Thoughts on purity

In this arti­cle, we would like to share some thoughts about our respon­si­bil­i­ty as humans in regards to rela­tion­ships. Our inten­tion is also to encour­age espe­cial­ly those young peo­ple who still have a sense for the val­ue of puri­ty to oppose the heavy pres­sure from oth­ers around them or the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of sex­u­al­i­ty in the media.

Every per­son is faced with the issue of sex­u­al­i­ty. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, only few peo­ple are aware of the impor­tance of tak­ing the right deci­sions in this area. This is nec­es­sary for the devel­op­ment of our con­science and our whole char­ac­ter, as well as for a respect­ful behav­ior towards oth­ers, espe­cial­ly those of the oppo­site sex.

We see that very many people—including the so-called Chris­t­ian world or “church­es”— are far from God’s stan­dard in their feel­ing, think­ing, speech and behav­ior in this point—a fact made clear by the fol­low­ing exam­ples. It is, for instance, unclear for many whether or not mas­tur­ba­tion is sin­ful. You can even find peo­ple who believe that it is not a prob­lem to have a sex­u­al rela­tion­ship before mar­riage. Though pornog­ra­phy is often seen as some­thing bad or abnor­mal, yet you can find just few who have not “con­sumed” such dirty pic­tures which so utter­ly despise human dig­ni­ty. Puri­ty with­in mar­riage is rarely dis­cussed. That girls and women con­tribute to this prob­lem by the way they present them­selves, which seduces men to impure looks and thoughts, is rarely addressed …

What does the Holy Scripture tell us about purity?

In the Bible we find clear warn­ings and encour­age­ments to remain pure in the area of sex­u­al­i­ty. The high moral stan­dard for the behav­ior of the sex­es with one anoth­er which is com­mand­ed in God’s word is a sure sign of the rev­e­la­tion giv­en to us by God in regards to his nature and will. In this point it stands in con­trast to oth­er reli­gions and world views.

Let us first look at some pas­sages from the let­ters in the New Testament:

There­fore be imi­ta­tors of God, as beloved chil­dren. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave him­self up for us, a fra­grant offer­ing and sac­ri­fice to God. But sex­u­al immoral­i­ty and all impu­ri­ty or cov­etous­ness must not even be named among you, as is prop­er among saints. Let there be no filth­i­ness nor fool­ish talk nor crude jok­ing, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanks­giv­ing. For you may be sure of this, that every­one who is sex­u­al­ly immoral or impure, or who is cov­etous (that is, an idol­ater), has no inher­i­tance in the king­dom of Christ and God. (Eph­esians 5:1–5)

Let mar­riage be held in hon­our among all, and let the mar­riage bed be unde­filed, for God will judge the sex­u­al­ly immoral and adul­ter­ous. (Hebrews 13:4)

Or do you not know that the unright­eous will not inher­it the king­dom of God? Do not be deceived: nei­ther the sex­u­al­ly immoral, nor idol­aters, nor adul­ter­ers, nor men who prac­tise homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunk­ards, nor revil­ers, nor swindlers will inher­it the king­dom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanc­ti­fied, you were jus­ti­fied in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spir­it of our God. (1 Corinthi­ans 6:9–11)

Put to death there­fore what is earth­ly in you: sex­u­al immoral­i­ty, impu­ri­ty, pas­sion, evil desire, and cov­etous­ness, which is idol­a­try. On account of these the wrath of God is com­ing. (Colos­sians 3:5–6)

It is worth men­tion­ing that sex­u­al immoral­i­ty and greed are often referred to in one breath. Eph­esians 4:17–20 makes this con­nec­tion clear:

Now this I say and tes­ti­fy in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gen­tiles do, in the futil­i­ty of their minds. They are dark­ened in their under­stand­ing, alien­at­ed from the life of God because of the igno­rance that is in them, due to their hard­ness of heart. They have become cal­lous and have giv­en them­selves up to sen­su­al­i­ty, greedy to prac­tise every kind of impu­ri­ty. But that is not the way you learned Christ! — (Eph­esians 4:17–20)

The Bible uncov­ers the self­ish and greedy char­ac­ter of this kind of sin, and demon­strates how strong­ly it con­tra­dicts love—which is self­less by nature—and there­by destroys a person’s abil­i­ty to love.

