sons and daughters who are holy and live holy lives. To be holy means to be
set apart for God and to be separate from sin.
a. Eph 1:4—Long ago, even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be
holy and without fault (NLT) before His searching, penetrating gaze (Wuest).
b. II Tim 1:9—It is God who saved us, and chose us to live a holy life. He did this not because we
deserved it, but because that was his plan long before the world began—to show his love and
kindness to us through Christ Jesus (NLT).
c. I Pet 1:14-16—Obey God because you are his children…now you must be holy in everything

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you do, just as God—who chose you to be his children—is holy. For he himself has said, “You
must be holy because I am holy” (NLT).
3. Talking about holiness (being holy and living holy) makes us nervous because we know that we fall
short. We all still sin and struggle with habits, attitudes, and actions that would not be described as
holy. This is why understanding the big picture—why Jesus died and what His death accomplished
—is so important and so practical (more in this in a moment).
a. Christianity is more than a belief system. It’s an organic, living relationship with God through
union and shared life. God’s intention has always been to indwell His sons and daughters. But
sin made this impossible.
b. Jesus’ death was a means to an end. He died as a sacrifice for sin to remove the guilt of sin
from us and open the way for God, who is holy, to indwell fallen, sinful men and women.
Jesus’ sacrifice was a success. And we are cleansed of sin through faith in Him.
1. Heb 10:14—By one sacrifice he (Jesus) has made perfect forever those who are being made
holy (NIV). The Greek word translated perfect means to make complete or make perfect by
reaching the intended goal—to fully cleanse from sin.
2. Col 1:20-22—By (Jesus) God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with
everything in heaven and on earth by means of his blood on the cross…As a result, he has
brought you into the very presence of God, and you are holy and blameless as you stand
before him without a single fault (NLT).
c. On the basis of Jesus’ sacrifice, Almighty God can now indwell us by His Spirit and life. This
makes us His holy sons and daughters through what the Bible calls a new birth. And, a process
begins that will ultimately make us holy in every thought, word, and action.
4. To appreciate all that this means we need to understand two important words: justification and
sanctification. Justification comes from a word that means to be made right or righteous.
Sanctification is from a word that means to make holy or purify.
a. Because of Jesus’ sacrifice and through faith in Him, we are justified or made righteous before
God. He indwells us, and we become sons and daughters of God through a second birth.
1. Rom 5:1—Therefore, since we are justified—acquitted, declared righteous, and given a right
standing with God—through faith Amp) we have peace with God (NLT).
2. John 1:12-13—But to all who believed him (Jesus) and accepted him, he gave the right to
become children of God. They are reborn! This is not a physical birth resulting from
human passion or plan—this rebirth come comes from God (NLT).
b. But we all know that our thoughts, words, and actions are not automatically changed when we
become sons and daughters of God.
1. We must change them and bring them into submission to the Lord, with the help of His Spirit
in us. This is a process, a progressive separation from sin, from what is evil in the sight of
God. This process is called sanctification (many lessons for another day).
2. The point for now is that God is now in us by His Spirit and life to empower us to make the
necessary changes to behavior, thoughts, and attitudes as we trust and obey Him.
A. Phil 2:13—God is working in you, giving you the desire to obey him and the power to do
what pleases him (NLT). Heb 13:21—May (God) produce in you, through the power of
Jesus Christ, all that is pleasing to him (NLT).
B. Rom 8:11-13—If the Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from death, lives in you, then he
who raised Christ from death will also give life to your mortal bodies by the presence of
his Spirit in you. So then, my brothers, we have an obligation, but not to live as our
human nature wants us to. For if you live according to your human nature, you are
going to die; but, if by the Spirit, you kill your sinful actions, you will live (Good News

