“Clean Hands or a Clean Heart?”
Notes
Transcript
Text: John 11:55- John 12:3
Speaker: Pastor Chris Polito
Church, picture this with me.
There’s a guy in town who’s got an absolutely beautiful truck.
I mean this thing is spotless.
The paint is flawless, you can see your reflection in it.
It’s got the perfect wheels and tires, lifted just right.
Interior is dialed in, clean, detailed, not a speck of dust anywhere.
From the outside, it looks like a dream.
But here’s the reality… it doesn’t run.
The engine’s shot. Something deep under the hood is broken.
And instead of fixing the problem, every weekend you see him out there doing the same thing, washing it, waxing it, polishing it, making it shine.
And from a distance, people admire it.
They think, “Man, that thing is in incredible shape.”
But anyone who gets close enough realizes, it looks good… but it’s going nowhere.
You can polish it all you want, but if it won’t run, it’s still broken.
And church, I see this same kind of thing all the time in my line of work.
I’ll walk into a house and everything looks great at first glance.
Beautiful countertops.
Custom cabinets.
Nice flooring all throughout.
It looks put together.
But then you start digging a little deeper.
There’s a slow leak behind the wall that’s been there for a while.
And now there’s mold spreading underneath the surface.
And no matter how nice those countertops are…
no matter how clean the floors look…
That house has a real problem that hasn’t been dealt with.
Because no amount of surface work fixes something that’s broken underneath.
And if we’re honest, that’s how a lot of people approach God.
We spend our time polishing the outside.
Trying to look right, act right, clean things up where people can see.
But underneath… the real issue hasn’t been touched.
And the question is not, “Do you look clean?”
The question is, “Have you actually been made clean?”
And that’s exactly the tension we step into in this passage.
Because John is going to show us two responses side by side, one group focused on outward purification, working from the outside in while completely missing the One who can actually make them clean… and right next to them, Mary, who isn’t trying to clean herself up at all, but comes straight to Jesus and pours everything out at His feet, recognizing that He alone is the source of true cleansing.
Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and many went up from the country to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves.
They were looking for Jesus and saying to one another as they stood in the temple, “What do you think? That he will not come to the feast at all?”
Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where he was, he should let them know, so that they might arrest him.
Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table.
Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
Point 1: The Illusion of Self-Purification (John 11:55–57)
Point 1: The Illusion of Self-Purification (John 11:55–57)
Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and many went up from the country to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves. They were looking for Jesus and saying to one another as they stood in the temple, “What do you think? That he will not come to the feast at all?” Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where he was, he should let them know, so that they might arrest him.
The Passover is near, and John tells us that people are going up to Jerusalem to purify themselves. And on the surface, that sounds right. It sounds spiritual. It sounds like obedience.
They’re doing what the Law required, ritual washings, ceremonial preparation, getting themselves ready, at least externally, to enter into the presence of God.
But then John, like he so often does, pulls the curtain back and lets us see what’s really going on underneath. Because at the very same time that they’re going up to purify themselves, they’re also looking for Jesus, not to worship Him, not to follow Him, but to report Him. The religious leaders had already given the order: if anyone sees Him, let us know so we can arrest Him.
So don’t miss the weight of this moment. They were washing their hands… while rejecting the One who could cleanse their hearts. Everything on the outside is saying, “We’re ready for God.” But everything in the heart is saying, “We don’t want Him.”
And that right there is the danger of religion without the gospel. It convinces us that if we just do the right things externally, something internally must be changing. It creates this illusion that effort equals transformation.
But Jesus confronts that thinking head-on. In Matthew 23:25
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.
Let’s not miss the irony here.
They are preparing for Passover… while rejecting the Passover Lamb.
Passover goes all the way back to Exodus 12, when God delivered Israel out of slavery in Egypt. On the night of judgment, each household was told to take a spotless lamb, kill it, and spread its blood over the doorposts. And when the Lord passed through the land, He didn’t judge based on how good the people inside were, He looked for the blood. If the blood was there, judgment passed over them. The lamb died so the people could live.
