Not washing oneself

There are some believers who think that to be humble means not to wash oneself or to wash oneself rarely, so wherever you meet these believers (even in the place of worship) they are dirty and smelly. Such a behaviour is of the devil, because it does not honour one’s body, which is the house of God and the Scripture says that God wants the saints to keep their body in sanctification and honour (1 Thessalonians 4:4), and because through it one causes people to blaspheme the doctrine of God, and thus he causes them to stumble. How will the people of the world honor the doctrine of our God if we say to them or show them that our God does not want us to wash ourselves? I am sure, they will by no means honour His doctrine because they will think that we have a God who wants us to be bad-smelling and to have lice or some other little animals on our body running the risk of passing them on to those who are near us.

The law was against the presence of dirt in the midst of the camp of God, for God said: “Also you shall have a place outside the camp, where you may go out; and you shall have an implement among your equipment, and when you sit down outside, you shall dig with it and turn and cover your refuse. For the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp, to deliver you and give your enemies over to you: therefore your camp shall be holy, that He may see no unclean thing among you, and turn away from you” (Deuteronomy 23:12-14 - NKJV). And since we are now God’s field (1 Corinthians 3:9) and God walks in the midst of us and dwells among us, we must keep ourselves clean even from the physical point of view and not only from the spiritual point of view because God does not take pleasure in seeing dirt in the midst of His field, which dirt I remind you has a bad smell.

So, brothers, I exhort you to wash yourselves, in order to keep your body clean and not to smell bad, otherwise your bad smell will keep people far from you. Remember that your body does not belong to you but it belongs to the Lord because it was bought at a price (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). Your body is His house and we must take care of His house because it is a holy house. If the servants of an earthly king make every effort to keep the house of their master clean, so that their king may be honoured, shouldn’t you, who are servants of the King of kings and the Possessor of heaven and earth, make every effort to keep His house, which is your body, clean? If the place of worship, which is not the house of God, is cleaned and kept in order because the saints gather together in it, how much more must your body be kept clean because the God of glory dwells in it, I say it again, because the God of glory dwells in it!

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