What does “love” mean?

It may sound strange to some, but love and sex­u­al­i­ty are not the same. Sex­u­al­i­ty should be just one of the expres­sions of the love a man and woman have for one anoth­er. Sex­u­al­i­ty may also “func­tion” with­out love, but God nev­er intend­ed it to be that way. The fact that peo­ple often think of sex­u­al sat­is­fac­tion when they speak about love is a sad indi­ca­tion of the loss of high­er moral values.

The fol­low­ing words of Paul give an insight into what should char­ac­ter­ize love:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dis­hon­or oth­ers, it is not self-seek­ing, it is not eas­i­ly angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoic­es with the truth. It always pro­tects, always trusts, always hopes, always per­se­veres. Love nev­er fails. (1 Corinthi­ans 13:4–8a, NIVUK)

Love seeks the best for the oth­er per­son, even at the cost of bear­ing dif­fi­cul­ties. Love is not self­ish and does not live in expec­ta­tion of hav­ing one’s own wish­es or plans ful­filled. Love wants to pro­tect oth­ers from every­thing that would destroy what is lov­able and respectable in them. That is why love can express itself in strict­ness towards oth­ers, and above all, strict­ness towards one’s own self­ish­ness and van­i­ty. Love does not want to pos­sess oth­ers, but respects their free­dom and respon­si­bil­i­ty in front of God, their cre­ator. Love is self­less, and does not turn into bit­ter­ness when it is not loved in return or is despised.

Love or “being in love”

“Being in love” is an emo­tion­al high, which can eas­i­ly fall to a deep low. This “rush” often hap­pens when two peo­ple make them­selves the cen­ter of atten­tion for each oth­er, and, by doing so, take the place that only belongs to God. Many, whether con­scious­ly or uncon­scious­ly, seek their val­ue in how desir­able they are for the oppo­site sex. When such a rela­tion­ship breaks apart, the dis­ap­point­ment is great. It is very dif­fi­cult for many to bear the con­fronta­tion with the real­i­ty of not being as impor­tant for some­one as they had thought—leading peo­ple even to despair of any sense in life.

How­ev­er, even in rela­tion­ships in which both mar­riage part­ners remain faith­ful to the end, they will final­ly be separated—by death. At the very lat­est it becomes clear at this point that we can­not build our hap­pi­ness in life on peo­ple, who we will cer­tain­ly lose soon­er or lat­er. Only those who find secu­ri­ty and com­fort in God’s love will be able to escape the despair aris­ing from the loss of a loved one. The secu­ri­ty in God pro­tects us from build­ing a mar­riage on feel­ings which are so change­able. This does not mean that feel­ings do not belong to a rela­tion­ship to a cer­tain extent, but life­long faith­ful­ness demands sober, self­less love. This love express­es itself in the readi­ness to put aside one’s own wish­es, ideas and feel­ings, in tak­ing on a serv­ing atti­tude towards one anoth­er and in seek­ing God’s will togeth­er and for each other.

Most young peo­ple lack the matu­ri­ty to assess and to deal with such emo­tion­al forces of attrac­tion, and some even get entan­gled in sex­u­al rela­tion­ships. Before they devel­op a sense for sex­u­al­i­ty as some­thing that car­ries both respon­si­bil­i­ty as well as val­ue, they destroy the very foun­da­tion. The use of sex­u­al­i­ty for the sat­is­fac­tion of one’s own desires feeds the insa­tiable appetite of the ego, and dri­ves a per­son to a dis­as­trous depen­dence on the sex­u­al rush. It ends up hav­ing lit­tle to do with rela­tion­ship, for rela­tion­ship means being focused on the needs of the part­ner, and seek­ing the best for them and what tru­ly serves them. It is pre­cise­ly this abil­i­ty to love and to hon­or the oth­er person—to approach them as a per­son and not as an object of lust, which is destroyed more and more by this ego­ism. The unin­hib­it­ed and unashamed pre­sen­ta­tion of this top­ic in the media sup­ports peo­ple to start search­ing for such excite­ment at a very young age. Impure, seduc­tive and sug­ges­tive con­tents used in images, texts and adver­tis­ing slo­gans are unfor­tu­nate­ly ever-present in our societies.

