I was running bath water for my son Isaac once and I heard something behind me. I turned and asked him what he was doing. He said that he was washing his hands. I asked him why he was washing his hands, he was fixing to get a bath.
It sounds silly to us to wash before you bathe. Kind of like taking a bath before you get a shower or vice versa. You don’t get clean to get a bath. Though this sounds like a strange idea many people apply the same concept to coming to Jesus. People think they have to clean up their act and then come to God. They think they have to start living right before they can come to Jesus.
That idea is so backwards from the way it really is. We don’t get good to get God, we get God to get good. Don’t you know that the Word says that all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6 KJV). We can’t do enough right things to clear the sin stain from our lives. No, there is only one thing that can do that. Because it is the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin (1 John 1:7 KJV).
Stop trying to be good enough to get to God. Go to God and let Him clean you up. As He says in Isaiah 1:18 (KJV) Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
Romans 5:6-8 KJV 6 For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. 8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.