Is cleanliness next to godliness?

Hello Blik,

My point was/is, that no matter how clean you get on the outside by washing with water, it can never cover one's sins. Only the blood of Christ can do that. Cleanliness is not next to Godliness. But faith in the shed blood of Christ credits us with righteousness and reconciles us to God.

Well it doesnt have to be a law. Why everyone seems to makes out the law in the OT to be something BAD is beyond me. Otherwise why would anyone bother with washing.

We had whole pyjama drive at church for children who need to live in cars cos they have no home!

Where does this phrase come from, is it from the Bible?

It may not be from the Bible, but it is quite accurate.

Physical and external cleanliness is important provided internal cleanliness is even more important.

And a day is coming when this earth and its atmosphere will be totally burned up with supernatural cleansing fire, so that there is a cleansed earth and heaven prepared to become the New Heavens and the New Earth.

Is it a competition? The who can do more for the poor and brag about it competition?

You ignore where Jesus said, don't practice your righteousness before men and when give alms, let not your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Matthew 6:1-4

You ignore the words of Jesus, while you highlight the words of John Wesley. Matthew 15:9

Jesus says do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Luke 6:31

Bearing that in mind, it makes sense that we would keep ourselves and our surroundings clean.

If your neighbour does not dispose of their garbage properly, it will attract insects that will soon make their way over to your place.

If you don't take a bath, you will have an odor. When you turn up at church with an odor, everyone will be uncomfortable.

To be of help to others, you want to be as healthy as you possibly can. And in keeping clean, you can prevent certain illnesses.

So we all can agree, being clean and tidy makes sense.

But God says we must neither add nor take away from His word. Deuteronomy 4:2

While we all need to be physically clean, the cleanness that God emphasizes is cleanness from sin. Isaiah 1:16,18

If you have an issue with untidy people, then make a thread about that. But do it in such a way where you are not making a doctrine out of it.

Stop with your nonsense.

Ok lets go back to to topic what does the Bible say about cleanliness and does it give us any tips.

Come on, I dont have all day to muse on why its ok to just stay dirty.

David prayed this prayer...create in me a clean heart, O lord, and renew a right spirit within me.

Our Lord uses symbols in our world. All of what we live, think, and do has spiritual meaning and the results of our actions are spiritual as well as physical. Physical cleanliness is an example.

Deut. 23: 12 Thou shalt have a place also without the camp, whither thou shalt go forth abroad:
13 And thou shalt have a paddle upon thy weapon; and it shall be, when thou wilt ease thyself abroad, thou shalt dig therewith, and shalt turn back and cover that which cometh from thee:
14 For the LORD thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp, to deliver thee, and to give up thine enemies before thee; therefore shall thy camp be holy: that he see no unclean thing in thee, and turn away from thee.

Note that it was physical cleanliness that was necessary for the camp to be holy. The physical results of this law was that a group as large as that group was, living together, did not have the diseases that creeps through large camps of people without cleanliness.

I so agree. If we thought and spoke using the language of Hebrew we wouldn't be using the word law at all. There is no one word to translate how the Hebrew language puts what we read as law. It includes the English word guidance as an example.

Here’s the best answer to its origins I could find;

The saying “cleanliness is next to godliness” does not appear in the Bible. The expression is an archaic proverb found in Babylonian and Hebrew religious tracts. Its debut in the English language, in a modified form, is found in the writings of philosopher and scientist Sir Francis Bacon. In Advancement of Learning (1605) he wrote, “Cleanness of body was ever deemed to proceed from a due reverence to God.” Almost two hundred years later (1791), John Wesley made a reference to the expression in one of his sermons in the form we use it today. Wesley wrote, “Slovenliness is no part of religion. Cleanliness is indeed next to Godliness."

It’s hard to say where the idea of a connection between cleanliness and godliness originated. The Israelites were certainly concerned about the concepts of “clean” and “unclean” because a major portion of the Mosaic Law outlines the principles of each. Among the unclean things that God’s people were to avoid are dead bodies and carcasses, eating certain animals, leprosy, and bodily discharges. Elaborate washing rituals were prescribed to render an unclean person clean again so that he could re-enter the community and the sanctuary of the Lord (Numbers 19). For the Jew, keeping the ceremonial laws and regulations was considered the way to approach God. Therefore, it is no wonder that the expression has its roots in Hebrew literature.

Biblically speaking, however, outward cleanliness has no connection to godliness. Jesus made it clear that men are defiled by what is in their hearts and that godliness is not attained by what we eat or don’t eat or by how often we wash our hands (Matthew 7:18-23). The Pharisees who questioned Jesus on His teachings failed to understand that truth. They adhered to the Old Testament requirements and ceremonies as they waited for their Messiah. But when He came and stood before them, they were blinded by their own efforts to obtain righteousness by the Law, and they denied Him. He told them, “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life” (John 5:39-40). For all their attention to the details of clean and unclean, they remained far from godliness.

The Greek word translated “godliness” in the New Testament means “holiness,” without which no one will see God (Hebrews 12:14). But it is a holiness not obtained by keeping the Law, which is impossible (Romans 3:20; Galatians 2:16), but by being transformed into completely new creations in Christ by the power of God (2 Corinthians 5:17; Ephesians 4:24). At the moment of salvation, we are made completely clean and righteous before God and only then can we share in His godliness.

This post gives the best of fleshly reasoning, if you take out the spirit of the Lord this is what you get.

God uses physical acts as a symbol of the spiritual, fleshly reasoning just takes out the spiritual. God looks at the spiritual that the physical acts represent, not the physical acts alone. They can't be separated as God designed our world, and here is a man who believes they can and acts on it.

I used a little history and eight different books of Scripture to zero in on the crux of the of the “saying” at issue.
Jesus said it best when He stated in Matthew,
[16] And Jesus said, Are ye also yet without understanding?
[17] Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught?
[18] But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man.
[19] For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies:
[20] These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.