The Unanswerable Question Text: Proverbs 20:9
Introduction: The Age of Self-Esteem
We live in a peculiar age, an age that has dedicated itself to the meticulous cultivation of self-esteem. Our therapeutic culture tells us, from the cradle to the grave, that we are basically good, that our hearts are trustworthy guides, and that the greatest sin is to make someone feel bad about themselves. We are encouraged to look within, to find our truth, and to declare it boldly. The modern man, when prompted, is quite ready to say, "I have kept my heart pure." He might not use those exact words. He might say, "I'm a good person," or "I follow my heart," or "I haven't hurt anybody." But the underlying sentiment is the same: a profound and unexamined confidence in his own righteousness.
Into this festival of self-congratulation, the book of Proverbs drops a rhetorical question that functions like a well-aimed hand grenade. It is a question designed not to be answered in the affirmative, but to silence every mouth and to expose the universal disease of the human condition. It is a question that cuts through the fog of our self-justifying narratives and forces us to stand before the piercing gaze of a holy God. This is not a gentle suggestion to consider our flaws. This is a divine cross-examination, and under its pressure, the entire edifice of human pride collapses into a pile of dust and rubble.
The wisdom of Proverbs is intensely practical. It is concerned with how we live our lives in the real world, in the marketplace, in the family, and in the king's court. But this practical wisdom is not built on a foundation of self-help tips. It is built on the bedrock of sound theology, on a right understanding of God and a right understanding of man. And a right understanding of man must begin with the frank admission that we are not, in fact, "clean from our sin." This verse is a diagnostic tool. It is the Holy Spirit holding up a spiritual MRI to the human heart, and the results are not flattering. But until we accept the diagnosis, we will never seek the cure.
The Text
Who can say, “I have kept my heart pure, I am clean from my sin”?
(Proverbs 20:9 LSB)
The Universal Indictment
The question is stark and absolute. "Who can say...?" The implied answer, of course, is "no one." No mere mortal, no son of Adam, can make this claim truthfully. This is a universal indictment. It sweeps away all our careful distinctions and self-serving comparisons. We love to grade on a curve. We look at the scoundrel down the street and think, "Well, at least I'm not like him." But God does not grade on a curve. He grades against the perfect, absolute standard of His own holiness, and before that standard, every one of us falls short.
"Who can say, 'I have kept my heart pure...'" (Proverbs 20:9a)
Notice where the problem is located. It is not primarily about outward actions, though it certainly includes them. The problem is the heart. In biblical terminology, the heart is not just the seat of our emotions. It is the command center of our entire being. It is the source of our thoughts, our will, our desires, and our decisions. Jesus Himself taught this: "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander" (Matthew 15:19). The problem is not that we are good people who occasionally do bad things. The problem is that our hearts, the very wellspring of our lives, are polluted.
To say, "I have kept my heart pure," is to claim that you have successfully policed the fountainhead of your own being. It is to claim that no sinful thought has ever taken root, no envious desire has ever flickered, no proud ambition has ever motivated you. It is a claim to have maintained a perfect, unblemished inner life. The Pharisees were experts at whitewashing the outside of the cup, at maintaining an outward appearance of righteousness. But Jesus reserved His harshest rebukes for them, because while the outside was clean, the inside was full of "greed and self-indulgence" (Matthew 23:25). God is not interested in our performance of religious charades. He looks at the heart, and He sees it as it truly is.
This is the doctrine of total depravity, not in the sense that we are all as evil as we could possibly be, but in the sense that sin has affected the totality of our being. It has corrupted our minds, warped our wills, and polluted our affections. There is no part of us that remains untouched by the fall. As Jeremiah says, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" (Jeremiah 17:9). The answer to Jeremiah's question is the same as the answer to Solomon's: no one, apart from God.
The Inescapable Stain
The second clause of the verse reinforces the first, moving from the internal state of the heart to the objective reality of sin.
"...I am clean from my sin." (Proverbs 20:9b)
This is the claim of moral and spiritual spotlessness. It is the assertion that one has managed to live life without accumulating any guilt, any moral filth. But Scripture is relentlessly clear on this point. "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us" (1 John 1:8). To claim to be clean from sin is not a mark of holiness; it is a mark of profound self-deception.
Sin is not just a series of mistakes or poor choices. It is a condition. It is a state of rebellion against our Creator. It is a debt that we have incurred and cannot possibly pay. The imagery of being "clean" is powerful. It suggests that sin is a defilement, a stain that ruins us and makes us unfit for the presence of a holy God. And it is a stain that we cannot wash out ourselves. We can try to cover it with good works. We can try to ignore it with distractions. We can try to redefine it as something less serious. But the stain remains. No amount of moral scrubbing on our part can make us clean.
This is why all man-made religions are ultimately exercises in futility. They are all, in one way or another, systems for self-cleansing. They are elaborate attempts to answer the question of Proverbs 20:9 in the affirmative. But they are all doomed to fail, because they misdiagnose the problem. They assume the problem is a few smudges on the surface that can be wiped away with enough effort, when in reality, the problem is a deep, penetrating stain that has soaked through to the very fiber of our being.
The Only Answer
So, is the verse intended to leave us in despair? Is the point simply to rub our noses in our own filth? Not at all. The law, and the wisdom of the Old Testament, functions as a tutor to lead us to Christ (Galatians 3:24). A question that exposes our utter inability to save ourselves is a question designed to make us look for a savior outside of ourselves.
The question is, "Who can say...?" And the answer is, "No man can say it." But that is not the end of the story. While no man can claim to have kept his own heart pure, there is one Man who was pure in heart. While no man can claim to be clean from his sin, there was one Man who had no sin. That man is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the only one in all of human history who could have answered this question with a resounding, "I can." Peter tells us that He "committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth" (1 Peter 2:22). The author of Hebrews says He was "holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners" (Hebrews 7:26).
And this is the glorious heart of the gospel. The one who was clean took our filth upon Himself. The one whose heart was pure took the punishment for our impure hearts. On the cross, God "made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21). He did not come to give us a better method for cleaning ourselves. He came to provide a cleansing that we could never achieve. He offers not a program of self-improvement, but a declaration of pardon. He offers not a whitewashing, but a heart-washing.
Living in the Answer
For the Christian, this verse is not a source of condemnation, but a source of profound comfort and humility. It reminds us that our standing before God is not based on the purity of our hearts, but on the purity of Christ's heart, which has been credited to our account. This is the doctrine of justification. It is a legal declaration. God looks at us, and because we are in Christ, He sees not our sin, but Christ's perfect righteousness.
This does not mean that we cease to strive for purity. On the contrary, because we have been declared clean, we are now free and empowered to actually become clean. This is the process of sanctification. We now have a new heart, a heart that desires to please God. And we have the Holy Spirit, who works in us to cleanse us from the remaining corruption of our sin. But our sanctification is always imperfect in this life. We will continue to struggle with sin until the day we die. And so, we must continually return to the truth of this verse. We must continually confess that we cannot make our own hearts pure. We must continually cast ourselves upon the mercy of God in Christ.
The world tells you to look inside yourself and find your goodness. The Bible tells you to look inside yourself, see the sin, and then look outside yourself to Christ, who is your only goodness. The world's path leads to pride and ultimate despair. The Bible's path leads through humility to everlasting joy. The man who tries to answer this proverb's question for himself is a fool. The man who lets the question drive him to his knees before the cross is wise unto salvation.
Therefore, we can answer the question, but only with a crucial modification. Who can say, "I have kept my heart pure"? No one. But who can say, "Christ has cleansed my heart, and I am clean from my sin by His blood"? Every believer. And that is the beginning of all true wisdom.