Proverbs 16:2 “All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes;

but the Lord weighs the spirits.”

            You tell your young child to go clean their room and they come back a few minutes later, all smiles, “I’m finished! It’s all clean.”  Then you go to inspect their room because you remember, “Don’t expect what you don’t inspect.”

• Wadded up paper balls in the corner
• A loose sock in another corner
• Piles of paper shoved (well mostly shoved) under the bed and dresser
• A few toys still on the floor
• In short, the room is not clean 

           It took me a while to understand that, to my child, the room was clean. They did not see the room from my perspective. I had to teach them. I had to help them understand that all the trash in the room had to be thrown away. All the dirty clothes had to go into the dirty clothes closet. All the toys had to be put back, and not just hidden from view. As I inspected and instructed, they began to understand what it meant to, “Go clean your room.” (Getting them disciplined enough to do this on their own, regularly is another story!) We could say that my children were clean in their own eyes, but found lacking when their works were “weighed.”

            Scripture is full of examples of people who were clean in their own eyes but found lacking in the balances of God. Sometimes it was a lack of understanding of what it meant to be clean and sometimes it was sheer disobedience. Saul, in 1 Samuel 15, agreed to obey God; and he did obey God, partially. He did not execute the wicked ruler and he kept some sheep after the Lord told him to not to leave anything living. What did Saul say when he saw the prophet Samuel approaching? “Blessed are you of the Lord! I have performed the commandment of the Lord.” God did not accept a partial obedience and Saul received very severe consequences because it he was clearly disobedient.

            In the New Testament, the rich young ruler of Matthew 19 approached Jesus asking what he needed to do to receive eternal life. He told Jesus that he had done everything that God expected from him. He was clean in his own eyes….and then his spirit was weighed and revealed. He went away sad because of his unwillingness to surrender his will to Christ. Maybe he was expecting Jesus to tell him that he was “clean.” Zacchaeus was the complete opposite. He did not even have to be told to make his greed right. He did so, on his own, once he met the Savior and saw his uncleanness. Luke 19 tells us, “And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, ‘Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house.’”

            Lord, weigh my spirit today and show me what is lacking; and then give me the grace I need to obey.