In this generation of sexual freedom and expression, purity has received a bad rap even in the church. Many young women don’t understand what God means when He calls us to a life of purity. And because of this, we either balk at living a life of purity or we try and fail.
I’m convinced that if we as young Christian women truly understood what Biblical purity is, we would agree it is beautiful. If we understood how the gospel enables us to obtain it, we would stop failing.
Here are three common misunderstandings of what purity is.
What Purity is Not
1. A list of rules
Many of us think of purity only as a list of things we can’t do.
For example:
- No sex before you’re married
- Make sure your skirt is below your knees
- No talking to boys
- No social media until you’re 18
- Don’t listen to secular music
- And so on
During Jesus’ ministry on earth, there was a group of people who also thought purity and holiness were about a list of rules. The Bible calls them Pharisees.
They were so obsessed about purity that they took the list of rules in the Old Testament and added hundreds more as “safeguards” – just to make sure they didn’t break the important ones.
For example, the Old Testament said to honour the Sabbath day and keep it holy. They were not supposed to do their customary work on the Sabbath but instead use it as a day of rest. So these Pharisees, just to make sure they wouldn’t break that law, made another law specifying how far people could walk without it being considered “work.”
That’s just one example. These guys made up a long list of extra rules they followed in their zeal to be pure and holy before God.
And yet, Jesus had some pretty harsh words to say to the Pharisees.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also. … Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” (Matthew 23:25-26, 28)
Jesus hated their long list of rules because it didn’t bring them one step closer to truly being pure and holy before God.
We can laugh at the Pharisees and their long list of rules. But how often do we do the same thing?
The Bible says sex is good and holy but is to be saved for within a marriage covenant between one man and one woman.
In our sincere desire to be obedient to the Lord and live upright, holy lives we make a whole bunch of other rules as “safeguards” – just to make sure we don’t have sex before marriage.
Here’s a sample of what those additional rules we’ve created might look like:
- No kissing before marriage
- No holding hands before marriage
- No talking to boys one-on-one
- No dating
Some of these safeguards might be good. I’m not suggesting we should through all boundaries out the window and go dating around or having long one-on-one conversations with guys.
However, we often add these rules to our lives simply to try and keep from crossing a boundary. We rarely make them out of a conviction the Lord placed on our heart or a desire to magnify Jesus Christ and showcase the gospel in our relationships.
Rules cannot make us or keep us pure. All they do is make us look like good Christian girls on the outside, while the inside remains unchanged before God.
2. Abstinence
Others believe purity is simply saving sex for marriage.
We think of having sex before marriage as falling (or jumping) off the edge of a cliff. As long as we don’t fall over, it doesn’t matter how close to that edge we get.
This way of thinking reduces purity to being about sex. But, as we will see, Biblical purity has nothing to do with sex.
Sex is a physical experience. Purity is a condition of our heart.
3. Good intentions or motives
Have you ever said or thought “my motives were pure”?
If you aren’t the list-of-rules type of girl, you might have fallen prey to this misunderstanding of purity.
When we think purity is only about our motives we run into the opposite problem – we clean the inside of our cup while allowing the outside to stay filthy.
This can look like dressing provocatively and justifying it because our motive isn’t to get attention from guys. We’re dressing this way because it’s the latest fashion and helps other people feel more comfortable around us.
Or watching graphic movies because “we aren’t affected by them,” and watching them helps us better relate to our culture and engage them in conversation.
True Biblical purity always produces a truly pure, Christ-exalting lifestyle.
Ephesians says: “But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people.” (5:3, NIV, emphasis mine)
Is the way we dress, the movies we watch, or the words that come out of our mouth hinting at impurity?
What it is
Purity means unmixed or separate from everything else. In the Biblical sense, without any spot of sin and free from guilt.
According to this definition, none of us can ever achieve purity. Every person has sinned and bears the weight of our guilt.
No list of rules can remove our past rebellion, lift our present guilt, or keep us from future sin.
No abstinence commitment can absolve our iniquity.
No pure motives can purify our actions.
Jesus is the only one who ever lived a completely, perfectly pure, upright, holy life. He is the only one sin has not contaminated and guilt does not condemn.
And so, the only way for us to obtain true, biblical purity is for us to die to our old sinful life and allow Jesus, the perfect Holy One, to live His life through us.
At its core, Biblical purity is the life of Christ expressed in and through a surrendered life.
Unmixed
Allowing Christ to live His holy life in and through us does mean we must come away from the lifestyle of this world and be separate (2 Cor. 6:17). If we try to mix the purity of Jesus with anything of this world, we no longer have the purity of Jesus.
As Amy Carmichael said, to embrace the life of Jesus is “to break with all worldly customs; to live utterly separate from the Spirit of the world, so that we shall not say, ‘What is the harm of this and that?’ but simply shall have lost all relish for what is not of the Father; to live as those who truly lay all on the altar – time, strength, possessions, literally everything we are and have … this will cost us something. Are we ready for what it will cost?”
To live a pure, holy, set apart life is not to make an abstinence commitment, embrace a set of rules, or check your motive.
It is to embrace Jesus and let go of all things that would come between your relationship with Him.
Again, Amy Carmichael exhorts us in this; “Comrades in this solemn fight, let us settle it as something that cannot be shaken: we are here to live holy, loving, lowly lives. We cannot do this unless we walk very, very close to our Lord Jesus. Anything that would hinder us from the closest walk possible, till we see Him face-to-face, is not for us.”
His purity has become ours
Living a life of purity is utterly impossible. Only one person in all of history has succeeded.
That person is Jesus.
Sister, let us not hesitate to surrender all to Him and embrace His purity as our own. Jesus became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21). Jesus desires to set you free from your sin and make you pure and holy.
Let us reckon, believe as truth, the old man with his baggage of sin to be dead and buried with Christ. And let us reckon our new man hidden with Christ in God. Let us abide in Him, counting His purity as our own and striving no more to obtain it by our own merit.
Rather than trying and failing to be pure, let us simply allow Christ to live His life through us.