The base for this kind of rela­tion­ship is often the exter­nal appear­ance of a per­son. They are “loved” for their body—the beau­ti­ful exterior—without real­ly know­ing the inner char­ac­ter. Accord­ing­ly, among the young and not so young, much effort is focused on “improv­ing” their facade, rather than work­ing on the beau­ty of the char­ac­ter and the soul and work­ing on becom­ing a per­son of inner strength—a per­son who rules over their desires rather than being ruled by them. The shame­less­ness of fash­ion needs to be men­tioned in this con­text, which aims to present the body as espe­cial­ly “desir­able” and to tempt the thoughts of the oppo­site sex in an impure direc­tion. Peo­ple who depend on the “suc­cess” of their out­ward appear­ance reveal their inner pover­ty and emptiness.

This is how the New Tes­ta­ment describes the way God wants women to be beautiful:

Wives, in the same way sub­mit your­selves to your own hus­bands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over with­out words by the behav­ior of their wives, when they see the puri­ty and rev­er­ence of your lives. Your beau­ty should not come from out­ward adorn­ment, such as elab­o­rate hair­styles and the wear­ing of gold jew­el­ry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfad­ing beau­ty of a gen­tle and qui­et spir­it, which is of great worth in God’s sight. (1 Peter 3:1–4, NIVUK)

Although this pas­sage speaks about women, God expects the same mod­est atti­tude from men as well.

Why sexuality

God gave sex­u­al­i­ty to human beings as a way for a man and a woman to give expres­sion to their self­less and self-giv­ing love through pass­ing on the gift of life to their chil­dren. It belongs to a person’s human dig­ni­ty to keep him­self pure for this great act of trust in sex­u­al union with­in a mar­riage partnership—in which each one of the two belongs to that one part­ner alone and no one else. This rela­tion­ship must be born out of the wish for life­long faith­ful­ness, care and respon­si­bil­i­ty. These high­er val­ues are what give sex­u­al­i­ty the pre­cious­ness God intend­ed for it, which is miss­ing in so many relationships.

Relationship without commitment?

There are young peo­ple who have a rela­tion­ship with­out mar­ry­ing. How­ev­er, when a man and a woman want to live togeth­er with­out the pub­lic dec­la­ra­tion of mar­riage, they ques­tion the love of uncon­di­tion­al faith­ful­ness and respon­si­bil­i­ty for one anoth­er. In a rela­tion­ship where two peo­ple first want to “try each oth­er out,” it is not pos­si­ble to build deep trust because this atti­tude reveals that they expect their own wish­es to be ful­filled, rather than hav­ing the aim to serve and give. The rela­tion­ship suf­fers because of the uncer­tain­ty that if it does not “work” they can eas­i­ly break up.

Many want to have their wish­es ful­filled, but they do not want the respon­si­bil­i­ty. They want to be “adults,” but do not want to bear the con­se­quences of their actions. They want the sex­u­al expe­ri­ence, but do not want to pass on the gift of life. At this point, the mis­use of sex­u­al­i­ty becomes a threat to life. When preg­nan­cy results, many turn to the dead­ly “solu­tion” of abor­tion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, even the shock­ing sta­tis­tics of the world­wide mur­der of unborn chil­dren hard­ly leads any­one to the recog­ni­tion that a basic turn­around is required regard­ing the ques­tion of sexuality.

Con­tra­cep­tives (tablets) seem to be a harm­less solu­tion, and their use by women can be fre­quent­ly found before and in mar­riage. Many are unin­formed how­ev­er, of what seri­ous health risks these drugs pose (infor­ma­tion on this can be found eas­i­ly). Still more seri­ous, how­ev­er, is the fact that con­tra­cep­tives are also abortive. Such tablets do not only aim to pre­vent preg­nan­cy. In case fer­til­iza­tion occurs, it also pre­vents the fer­til­ized egg—that is, the per­son who has just begun their existence—from find­ing their first essen­tial shel­ter in the womb, and they die.

