Purity

I was speaking this week with a group of friends about the subject of purity in our lives, and our reason and method of upholding it. The subject of relationships and how we are to go about them has been a hot topic in my mind recently. I've been putting some thought into just why I am trying to be pure. Is it for my future wife? Is it because I don't want to be a hypocrite? Is it moral? Ethical? Why exactly do I, do we as Christians, strive for purity?

Well, that's the key right there - "as Christians." Literally, "follower of Christ." As a follower of Christ, why do we strive for excellence, for blamelessness, for purity in our relationships? The first suggestion may be that  we must remain pure in order to become faultless before God in the end. We must eliminate from ourselves any form of impurity so that we may become pure in the sight of God. Purity is our means to attain an end, a goal, that being blamelessness before God.

However, in this discussion with my friends, we talked about a different option. We talked about how ultimate reason of our purity and the real goal of it should not be a "for" but rather a "because." I am trying to be pure because I have been made pure in Christ. I strive for cleanliness in my life because my life has been cleaned by the blood of the Lamb. At least in my life, staying pure in order to benefit my career and my future wife and my friends and my kids are all great reminders, but they are not reasons for it. I use the things that benefit from my purity as reminders that point towards the one and only real reason for my purity - that being Christ, and my new life that I have received. 

The old life is dead and gone. I must live a new live because my old life is gone. I really have no choice in the matter. If I am to continue being a Christian, I have no choice but to challenge the impure things in my life and to overcome them with this new Power. I am pure not in order to become a righteous man; rather, I am pure because I am a man who has been made righteous.

"What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life." -- Romans 6:1-4