And that’s what makes this moment so heavy. The entire Passover system was never just about a meal or a ritual, it was pointing forward to a greater Lamb.
Jesus Christ is that Lamb, the true and final sacrifice, the One whose blood doesn’t just cover sin for a moment but takes it away completely.
Remember John the Baptists declaration?
The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
So when we say they were preparing for Passover while rejecting the Passover Lamb, what we’re really seeing is this, they were holding onto the shadow while turning away from the substance, clinging to the symbol while rejecting the Savior it was always meant to reveal.
More irony look...
They’re getting ready to celebrate deliverance… while actively plotting against the Deliverer.
Deliverance, for Israel, wasn’t just an idea, it was their defining story. God had rescued them out of slavery in Egypt with power and mercy, bringing them out from under oppression and into freedom. Passover was meant to remember that, to celebrate that God Himself stepped in as their Deliverer, doing for them what they could never do for themselves. It was a reminder that salvation wasn’t earned, it was given.
And that’s what makes this moment so striking. The same God who once delivered them is now standing in front of them in the person of Jesus Christ, not just to free them from physical slavery, but from sin and death itself.
And yet, while they’re preparing to celebrate deliverance, they’re actively plotting against the Deliverer. They’re remembering a past rescue while rejecting the One bringing the greater, final rescue. It’s the tragedy of holding onto the story of salvation while resisting the Savior who fulfills it.
They were washing their hands… while rejecting the One who could cleanse their hearts.
And church, if we’re honest, we’re not as far removed from that as we’d like to think. We can show up. We can go through the motions. We can say the right things, learn the language, play the part. And all the while, still be trying to manage our sin ourselves instead of bringing it fully and honestly to Christ, the only One who can actually make us clean.
And if we’re really honest, it doesn’t just stop there. Sometimes, while we’re doing that, we also become really good at watching other people. We get sharp when it comes to noticing where someone else is falling short. We can point out the inconsistency, the struggle, the place where they’re not growing fast enough or not doing it the way we think they should.
But at the same time, we can completely overlook what God has already done in their life. We dismiss the progress. We ignore the grace. We fail to see that if they’re in Christ, God is already at work in them.
And Jesus speaks directly into that in Matthew 7:3–5
Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.
In other words, we can become experts at diagnosing everyone else’s issues while staying blind to our own deeper need.
And when that happens, we end up doing something very similar to what we see in this passage.
We start focusing outward.
We start measuring others.
We start managing appearances.
And church, that same danger is right in front of us. Because it’s a lot easier to evaluate someone else’s progress than it is to surrender our own heart. It’s a lot easier to point out someone else’s struggle than it is to bring our own sin into the light.
But hear me clearly, this doesn’t mean we ignore sin or pretend it doesn’t matter. The gospel never asks us to lower the standard. It calls us to walk in truth. It calls us to holiness. It calls us to speak honestly about sin. But it also tells us how we do that, with humility, with love, and with a clear awareness that we stand in need of the same grace.
Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.
That’s the balance, truth and tenderness, accountability and humility. We don’t ignore sin, but we don’t attack people either. We come alongside, not from a place of superiority, but from a place of shared need.
So yes, we speak truth.
Yes, we help each other fight sin.
Yes, we walk in accountability.
But we do it as people who have first come to Christ ourselves.
Because the gospel doesn’t call us to manage others, it calls us to come to Christ.
To stop pretending.
To stop comparing.
To stop performing.
And to deal honestly with the reality that we don’t need to clean ourselves up, we need to be cleansed by Him.
And then, from that place, cleansed, humbled, and changed, we help others do the same, not by pointing down at them, but by walking beside them in truth and in love.
So we don’ find ourselves in the position where God says about us that...
They were washing their hands… while rejecting the One who could cleanse their hearts.
And right when that tension is sitting there… John shifts the scene.
From the crowds… to a home.
From ritual… to relationship.
Let’s jump into chapter 12
Point 2: The Posture of True Worship (John 12:1–2)
Point 2: The Posture of True Worship (John 12:1–2)
Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table.
Now we’re in Bethany.