Respect for God’s order of cre­ation, respect for mankind and for life itself there­fore oblig­es us to deal with the ques­tion of sex­u­al­i­ty with utmost respon­si­bil­i­ty. Pass­ing on the mir­a­cle of life is the pur­pose such a rela­tion­ship serves. In order to be capa­ble of bear­ing the respon­si­bil­i­ty for a fam­i­ly, a per­son must first edu­cate them­selves. The dis­tin­guish­ing mark of some­one who is mature is, among oth­er qual­i­ties, the abil­i­ty to rule over their own desires. For this rea­son, it is of great impor­tance for every ado­les­cent to deal strict­ly with their own sex­u­al desires in order to be able to direct the sex­u­al dri­ve to its prop­er place with­in a mar­riage partnership.

The preciousness of a pure heart

As Chris­tians, we do not refer only to the issue of sex­u­al puri­ty when we speak about puri­ty. Our striv­ing for puri­ty touch­es every aspect of who we are: our thoughts and feel­ings, atti­tudes and motives, rela­tion­ships, words and deeds. Jesus calls peo­ple who are pure in heart “blessed,” because a pure heart grants a per­son access to God, who is him­self absolute­ly light (see 1 John 1:5).

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. (Matthew 5:8, NIVUK)

Even the Old Tes­ta­ment believ­ers were aware of this:

Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceit­ful­ly. (Psalm 24:3–4)

For the Jews, the heart was the cen­ter of all thoughts, motives and deci­sions. Since God sees the heart, our inner being, which is invis­i­ble to the out­side world, should be entire­ly light, crys­tal clear and pure.

The pure heart is upright, free of all ego­tis­tic back­ground motives. It desires to serve in sim­plic­i­ty and humil­i­ty, and shies away from every­thing which is dis­hon­or­able. It seeks a clear con­science and does not cast curi­ous side-glances at world­ly entice­ments. It finds rest in God and in the knowl­edge that he pro­vides for all our needs.

The love which God wants to lead us to is char­ac­ter­ized in this way:

The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good con­science and a sin­cere faith. (1 Tim­o­thy 1:5)

Hav­ing puri­fied your souls by your obe­di­ence to the truth for a sin­cere broth­er­ly love, love one anoth­er earnest­ly from a pure heart, (1 Peter 1:22)

In Jesus we find the per­fect role mod­el of this love. He came to mankind in truth­ful­ness and upright­ness. With the same clar­i­ty with which he exposed the hypocrisy of reli­gious peo­ple of his time, he also called sin­ners to repen­tance. He went after the lost souls and gave com­fort and for­give­ness to those of con­trite heart, those who were tru­ly sad about their sins. He set the hopes of those who are hum­ble on God’s mer­cy, and destroyed the false hopes of those who were self-right­eous. By his readi­ness to die an unjust death he gave tes­ti­mo­ny to the truth­ful­ness of his words and his self­less love. God raised him from the dead and this joy­ful mes­sage was what his dis­ci­ples, who had wit­nessed him after his res­ur­rec­tion, preached.

It was from this tes­ti­mo­ny that the Church arose—the fel­low­ship of those who seek God whole­heart­ed­ly and want to live a pure life. Although there are not many peo­ple who have this wish, the Church still exists today.

Some of us were deeply entan­gled in the sins men­tioned above. When Jesus called us to repen­tance, we expe­ri­enced a huge change. Ear­li­er we were enslaved by impure desires and sins, but through turn­ing to Jesus we found the strength to say no to sin. Through the love that God shows for us, our life has been giv­en sense. We know and expe­ri­ence that he wants the best for us and is always there for us, to help us in our temp­ta­tions and fights. In this way, we no longer need to seek our val­ue in being attrac­tive for peo­ple. We expe­ri­ence free­dom from ego­ism so that we can do good to oth­ers and tru­ly love them in all puri­ty. On this jour­ney togeth­er we are able to strength­en one anoth­er in our com­mit­ment to our deci­sion to live a life which pleas­es God.

We invite you too to get to know this life with God!