How the Bible Tells Us to Pursue Purity

How can a younger man hold his means pure?
      By guarding it in response to your phrase.
—Psalm 119:9

What Is Purity?

Lately, purity has gotten a nasty rap. A few of it is a results of the backlash towards so-called “purity tradition,” which refers back to the supposed overemphasis on sexual purity, abstinence, courtship, and the like, that pervaded evangelical church buildings about twenty years in the past. The despisers of purity tradition declare that these emphases are, at finest, solely partially biblical and, normally, severely dangerous to those that undertake its tenets. One author, reflecting on her previous expertise of purity tradition, laments, “I felt embarrassed realizing that a lot of what I had accepted as true had nothing to do with biblical sexuality or the grace of God.”¹ In mild of such experiences, purity tradition must be jettisoned. But, I’m wondering if, within the aftermath of this onslaught towards purity tradition, we’re in peril (and are typically responsible) of discarding the infant (purity) with the bathwater (purity tradition). If calling younger folks to a lifetime of purity produces a cringe, then we’ve possible crossed that line.

Our Eager for Purity

As a lot as we might query the significance of purity, there is no such thing as a evading the primal human sense that we require it. Religions as numerous as doable share a typical perception that, ultimately, we should be cleansed. In the course of the Pitcher Competition (or Kumbh Mela), tens of hundreds of thousands of Hindus bathe within the filthy waters of the Ganges River within the perception that they are going to be cleansed of sins and even finish the cycle of reincarnation. The desperation for purification is so robust that individuals threat grave illness by bathing within the bacteria-laden water.

Purity can be woven into the material of the Jewish religion. The classes of fresh/unclean and pure/defiled fill the pages of the Previous Testomony. Those that have been pure had entry to God within the tabernacle. Those that have been impure, whether or not via disobedience or contact with an impure factor, needed to be ritually cleansed to achieve that entry. The legal guidelines of formality purity have been every day reminders of what was required to strategy their holy God. In Israel, their highest good was sure up with their purity.

Lest we predict purity is solely an Previous Testomony factor, this sentiment is repeated in a robust assertion from the writer of Hebrews: “Try for peace with everybody, and for the holiness with out which nobody will see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14). There are not any two methods about it: holiness is, in some sense, important to salvation. J. C. Ryle, commenting on this passage, affirms: “If unsanctified souls may be saved and go to heaven, the Bible shouldn’t be true.”² Due to this fact, try for holiness, the writer of Hebrews implores. The apostle Paul exhorts Timothy to set an instance of purity (1 Tim. 4:12) and for the younger ladies “to be self-controlled, pure” (Titus 2:5). Paul’s ministry is centered on presenting the church as a “pure virgin to Christ” (2 Cor. 11:2). James is worried about “pure and undefiled” faith (James 1:27), whereas Peter calls the church to “respectful and pure conduct” earlier than non-believers (1 Pet. 3:2). John talks about how our final, eschatological purity—reflecting Christ’s personal purity—is the motivation for a lifetime of pursuing purity (1 John 3:3). And believers in heavenly glory are commonly portrayed in Revelation as clothed in pure clothes (Rev. 15:6; Rev. 19:8, 14). Purity shouldn’t be an incidental function of the Christian worldview. In truth, whether or not Hindu, Israelite, Christian, or in any other case, God’s revelation in our consciences and in Scripture bears witness to the truth that we have to be purified if we wish life.

Protecting Our Means Pure

In Psalm 119:9, the psalmist poses probably the most vital questions one can ask in mild of our want for purification: How can a younger man hold his means pure? In different phrases, he’s asking: How do I dwell a life that retains me near God? How do I dwell a life reflective of the holiness granted to me via my covenantal bond to the Lord? How do I ongoingly mirror God’s holiness in my day-to-day life? This passage is gorgeous for the simplicity of its query and reply. How does a younger man—sometimes seen as vulnerable to youthful lusts and vulnerable to folly—pursue the pure path? The reply: He should “cleanse his means,” because the older translations have it, by “guarding it in response to” God’s Phrase (Ps. 119:9b). Some translations concentrate on guarding the trail in response to God’s Phrase, whereas others stress holding quick to or heeding the Phrase itself. Each senses are true and are captured nicely by Charles Spurgeon in his basic work on the Psalms:

Younger man, the Bible should be your chart, and you will need to train nice watchfulness that your means could also be in response to its instructions. You need to take heed to your every day life in addition to research your Bible, and you will need to research your Bible so that you could be take heed to your every day life. With the best care, a person will go astray if his map misleads him; however with probably the most correct map, he’ll nonetheless lose his street if he doesn’t take heed to it. The slim means was by no means come across by likelihood, nor did any heedless man ever lead a holy life.³

The presence of God’s Phrase, coupled with our vigilance in realizing and heeding it, will hold each younger and outdated pure in our means. Left on our personal, we are going to drift towards sin and folly.

For this reason the psalmist will go on to say two verses later, “I’ve saved up your phrase in my coronary heart, that I may not sin towards you” (Ps. 119:11). The Phrase of God is sort of a treasure locked up in a protected, like a pearl of nice value worthy of promoting every little thing to personal. The Phrase, when treasured, is a protection towards sin—particularly as it’s utilized by God to form our affections and actions. In his characteristically punchy means, Spurgeon summarizes the psalmist’s non secular instruction: “His coronary heart can be saved by the Phrase as a result of he saved the Phrase in his coronary heart.”⁴ How? By meditating on, that’s, singing it, fascinated with it, reciting it, memorizing it, listening to it, studying and re-reading it (see Ps. 1:2). By taking a look at it from each angle as if it have been as valuable to us because the Ring was to Gollum in Tolkien’s volumes.

The Phrase of God, activated by our obedience to it, purifies us.

Agent and Instrument

The psalmist’s theology of Phrase-centered purification is repeated within the New Testomony. The apostle Peter writes in his letter: “Having purified your souls by your obedience to the reality” (1 Pet. 1:22). The believers have been purified by the use of obedience to God’s Phrase. In truth, Peter will go on to say that they have been “born once more,” made new, via the Phrase of God (1 Pet. 1:23). The Phrase of God, activated by our obedience to it, purifies us.

The Scriptures and our willed obedience to them alone can’t purify us. The apostle Paul writes to the Thessalonian believers, “Now might the God of peace himself sanctify you fully, and should your entire spirit and soul and physique be saved innocent on the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. 5:23). Just like the Previous Testomony writers, he views our sanctification as primarily God’s work. God alone cleanses us. Putting these two biblical emphases collectively—our self-cleansing and God’s cleaning of us—it needs to be clear that we’re encountering a well-recognized biblical sample: God works via means.

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Think about washing your automobile. You are taking out the hose, activate the water, and begin firing away at weeks of caked-on mud. Who is washing the automobile? You’re. What is washing the automobile? The water. The water doesn’t wash the automobile with out you, neither is the automobile cleansed with out the water. Each are actually washing the automobile: one because the agent, the opposite because the instrument—however they’re inseparable. So it’s with Scripture. God is the air purifier. But, God purifies us via our engagement with Scripture. In different phrases, the present of purity involves us via the present of Scripture.

Uche Anizor is the writer of The Goodness of God within the Reward of Scripture: 20 Meditations.

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