A Study in Purity - Part 3
by Jamie Steach
Today we will wrap up our series on purity with a look at Romans and then some final thoughts to tie everything together, drawing up some final conclusions of this study.
Before we jump into Part 3, here is a quick recap of Parts 1 & 2:
Purity is all about devotion to God.
To be blameless as God asks, we need to be pure; if we are pure, then we are also blameless.
Absolute obedience and submission to God’s/Jesus’s authority must be present with purity, as it is the result of pure devotion; we need to recognize that God is always sovereign, and act like it.
It matters who we are in relationship with; those who influence us will either protect or destroy God’s standard in our lives.
Part 3 -
[ R O M A N S 5 - 6 ] ~ It would be beneficial to read these chapters in their entirety, but to save space and time, here are some selected scriptures:
19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. 20 The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, 21 so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
(Romans 5:19-21)
5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7 because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
13 Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. 14 For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.
16 Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance.
22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.
(Romans 6:5-7, 13-14, 16-17, 22)
These two chapters are a pretty thorough look at the relationship between sin, death, life, and righteousness, and the bottom line for our study is that impurity is all sin. Sin is what makes us defiled, and when we are defiled, we are impure. These two chapters dissect how we were lost and defiled, dead in our sins and impure before God, and how the whole point of what Jesus did at the cross was so that we would DIE to what defiles us, to our sins, and become an obedient slave to RIGHTEOUSNESS. We see quite a few of the themes we have already discussed pop up again here. Firstly, obedience is once again on the side of the righteous, and the righteous are those who are going to be blameless, pure and holy, before God (Romans 2:13, 6:22). Disobedience sides with sin and impurity. Secondly, it’s Jesus who allows us that access to righteousness, and we cannot attain righteousness, or purity, apart from Him. This is both because receiving grace makes us pure and righteous, and also because, as we will see in the next point, it is Jesus’s way that informs us of how to live a righteous and pure life. Thirdly, obedience specifically to Jesus’s authority is called on again. A master has total authority over you, and we have the choice of allowing sin (impurity) to be our master, or obedience, which is to the authority of Jesus, to be our master. Being slaves to Jesus’s authority leads to righteousness and holiness, so by submitting to Jesus’s TOTAL authority in our lives, we will be led to a life of purity. Lastly, when we obey from our hearts and give our allegiance to God as Paul writes here, what does that sound like to you? It sounds an awful lot like devotion to me, and it sounds like complete devotion from our hearts, too. So once again, we find devotion to God at the heart of pure obedience. And just to more fully unpack these two chapters, I decided to look into some of the Greek:
Dikaiosynē > righteousness : him/her who is as he/she ought to be; a condition acceptable to God {purity of life, correctness of thinking, feeling, and acting}
Hagiasmos > holiness/sanctification : consecration, purification {sanctification of heart and life}
Hypakouō > obey : literally, one who answers the door when it’s knocked on, to submit, to allow to be captivated/ governed by
These three words are heavily involved in Romans 5-6, and I think it’s really poignant that the definitions for BOTH righteousness and holiness involve purity and purification. This tells me that according to the Bible, the closest synonyms to “pure” are “righteous” and “holy”. In order to be holy, we must be purified, and then must continue in being pure and set apart. If we are righteous, then our life is pure because that is the condition acceptable to God, and the condition that is as we ought to be. We ought to be holy, set apart for God. We get a picture that the relationship in these three words is that you cannot have one without the others; they may be distinct in their meaning, but these three qualities will always exist together because they are intertwined with each other. The obedience factor is that when we obey from our heart and give our allegiance to God’s way (6:17), He is able to bring the righteousness and holiness (and purity by association) promised in these passages into the way we live. These words are all-encompassing, and they pervade every aspect of our lives; purity is, therefore, a mentality, a devotion, and a lifestyle of being obedient to, or captivated by, God’s righteousness. When we look at purity, and when we evaluate the purity of our own lives, we need to address it in this context.
Final Thoughts
Purity is a theme dispersed throughout the Bible, and has so much depth just waiting for us to discover. I especially love the perspectives that we can find in the Old Testament, because there are so many places that God vulnerably bears His heart and pleads with Israel (and us) to return His love. Here is one such example:
“Put the trumpet to your lips!
An eagle is over the house of the Lord
because the people have broken my covenant
and rebelled against my law.
2 Israel cries out to me,
‘Our God, we acknowledge you!’
3 But Israel has rejected what is good;
an enemy will pursue him.
4 They set up kings without my consent;
they choose princes without my approval.
With their silver and gold
they make idols for themselves
to their own destruction.
5 Samaria, throw out your calf-idol!
My anger burns against them.
How long will they be incapable of purity?
