Two Deeply Rooted Realities

Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? No one! (Job 14:4)
Job struggles with the disasters that happened to him. He speaks sorrowfully. He knows that all men are unclean, and it is futile to try and do anything about his own sinfulness.
Over the past few weeks, Job's conclusion has hit home with me. Reading Charnock is part of it. I see how deeply man pits himself against God. Struggling against my own sinful attitudes also instructs me. I know without a doubt that only God can cleanse my heart. If He does not do it, it will not happen. I cannot, even will not, do it myself.
Charnock also makes clear that God created people to know Him, to know that He exists and to know that He made us. While human beings go through all sorts of futile exercises to deny God and push Him away, we simply cannot escape that innate knowledge of His being.
But sin has made just as deep a mark in our souls. As Job says, it cannot be erased by our own efforts. It is part of our fallen human nature and we know that we have it. We are sinful. We don’t live up to our own standards (are they really ours?) — and fight to rise above the reality of what we are to what we hope to be. Yet we know our failure.
Woe to those who deny the reality of God and their need for Him, then try to live with the reality of their failure. Woe to those who grasp that there is a God and that they need Him, but refused to acknowledge the reality of their uncleanness. No one can push away both truths, or accept one without the other, and remain sane.
God's standards are far above ours, but so is His power to forgive our sin and remake us into His image. Job was talking to God in this cry of despair, knowing that God exists, knowing that he was unclean, affirming that no man can make himself clean. Job also knew that God alone can remove impurity. When He forgives our sin and fills us with the Holy Spirit, He does the impossible — He brings a clean thing out of an unclean!