Caught Before Clean

Suggested Read: Ezekiel 34:11-16

There are moments when I read or contemplate a passage or idea I’ve encountered a hundred times before and suddenly notice something that feels embarrassingly obvious.

Recently, it was about fishermen. I’ve never stopped to consider that fishermen clean fish after they catch them.

I know. Groundbreaking. I am a born and raised Southern girl, I have been fishing, I know plenty of avid fishermen. But somehow that detail had never crossed my mind in this way.

The fisherman doesn’t stand on the shore scanning the water, hoping to find the cleanest fish in the lake (boy would that make for a LONG day). He isn’t searching for fish that have somehow managed to avoid the mud, algae, and murky water. The condition of the fish has nothing to do with whether it’s worth catching. Whether it’s swimming through crystal-clear water or the murkiest part of the sea, the fish is still valuable enough to pursue.

The cleaning comes afterward.

Immediately my mind went to Jesus’ words in Mark 1:17:

“Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.”

That isn’t accidental language. He intentionally called fishermen.

He could have called priests or Pharisees and said, “You’ll become teachers of men.” Instead, He chose men whose daily work was catching fish that were, frankly, slimy and dirty. They understood that the valuable part wasn’t finding pristine fish—it was catching them. Cleaning them was simply part of the job.

Jesus never told His disciples to go find people who already looked put together. He didn’t say, “Find the morally polished. Find the emotionally healthy. Find the people who have already figured life out.” Instead, throughout the Gospels, we watch Him move toward the very people everyone else avoided. The weary. The outcasts. The tax collectors. The women with reputations. The demon-possessed. The sick. The blind. The lame. The doubters. The people who had spent years believing they were too far gone to belong anywhere near God - He invited them before He transformed them.

Friends, I think we’ve subtly reversed the order.

We assume we need to become cleaner before we come to Jesus. We promise we’ll get our anger under control first. We’ll stop struggling with that sin. We’ll finally get consistent in our Bible reading. We’ll become a little less anxious, a little less controlling, a little more patient, a little more...presentable. Then we’ll really follow Him.

But that’s not how fishermen work.

And thankfully, it’s not how Jesus works either!

He catches first - Then He cleans.

Following Jesus was never about proving you were worth rescuing. It was about responding to the One who already decided you were.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized Jesus uses another picture that tells the same story.

He doesn’t just call Himself a fisherman. He calls Himself our Shepherd.

“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep.” (John 10:14-15, NIV)

Now, sheep have a reputation, and honestly...they’ve earned it.

They wander because a patch of grass twenty feet away suddenly looks more appealing than the one they’re standing in (grass is greener, right?). They have an incredible ability to get themselves stuck in situations they absolutely did not need to be in. If sheep had LinkedIn profiles, “excellent decision-making” probably wouldn’t make the list of highlighted skills.

And if I’m being fair, it wouldn’t make mine either.

Isaiah wasn’t exaggerating when he wrote, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way” (Isaiah 53:6).

The beautiful part of that imagery isn’t that sheep eventually figure it out. They rarely do.

It’s that shepherds expect wandering.

A good shepherd doesn’t throw up his hands in frustration every time a sheep takes off in the wrong direction. He goes after it. Jesus says exactly this in Luke 15 when He describes the shepherd leaving the ninety-nine to search for the one sheep until he finds it. Not if he finds it - Until he finds it. Then he carries it home.

When I think about Jesus as my Shepherd, I’m reminded that His work didn’t end the day He found me.

Shepherds don’t rescue sheep once and call it good. They continually lead them to green pastures. They protect them from wolves. They pull burrs from their wool. They clean wounds. They shear heavy fleece that the sheep can’t remove themselves. Day after day, season after season, they care for the flock because that’s simply what shepherds do.

Jesus does the same with us. He doesn’t save us, hand us a list of instructions, and wish us luck. He keeps shepherding. He keeps leading. He keeps correcting. He keeps restoring. He keeps patiently forming us into people who look more like Him.

Paul captures this beautifully in Philippians 1:6:

“He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

The same Jesus who called us is the Jesus who continues His work in us. He never loses interest halfway through the process.

I think that's the part I forget most often. I can become so discouraged by the places where I'm still growing that I begin to wonder if Jesus is growing tired of me too. But fishermen expect fish to need cleaning after they're caught. Shepherds expect sheep to need constant care. Neither is surprised by the ongoing work because the ongoing work is part of the calling.

Paul reminds us of this when he writes, "Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely... The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it" (1 Thessalonians 5:23–24, NIV). Notice who carries the weight of that promise. The One who called you is the One who is committed to completing His work in you.

He has always known that following Him would be a lifelong journey of becoming. Every time He gently convicts us, invites us to trust Him again, or leads us into deeper obedience, He isn't expressing frustration that we're still unfinished. He's simply continuing the work He promised He would do.

That doesn't make us passive. Sheep still have to learn to recognize their Shepherd's voice and follow where He leads. We respond to His leading. We surrender. We obey. But our growth is never fueled by the fear that we'll lose His love if we don't get it together. It grows from the security of knowing we already belong to Him.

Maybe today you're painfully aware of all the places you still need to grow. Maybe you've been carrying quiet shame because you thought you'd be "further along" by now. If that's you, consider this: perhaps the very fact that God is still convicting you, still teaching you, still pruning you, and still drawing you closer is evidence that He has never stopped shepherding you.

The Christian life was never about finding a way to clean yourself before coming to Christ. It has always been about trusting the One who gladly stepped into the murky water to bring you home in the first place. Fishermen don't wait for clean fish, and shepherds don't give up on wandering sheep. They expect the work that follows because they know the value of what they've found.

Jesus does too.

He saw your value before you looked anything like Him. He called you before you had your life together. And He has no intention of abandoning the work of making you more like Himself. The Shepherd is still shepherding. The Fisherman is still cleaning His catch.

So when you're tempted to believe that your unfinished places make you a disappointment to God, remember this: they are simply the places where He's still at work.

bytaylormcgee