I said to him, "You know, my lord." So he told me, "These are the people who have come out of the great Distress, who washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

Blessed are those who wash their robes, that theirs may be the right to the tree of Life, the right to enter the gates of the City!

Brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy Presence in virtue of the blood of Jesus, by the fresh, living way which he has inaugurated for us through the veil (that is, through his flesh), and since we have a great Priest over the house of God,read more.
let us draw near with a true heart, in absolute assurance of faith, our hearts sprinkled clean from a bad conscience, and our bodies washed in pure water;

then poured water into a basin, and began to wash the feet of the disciples, wiping them with the towel he had tied round him. He came to Simon Peter. "Lord," said he, "you to wash my feet!" Jesus answered him, "You do not understand just now what I am doing, but you will understand it later on."read more.
Said Peter, "You will never wash my feet, never!" "Unless I wash you," Jesus replied, "you will not share my lot." "Lord," said Simon Peter, "then wash not only my feet but my hands and head." Jesus said, "He who has bathed only needs to have his feet washed; he is clean all over. And you are clean ??but not all of you"

draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

Now six stone water-jars were standing there, for the Jewish rites of 'purification,' each holding about twenty gallons.

Now a dispute arose between John's disciples and a Jew over the question of 'purification';

Then Pharisees and scribes from Jerusalem came to Jesus, saying, "Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? They do not wash their hands when they take their food." He replied, "And why do you transgress the command of God with your traditions?read more.
God enjoined, Honour your father and mother, and, He who curses his father or mother is to suffer death. But you say, whoever tells his father or mother, 'This money might have been at your service but it is dedicated to God,' need not honour his father or mother. So you have repealed the law of God to suit your own tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah made a grand prophecy about you when he said, This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me: vain is their worship of me, for the doctrines they teach are but human precepts." Then he called the crowd and said to them, "Listen, understand this: it is not what enters a man's mouth that defiles him, what defiles a man is what comes out of his mouth."

Now the Pharisees gathered to meet him, with some scribes who had come from Jerusalem. They noticed that some of his disciples ate their food with 'common' (that is, unwashed) hands. (The Pharisees and all the Jews decline to eat till they wash their hands up to the wrist, in obedience to the tradition of the elders;read more.
they decline to eat what comes from the market till they have washed it; and they have a number of other traditions to keep about washing cups and jugs and basins [and beds].) Then the Pharisees and scribes put this question to him, "Why do your disciples not follow the tradition of the elders? Why do they take their food with 'common' hands?" He said to them, "Isaiah made a grand prophecy about you hypocrites ??as it is written, This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me: vain is their worship of me, for the doctrines they teach are but human precepts. You drop what God commands and hold to human tradition. Yes, forsooth," he added, "you set aside what God commands, so as to maintain your own tradition. Thus, Moses said, Honour your father and mother, and, He who curses his father or mother is to suffer death. But you say that if a man tells his father or mother, 'This money might have been at your service, but it is Korban' (that is, dedicated to God), he is exempt, so you hold, from doing anything for his father or mother. That is repealing the word of God in the interests of the tradition which you keep up. And you do many things like that." Then he called the crowd to him again and said to them, "Listen to me, all of you, and understand this: nothing outside a man can defile him by entering him; it is what comes from him that defiles him. If anyone has ears to hear, let him listen to this." Now when he went indoors away from the crowd, his disciples asked him the meaning of this parabolic saying. He said to them, "So you do not understand, either? Do you not see how nothing outside a man can defile him by entering him? It does not enter his heart but his belly and passes from that into the drain" (thus he pronounced all food clean). "No," he said, "it is what comes from a man, that is what defiles him. From within, from the heart of man, the designs of evil come: sexual vice, stealing, murder, adultery, lust, malice, deceit, sensuality, envying, slander, arrogance, recklessness, all these evils issue from within and they defile a man."

When he finished speaking, a Pharisee asked him to take a meal in his house; so he went in and lay down at table. The Pharisee was astonished to see that he had not washed before the meal, but the Lord said to him, "You Pharisees do clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but your inner life is filled with rapacity and malice.read more.
Foolish men! did not He who made the outside make the inside of things too? Better cleanse what is within; then nothing will be unclean for you.

Such were the arrangements for worship. The priests constantly enter the first tent, in the discharge of their ritual duties, but the second tent is entered only once a year by the high priest alone ??and it must not be without blood, which he presents on behalf of himself and the errors of the People. By this the holy Spirit means that the way into the Holiest Presence was not disclosed so long as the first tentread more.
(which foreshadowed the present age) was still standing, with its offerings of gifts and sacrifices which cannot possibly make the conscience of the worshipper perfect, since they relate merely to food and drink and a variety of ablutions ??outward regulations for the body, that only hold till the period of the New Order. But when Christ arrived as the high priest of the bliss that was to be, he passed through the greater and more perfect tent which no hands had made (no part, that is to say, of the present order), not taking any blood of goats and oxen but his own blood, and entered once for all into the Holy place. He secured an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkled on defiled persons, give them a holiness that bears on bodily purity, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who in the spirit of the eternal offered himself as an unblemished sacrifice to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve a living God?