There is a monumental shift in your thinking and how you live your life when you have reckoned that you have a perfect standing in His grace, when you know who you are in Christ. From that moment onward, you rest in those truths. You don’t worry about upsetting God because, say, you ate something that was unclean in the old Mosaic law. You know Christ fulfilled the law. And now you are pure. Now all things are pure. Nothing you eat will alter your standing before God.
Yet, despite your absolute purity positionally, Paul calls you to practical pureness, a spiritual purity within that produces purity in your walk.
What is Purity?
Let’s define purity. Webster says to be pure is to be free from mixture with something else, like pure water. Free from contaminants. It’s undiluted. For us, pureness is to be free from moral defilement, to be blameless, unblemished in our walks, untarnished, uncorrupted. Chaste. Holy even. Purity is also to be genuine, real, true, unadulterated, unfiltered. You are not destroying your testimony with corruption. You’re free from impurity. Thus, purity is freedom. Purity is freedom from guilt and sin, freedom from corruption, which is the happiest way to live.
Biblical purity is more than just how you act on the outside. It’s more than the words you say and the things you do. There are some who think, “I’ll be a good Christian today. I’ll say all the right things and do all the right things even though I’m kinda… not right inside.” No, that’s not how it works. God works from the inside out. The process of sanctification is spirit, soul, and then the body. If you’re doing everything right on the outside but you’re not right on the inside, there’s a disconnect and oftentimes, people can tell. The process with God is – you are transformed within before you’re transformed without.
It’s possible you can have a perfect day. You can say all the right things and do all the right things even though you’re not feeling it. Those days happen. There is a reward for that.
But God calls for spiritual purity in your inner self – an inner man who is cleansed by the Word, who has a determined dedication to purity in his thoughts and motivations. You have an inner thought process that personifies Scripture. You have a spiritual inner life that reflects the righteous ways of God Himself. This is about you giving your mind and your heart over to the Word to such a degree that your inner life, the way you think and feel, mirrors God, in which His thoughts have become your thoughts, His inner life has become your inner life, His attributes have become your attributes, and you possess His rich inner spiritual life.
I’m reminded of 2 Cor 7:1 Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.
I used to joke with Pastor Hal about this. “Filthiness of the spirit? Do our souls get dirty? Do we need a filter?” “Yeah, over your mouth!”
I’d suggest that before you got saved, your soul was dirty, not literally dirty, but dirty in that your soul was unclean being in a state of unrighteousness. It was unclean because it was in bondage to sin in the flesh, choosing to fulfill the lusts of the flesh and the mind. It was unclean because in its state of unbelief, it was cut off from God’s life and light.
Paul advocates that we cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit. I think he means you are changing how your soul operates. Your are correcting what was the inclination of your soul to sin. It’s the soul that sins (Micah 6:7). Those sins are simply carried out by the body. Thus, after you get saved, through the study of His Word, your soul is to cleanse itself of all its old bad habits of sinning through the washing of regeneration, the cleansing of the soul through Bible study.
Now your soul is to function righteously, to think and act as God Himself would think and act. I’m reminded of 1Pe 1:22 Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently. How did the Little Flock purify their souls? Through obedience to the truth, walking in the Spirit, which resulted in unfeigned, sincere, love for the brethren, and it was their free-will choice to stay focused on loving each other with a pure heart fervently.
How does one achieve true spiritual purity today?
How can you have purity of thought and emotion inside of yourself while living in these sin-corrupted earth suits? You study. It’s not really listening to sermons and podcasts. It’s you having one-on-one time with the Word of God. Nothing compares to that. This is God talking to you directly, truth becoming effectual, energized, inside of you by the Spirit, the power of His Word working in you from the inside out. So when you have spent enough time studying that His Word now dwells richly inside of you, your inner thought life, your emotional life, your motivations, become not only healthy, but also strong, a reflection of God Himself. Then, the outward things you say and do will be pure.
Pureness in your walk begins with pureness inside of yourself, pureness in your inner man, in your thoughts, in your heart. Purity does not mean that you’re some prudish Pollyanna who is completely oblivious to the ways of the world. Biblical purity simply means that you are keeping everything in a proper spiritual perspective, in which your inner life, your thoughts, your feelings, mirror God’s perspective found in His Word.
I’d like to offer you 7 points Paul makes about spiritual purity.
#1 – Paul was Focused upon and Meditated upon Purity
In 2 Cor. 6, Paul is again defending his apostleship. He explains that he’s careful to give no offense or do anything that would undermine ministry.
Then he says in 2Co 6:4 But in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, 2Co 6:5 In stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings; 2Co 6:6 By pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned…
One of the ways he approves himself as a minister of God is how he handled himself when he went through suffering. There is no greater testimony than the suffering servant who is glorifying God through the pain and the suffering. In the first 10 verses or so, Paul gives us 3 lists.
