But sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. 

- Romans 7.8

Nichole Ward just wanted to pass her microbiology class and become a nurse. Instead, she set of germ warfare on the Internet, upset a large manufacturer, and earned death threats. 

The assignment was simple enough: Place a petri dish in a chosen location for three minutes and check for bacteria. Dyson stashed her container inside a Dyson hand dryer inside a public restroom and found enough germs to start an epidemic. The photo she posted on Facebook earned a half-million shares in a matter of days. "Hand dryers suck in fecal bacteria and blow it all over your hands," screamed a USA Today headline with typical journalistic restraint.

While some sources, including Dyson, dispute the results, the findings remain intriguing - and unsettling. One published study from 2016 found that such devices belch out 1,300 times as many viral agents as a plain old paper towel. If accurate, this finding indicates that a filthy environment spreads filth even in the act of cleaning it up. Like Lady Macbeth, the public wrings its filthy fingers in an effort to scour away spots but manages only to drive them in deeper. Who would have thought the old dryer to have had so much poop in it?

Paul had a similar view of the law: An instrument which some people thought helped clean up our souls in fact only spread their contagion. Sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me (v.11). Dirty souls in a dirty world make everything dirty, including the very device designed to sanitize them. Paul's conclusion: God doesn't mean for the law to remove sin, but to expose it.

If some sort of spiritual petri dish could collect the soul-contaminants contained in the average sermon, prayer, or moral action, the results would horrify the average religious striver. The harder I try to scrub my soul, the dirtier it grows. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? (v.24)  The only answer is that cleanliness must come from outside the contaminated environment. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! (v.25) 

So it turns out that the old country/western lament of Cowboy Joe Babcock might make a good hymn of invitation: "I washed my hands in muddy water." The only answer is that our sin-stained hands must seek cleansing in the fountain filled with blood drawn from Emanuel's veins, where sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. The mighty rushing wind of the Holy Spirit that roars from beyond this sin-soaked world can alone blow away the taint of the fall. We can rub our souls raw on the high-tech theologies of self-help and only multiply the contagion. Redemption relies on the Heaven-sent sanitizer of salvation.