And you can feel the shift right away. We’ve just come from crowds, noise, religious tension, people trying to purify themselves, and now everything slows down. It’s quieter. It’s personal. It’s not the temple, it’s a home. And sometimes that’s exactly where Jesus does His clearest work, not in the crowd, but in the quiet, not in performance, but in relationship.
Lazarus is there, sitting at the table. And don’t let that just pass by you. This is the same man who was in a tomb just days before.
When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.” The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
He’s living, breathing proof that Jesus has authority over death. He doesn’t even have to say anything, his presence is the testimony. This is what it looks like when Jesus steps into a life and brings resurrection.
Martha is there too, serving, and that matters. Because sometimes we’ve misunderstood Martha. We’ve turned her into the example of what not to be, but that’s not actually what Scripture shows us.
Back in Luke 10:38–42, Jesus didn’t rebuke her for serving, He corrected her because she was anxious and distracted, because her service had become a burden instead of worship.
Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.”
But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”
But here, there’s no correction. She’s serving again, and it’s quiet, it’s faithful, it’s right. Which shows us the issue was never her serving, it was her heart in it. And when her heart is aligned, her service becomes exactly what it was meant to be: not a performance to prove something, but an overflow of faith in the One she believes.
This is faith in motion. This is what James talks about when he says faith works itself out in action.
And then there’s Mary.
And everything slows down around her.
Because what she’s about to do isn’t loud, it isn’t flashy, it isn’t for attention, but it is deeply spiritual. It is worship in its purest form. Not religious performance. Not checking a box. Not trying to be seen.
It’s a heart that understands who Jesus is.
She’s not concerned with appearances.
She’s not trying to impress anyone in the room.
She’s not managing perception.
She’s focused on Him.
And church, that kind of focus is rare.
Because most of us know what it’s like to live distracted, to live aware of who’s watching, to live trying to say the right thing, do the right thing, look the right way. Even in church, it’s easy to drift into performance without even realizing it.
But Mary isn’t performing, she’s responding.
Responding to who Jesus is.
Responding to what He’s done.
Responding to the reality that she’s sitting in the presence of the Son of God.
And here’s what’s powerful, Jesus had already said in Luke 10:42 that Mary had chosen the “good portion,” sitting at His feet, listening.
And now we see it again. That wasn’t a one-time moment. That was the posture of her life.
Let me put it in something we understand.
It’s the difference between someone who shows up to a job site just to be seen working… and someone who actually cares about the work being done right. You can tell the difference. One is watching the clock, watching who’s around, making sure they look busy. The other is locked in. Focused. Not worried about attention, just committed to what’s in front of them.
Mary is locked in on Jesus.
Not worried about the room.
Not worried about opinions.
Not worried about how this looks.
Just Him.
And that’s what real worship looks like.
Jesus says in John 4:23 that the Father is seeking those who worship Him in spirit and truth. That means it’s not about location, not about ritual, not about appearance, it’s about a heart that is fully engaged with who God is.
And that’s what we’re seeing in Bethany.
Not a crowd trying to clean themselves up.
But a woman who has come to the only One who can make her clean… and is pouring out her life at His feet.
Then look what she does...
Point 3: The One Who Truly Purifies (John 12:3)
Point 3: The One Who Truly Purifies (John 12:3)
Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
And then Mary moves, and what she does shifts the entire room. She takes this perfume, this nard, something incredibly valuable, something that would’ve cost about a year’s wages. This isn’t a small gesture, and it’s not something done lightly. People in that room would’ve immediately recognized the cost of what she was holding.
And yet she doesn’t hesitate. She pours it out on Jesus’ feet, and then, in a moment that would’ve stopped everything, she lets down her hair and begins to wipe His feet with it.
There’s no reservation in her. There’s no calculation. She’s not weighing how this will be perceived or trying to manage the moment. This is surrender, full, unguarded, costly surrender.
She gives what is valuable, she humbles herself completely, and she centers everything, her resources, her dignity, her attention, on Jesus.
And the contrast couldn’t be clearer. While others are trying to purify themselves, working from the outside in, Mary is at the feet of the One who actually purifies.