In the first group, Paul lists the different types of suffering he went through. That list is punctuated by the preposition IN. In vs. 4, he says, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, In stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings… Those are all different types of suffering he went through.
In the second group, he lists HOW he got through those hard times. That list is punctuated by the preposition BY. Starting in vs. 6, he writes, By pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned… and more.
After that is a third group, the blessed results of the grace that carried him through the hard times. That list is punctuated by the preposition AS.
Of course, the point we want to focus upon is that when Paul went through suffering, he kept himself focused upon and meditated upon purity. By pureness, he says. When you’re going through hard times, it’s easy to lose yourself and even act in the flesh. But Paul was focused upon pureness in himself and in his walk when he suffered. He wanted to excel in pureness when he suffered, which I think is absolutely brilliant.
When Paul went through suffering, he kept himself focused on his walk. It wasn’t the suffering itself that tested Paul. Paul tested himself when he went through the suffering – by excelling at specific aspects of his walk. That is brilliant. That is strategic thinking about suffering. That is a solid mental discipline about what to do when you go through suffering. This was never about how to get through the suffering. This is about how well you can excel in virtues like pureness, knowledge, longsuffering, and kindness while you’re going through suffering.
By focusing upon specific areas of your walk, you’re not as upset about the suffering because you’re more concerned about your service to God. You can still serve God no matter what you’re going through, no matter what unfair things are being done to you. By staying focused upon virtues like pureness, knowledge, longsuffering, and kindness when you’re suffering, you’re keeping yourself in the spiritual game of advancing the cause of Christ rather than worrying yourself to death about “how do I get through this?” So, during hard times in life, Paul stayed focused upon and meditated upon purity.
How can you not think of Php 4:8? Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
He is advocating that you meditate upon, that you think about everything that is righteous, uncorrupted, everything that is good in life. When you’re not in the Word, when you’re off doing other things, whenever you can, you give yourself over to the ways of God. Not only that, but you also give yourself wholly over to them so your profiting may appear to all. You give yourself over to the thoughts of God in His Word. You are to fully open your mind to be fully influenced and fully taught by the Spirit in the Word. And what you profit from your studies and all your meditations about His Word, the result is that your thinking has changed, your emotional life has matured, you’re more spiritually strengthened, all of this is a cleansing, a purifying process for the soul – and your spiritual profit from those studies would become apparent to all. Your life is more and more shaped into the image of Christ.
The result is pureness in all the things you say and do. Your love is genuine, pure. It is transparent to all that you are conducting yourself in a pure manner, free from corruption, motivated by true charity, all of which is a testimony of Christ’s life in you. There’s no need for a façade because of the richness of the life you already have inside of you. Your profit from those studies and meditations appear to all because His life has come alive in you.
There’s another point about Phil. 4:8. Meditating upon all those righteous virtues, the things that are true, honest, pure, lovely, etc., by meditating upon those virtues, you’re not thinking about the things that would be bad influences on your mind. There is a vigilance and intentionality in staying focused on purity.
#2 – Spiritual Purity Begins with You Reckoning who you are in Christ
This point is a collection of so many things our readers already know. I said a lot of this stuff at the conference. But when you come to reckon the all-sufficiency of Christ’s victory at Calvary, that Christ paid for every sin, and that when you accepted the gospel you were identified with His victory over sin and death, you have to reckon the fact that in the eyes of God you are as pure as His Son. You are completely pure, because Christ’s sacrifice was a perfect payment. The all-sufficiency of His payment for your sins is comparable to the absoluteness of your positional purity in the eyes of God. Because of your identification with Christ and the cross, you are now as righteous and as pure as Christ Himself.
So now it’s a matter of reckoning as true who you are in Christ. You are pure. God identified you with His Son. You are dead, buried, and risen with His Son. You are pure. Once you understand how pure you are positionally, becoming pure practically in your walk is as easy as choosing to do it in your mind. You’re just aligning your earthly walk with your heavenly identity.
Just as sin has become a choice, so too, being pure in your walk is a choice. You studying His Word is a choice. You putting on the attributes of Christ is a choice. You behaving like the person God made you in Christ is a choice you make every single day. Purity is a choice. Purity in your walk means you’re simply living in light of who you are now. God has made it easy to choose to live a pure life because He has made you pure. You are pure. That pureness is a reflection of who you are in Christ.
#3 – God Calls for Purity in all your Thoughts
Paul says in 2 Cor 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.When your thinking has gone astray, you are to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. Captivity means, “Subjection; a state of being under control.” Control of what? You bring your thoughts into obedience to the words of Christ in the epistles of Paul.