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Bible) (many lessons for another day).
c. We must understand that we are finished works in progress—we are fully God’s sons and
daughters through faith in Jesus and His sacrifice. We are justified, holy, and blameless in His
sight, but we are not yet fully all the we are meant to be in character and action.
1. Even though we fall short, God deals with us as sons and daughters. And if we stay faithful
to Him, the process of sanctification and restoration will be completed when Jesus returns.
A. Jude 24—And now, all glory to God who is able to keep you from stumbling, and who
will bring you into his glorious presence innocent of all sin and with great joy (NLT).
B. Phil 1:6—He Who began a good work in you will continue until the day of Jesus Christ
—right up to the time of His return—developing [that good work] and perfecting and
bringing it to full completion in you (Amp).
2. Jesus, in His humanity, is the pattern for God’s family: God, in His foreknowledge chose
(us) to bear the family likeness of his Son (Rom 8:29, J. B. Phillips). Jesus shows us what
holiness looks like in a human.
A. When God’s overall plan for mankind is completed, in connection with Jesus’ second
coming, we will be fully like Him and character and actions (lessons for another day).
B. I John 3:1-2—See how very much our heavenly Father loves us, for he allows us to be
called his children, and we really are…Yes, dear friends, we are already God’s children,
and we can’t even imagine what we will be like when Christ returns. But we know that
when he comes we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is (NLT).
C. How does remembering and understanding Jesus’ death help us on a practical level? And how does all
of this connect to communion and why Jesus died?
1. Through the years, I’ve had more than one sincere Christian admit to me that they worry when they
take communion, since they know they are not worthy to receive it because of their shortcomings.
a. This idea comes from misunderstanding something Paul wrote in an epistle to Christians in the
Greek city of Corinth. Word reached Paul that there were problems in the church and they
needed help. One of the problems was with communion. Paul wrote to address those issues.
1. We know from the historical record that the earliest Christians came together for a meal, and
at the end they would partake of the bread and wine (communion), just as Jesus instructed.
2. At this meal, some of the people in the church in Corinth were getting drunk, and others were
overeating to the point where there wasn’t enough food for everyone. I Cor 11:20-22
b. Paul corrected them by reminding them what Jesus did and said at the Last Supper: Jesus took
bread, gave thanks, broke it, and said: “This is My body which is broken for you. Do this in
remembrance of me.” Then He took the cup of wine and said: “This cup is the new covenant in
My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me” (I Cor 11:24-25, NKJV).
1. Then Paul wrote: So if anyone eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord unworthily, that
person is guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. That is why you should
examine yourself before eating the bread and drinking from the cup. For if you eat the bread
or drink the cup unworthily, not honoring the body of Christ, you are eating and drinking
God’s judgment on yourself. (I Cor 11:27-30, NLT).
2. The Greek word that is translated unworthily means irreverently. Irreverent means lack of
reverence, disrespectfully. To reverence means to honor, to worship, to show devotion.
A. Through their behavior at the communion meal (overeating and overdrinking), the
Corinthians were irreverent. They were not recognizing and remembering the value of
what Jesus did at the Cross. They were taking it lightly—a serious sin according to Paul.
B. Paul continued: But if we examine ourselves, we will not be examined by God and

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judged in this way. But when we are judged and disciplined by the Lord, we will not be
condemned with the world (I Cor 11:31-32, NLT).
C. Paul warned them that this persistent sin was bringing consequences. God allowed them
to reap the consequences in the hope of waking them up before they reap a greater,
irreversible consequence—condemnation with the world (lessons for another day).
3. The point for us is that it is important that we understand what Jesus did for us through the
sacrifice of Himself and not take it lightly. We need to remember and be thankful,
respectful, and reverent about what He did for us—not just at communion, but always.
2. What about when we, as Christians, sin? How does it affect our standing and relationship with the
Lord? We get insight into this from a letter that John the apostle wrote many years after Jesus
returned to Heaven. By that time false teachers were preaching that it doesn’t matter if you sin.
a. I John 2:1-2—My dear children, I am writing this to you so that you will not sin. But if you do
sin, there is someone to plead for you before the Father. He is Jesus Christ, the one who pleases
God completely. He is the sacrifice for our sins (NLT).
b. I John 1:7-9—But if we are living in the light of God’s presence just as Christ is…the blood of
his Son cleanses us from every sin. If we say we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and
refusing to accept the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive
us and to cleanse us from every wrong (NLT).
1. Why confess our sin and ask for forgiveness if Jesus’ death wiped out our guilt? Because
sin is an offense against God. When you offend someone you’re in relationship with, once
you realize what you’ve done, you ask for forgiveness because it’s right relationally. Our
relationship with our Father doesn’t end when we sin, but it’s right to ask Him to forgive us.
2. And, on the basis of Jesus’ once for all sacrifice at the Cross, God our Father can justly and
rightly forgive our sin and cleanse us from it.
3. Jesus said something at the Last Supper that gives us insight into this. At that meal Jesus washed
the apostles’ feet (more on this in later lessons). Peter the apostle at first refused to let Jesus wash
his feet. Jesus replied: If I don’t wash you, you won’t belong to me…A person who has bathed all
over does not need to wash, except for the feet, to be entirely clean (John 13:8-10, NLT).
a. In that culture, even though people bathed (washed all over), because they wore sandals, their
feet got dirty. It was the custom to wash off the dirty feet when they went into a home.
b. The apostles didn’t understand it yet, but “bathed or washed all over” was a reference to the
cleansing that Jesus’ death will provide—the washing of regeneration, or the cleansing and new
birth given by the Holy Ghost, on the basis of Jesus’ sacrifice of Himself at the Cross. Titus 3:5
c. Even though we as Christians have been washed all over (cleansed by the blood), our feet still
“get dirty”. We still sin. But our Father is faithful and just to cleanse us from the “dirt”.
D. Conclusion: In the context of urging believers to walk in love, John wrote: It is by our actions that we
know we are living in the truth, so we will be confident when we stand before the Lord, even if our
hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts and he knows everything (I John 3:19, NLT).
1. When our actions fall short and we feel condemned, God is greater than our emotions. He knows
what Jesus’ sacrifice accomplished and that the work He has begun in us will be completed.
2. Communion is a visible representation of what God has done for us. Jesus cleansed us and made us
worthy by His sacrifice. Worth is measured by the esteem in which something it is held.
a. Our value and worth comes not from our achievements, but from our value to God. I Peter
1:18—(God) paid for you with the precious life of Christ, the spotless Lamb of God (NLT).
b. Eph 3:12—Because of Christ and our faith in him, we can now come fearlessly into God’s
presence, assured of his glad welcome (NLT). We have continual cleansing. More next week!