She’s not trying to clean herself up before coming to Him; she’s coming to Him because she knows He’s the only One who can make her clean.
And Scripture makes that truth unmistakably clear: 1 John 1:7
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
Not ritual, not effort, not self-improvement, Jesus. What Mary is doing in that moment is a picture of the gospel itself, a life poured out in response to the One who would soon pour out His life for her.
And John adds this detail that carries weight if we let it sit on us: “The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.”
What she poured out didn’t stay small or contained, it filled the entire space. Because real worship never stays private in the sense of being hidden; it overflows. When a heart is truly surrendered to Jesus, when someone has encountered His grace and stopped performing and started responding, it spills into the room. It affects the atmosphere. It leaves a mark. That’s what happens when worship is real, not polished, Not just posted, not staged, but rooted in a heart that has come face to face with who He is.
And it leaves a mark because people can tell the difference when they see genuine adoration for Christ, not just in the put-together moments, but in the vulnerable ones, the raw ones, even in the middle of failure and repentance, it does something.
It starts breaking down the walls that religion tends to build, those walls of polished language and empty platitudes. It creates space for honesty. It opens the door for real relationship. Because when people see that your faith isn’t a performance, but a real dependence on Jesus, it gives them permission to drop the act too. And suddenly, it’s not about looking right anymore, it’s about coming to Him together, honestly, and being changed by His grace.
Point 4: The Great Contrast
Point 4: The Great Contrast
Now bring it together.
You’ve got two responses to the same Jesus. In Jerusalem, the crowd is cleansing themselves externally, curious about Him, going through the motions, and ultimately rejecting Him. In Bethany, Mary isn’t trying to clean herself up. She comes directly to Jesus and pours everything out in worship.
Same moment. Same opportunity. Completely different hearts.
And here’s the dividing line: they were washing their hands… while rejecting the One who could cleanse their hearts.
But, Mary wasn’t trying to fix herself, she came to the only One who could.
And Scripture makes it clear in Hebrews 10:4
For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
And now He’s here.
And most people are missing Him.
Closing.
Closing.
Church, this passage presses a question into us that we can’t ignore, and it’s not a surface-level question, it cuts straight to the heart. Are you trying to clean yourself up for God… or have you actually come to Christ to be made clean? Because those are not the same thing, and if we’re honest, a lot of us have lived in that tension longer than we’d like to admit.
One path leads to exhaustion. It’s constant effort, constant evaluation, constantly wondering if you’ve done enough.
The other leads to freedom, not because you’ve finally gotten it all right, but because you’ve stopped pretending that you ever could.
It’s like that truck we talked about, you can keep polishing the paint, keep making it shine, but if the engine’s blown, it’s not going anywhere. Or like that house, you can admire the countertops and the floors all day long, but if there’s a leak in the wall and mold spreading underneath, the real problem is still there.
And listen, you already know this is true, you can polish it all you want, but if it won’t run, it’s still broken.
You can look the part. You can say the right things. You can go through the motions, learn the language, build the routine, and still be far from Him. That’s not just something that happened back then. That’s something that can happen right here, in us. They were washing their hands… while rejecting the One who could cleanse their hearts.
So don’t let that be you.
The gospel is not “clean yourself up and come to God.” It’s not “fix it first, then come.” The gospel is this, right where you are, in the middle of your mess, in the middle of your failure, in the middle of the places you’ve tried to hide, come to Him. Because as Scripture says in...
but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.
That’s the good news. Not that you can make yourself clean, but that He already made a way for you to be.
That’s what Mary understood. Not perfectly, not fully, but enough to know, He is worthy… and He is the answer. Enough to stop performing and start pouring out her life at His feet.
So don’t settle for clean hands if your heart is still far from Him. Don’t settle for surface level when real relationship is being offered to you through the finished work of Christ. Come to Jesus. Lay it down. Bring Him the real you, not the counterfeit version, not the falsely put-together version, the real you.
And trust what He’s done.
Because cleansing isn’t something you achieve, it’s something you receive at the feet of Christ, through the beauty of who He is and the finished work of what He’s already done for you.
Amen? Amen!
Let’s Pray!