(Hosea 8:1-5)
(See, I use scriptures with the word purity in them, too :).) The book of Hosea is one of my favorites in the whole Bible. God wants His people to not only love Him, but to be His bride; when God bears His heart in passages like this, He speaks from a place of a husband whose wife has been unfaithful, who has been an adulteress (Hosea 1-2). This passage addresses how God feels when our devotion and when our worship isn’t pure. When He says “How long will they be incapable of purity?”, what charges precede this question? To tie in the opening remarks of this series, is it sexual impurity that God is upset about? No! While idol worship could consist of things that were sexually impure in nature, that’s not what God is talking about when He uses the word purity here. God is upset, and they are incapable of purity, because their hearts do not belong to Him. They have broken God’s covenant, and been unfaithful in their devotion. They say with their mouths that they acknowledge God, but God says they have rejected Him. They don’t follow His lead, they rebel and they worship other things in addition to Him, breaking the one, most important command He gave them.
These people are incapable of purity because they are incapable of a pure love for God, and this makes God angry, and hurt. God wants our purity because He wants our devotion. I feel like a bit of a broken record, but when God says to love Him with all your heart, soul, and strength (Deuteronomy 6:5), this is purity to God.
All of your heart (lebab) -> all of your will, everything in you chooses God;
All of your soul (nephesh) -> all of your essence, everything you are, is devoted to God;
All of your strength (mǝ`od) -> all your very, exceeding muchness, or, in other words, with everything you have left, the highest degree goes to God.
This is God’s first and greatest command, and I think it’s clear why. This is God’s guide to the purity that He wants from us, which is, first and foremost, our wholehearted devotion.
I want to close out this little series with my absolute favorite scripture on purity and the mind-blowing concept of the Hebrew word for jealousy.
“2 I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. 3 But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.
(2 Corinthians 11:2-3)”
I don’t think I can say enough how much I love this passage. This is towards the end of Paul’s second letter to the church in Corinth, and again, we see the idea of purity associated with a pure devotion to Christ. Paul identifies one of his roles as a leader and an apostle as presenting all those in his care before Jesus as a pure bride full of pure devotion. He is primarily addressing the issue of false doctrine and how people are being led astray from the truth, which is in some ways a new iteration of the idolatry problem in the Old Testament. If we are led away from the truth of God’s covenant, we cannot properly give Him our pure devotion.
Paul introduces this idea of godly jealousy, and I love that he brings this concept into the picture. While this letter was originally written in Greek, Paul is making clear allusions to the many mentions in the Old Testament of how God refers to Himself as a jealous God. But here’s the really mind-blowing thing about it: the Hebrew word for “jealous” means something a little different than our English word, and it means more even than the Greek word that Paul uses here in his letter (zēloō= zeal/zealous) :
Jealous > (Hebrew) qn’/qanna’ : The expression of proprietary rights with exclusive implications; it is expected that when someone belongs to someone else, that others will recognize and respect those rights; belonging is established on a relational belonging basis, not an economic/possession basis; used of God as bearing no rival to His exclusive, relational rights to His people.
WOW. Read over that once or twice, there’s a lot packed in there. I used to struggle with the idea that jealousy is clearly defined as a sin, but God is also clearly described as jealous. How could something that describes sin also describe God? I knew that to be jealous is to not want other people to have what you have (which is the sin), but what I didn’t realize was the true nature of the word used when it refers to God. To say that God is JEALOUS for us, for His people, means that God wants us to recognize that He is exercising His exclusive right to be in relationship with us with no rival. In the Old Testament, this was often used in reference to other gods, that God’s demands were for His people to recognize that no other gods had the right to have Israel’s devotion. Paul draws on that picture here by saying he is jealous in the same way as God for the church to be only God’s; Paul says “I promised you to ONE HUSBAND”, referring to Jesus, that he “might present you as a pure virgin to him”. We have been promised to Jesus, which means that Jesus has exclusive rights to our devotion. He is to have no other rival. This is what it means for Him to be jealous for us! God wants us to know that when we become a Christian, when we are brought into His family, we now have a relational belonging to Jesus and NOT ANYONE or ANYTHING else. Jesus has called dibs! How amazing is God’s love, and desire for your love, that He doesn’t want to share you with anything or anyone else?
This is why it’s so important to Paul that we are not led astray from a pure devotion to Christ. God has claimed you, and Jesus, the ultimate standard of purity, is the husband you have been promised to. To be with Him, you must also be pure. Pure in your devotion, and as a result pure in life, not just specific areas of it. I think the reason that pure devotion is so important is because a pure devotion to Christ should trickle down to every area of our lives; it is the foundation to living a life of purity, and leads to being a “pure virgin” before Jesus. You cannot tolerate any other way of thinking, any other way of acting and behaving, even any other way of believing that is outside of the pure, heart, soul, and strength, devotion to God. To be outside of this in ANY area is to jeopardize your fidelity to your husband.
So the bottom line of my extensive study in purity is this:
Purity is respecting God’s sovereignty in your life, and His EXCLUSIVE access to your pure devotion, devotion that is NOT to be shared with anyone or anything else.
This is how I see the Bible defining purity, and this is the kind of purity I’m striving for in my own life.