The Word does the work for us. We need only take in the Word and yield ourselves to what the Word teaches us. So when we think a thought we know we shouldn’t be thinking, we simply correct our thinking to a proper Biblical perspective, and we’d know the reason why we should be thinking differently, because this verse and this verse tells us we should be thinking differently.
“So, wait a minute, Joel. If God tells us to have pure thoughts, and we think a bad thought, is that a sin?”
You’re asking the wrong question. God has already paid for all your sins. You now live in a faith-based, positive reinforcement program by His grace. The question for you is one of reward – how much will God reward you for doing what He says and doing it well? It’s only positive in grace. How much will God reward you for taking great care in having pureness of thought every single day?
Here are some questions for you: do your thoughts embody the characteristics of charity in 1 Cor. 13? In order for charity to be sincere in all the things you say and do, you must already be thinking that way beforehand. The love you show on the outside can only be genuine if you were already thinking that way on the inside, because you have chosen to allow your thinking to take on the characteristics of love.
Another question. In any given circumstance, do you know what Christ’s thinking would be? In any given situation you find yourself in, what verses would you use to apply to that situation? Bryan Ross once said, “every thought that passes through our minds needs to be judged based upon the standard of God’s word to us through the pen of the Apostle Paul. We cannot control what thoughts pop into our heads, but we can control what we do with those thoughts once we have had them. If the thought, attitude, or action is not in line with the mind of Christ it needs to be given no place and cast down immediately lest it grow into a stronghold. Either we will bring our thought life captive to the obedience of Christ or our thought life will take us captive.”
#4 – God Calls for a Pure Heart
Did you know that Paul twice beseeches us to have pure hearts? How can we have a pure heart?
1Tim 1:5 Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned. I always loved this verse. First, God commanded Paul to instruct Timothy to have a pure heart, a good conscience, and faith unfeigned.
It is possible to have a pure heart. In fact, God demands it.
I remember last year on Wednesday nights, we went through the Sermon on the Mount, and in the opening, the Lord says in Mat 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” We pointed out that, “It was possible to be pure in heart even in the OT prophetic kingdom program.” It was for them, as it is for us, impossible to be pure in heart unless they’ve first been justified by faith.
Of course, when you think of an impure heart, you can’t help but think of Jer. 17:9, which tells us that “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” The heart is desperately wicked. I’ve heard this verse used to describe believers. The problem is that, in that chapter, the Lord is comparing the righteous with the unrighteous. The Lord in that verse is talking about unbelievers. In the verse after 17:9 – He would go on to talk about judging unbelievers. He’s not only going to judge their works but also the fruit of their doings. Even Bullinger would say that that verse is “Referring to the old nature of the natural man.”
Does this mean we can somehow trust our hearts today? No. This means we need to study what Paul says and let our hearts get onboard with our renewed minds. How was it possible for an OT saint to have a pure heart? After they’re justified, it’s a matter of put off and put on. I’m reminded of Job 29:14. Job said, I put on righteousness, and it clothed me: my judgment was as a robe and a diadem. They could have a pure heart. They could have clean hands, a good conscience, if they put on the righteousness of God. They simply modeled the rightness of His ways in the outliving of their faith.
If it was possible for saints in time past to have pure hearts, how much more so for us today? God made things so much easier for us! But look at this verse again. 1Tim 1:5 Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned. All three of these virtues – charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned, are intimately tied together. True charity comes from a pure heart, which cannot be pure unless you live by a good conscience, which you cannot have unless you walk with sincere faith, which you cannot do unless you’ve placed your trust in the Word of God. You cannot have true pure love without a pure heart, and if your heat is pure then you also have a good conscience, and you cannot have a good conscience without faith, and you cannot faith without the Word of God. Faith in what Christ teaches in His Word enables you to live with a pure conscience, which enables you to love with a pure heart. One cannot love with purity if the heart is corrupted by sin.
I’m reminded of Heb 3:13, “But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.” This verse speaks of three things, 1) the importance of fellowship amongst believers constantly exhorting one another, and 2) the hardening character of sin, and 3) the deceitful nature of sin. Sin draws you in through deception and the result is a hardening of your heart. So you combine the lack of exhortations within fellowship and the deceitful character of sin, we have this warning about becoming hardened in your heart. If you allow unrighteous thinking to enter your minds, if you allow the deceitfulness of sin to infest your thinking, it can lead to a hardened heart, which is the beginning of a downward spiral in your spiritual life. To allow yourself to be fooled by the deceitfulness of sin, you are willingly sabotaging your own faith. I can personally attest to that. Been there, done that. For me, it was incremental. A compromise here, a compromise there. Next thing you know, you’re living in the flesh. The incremental hardening of your heart leads to the incremental death of your spiritual life, which leads to secret sins, which then leads to open sins, which leads to blasphemy and a seared conscience, and before you know it, you are no different than an unbeliever. You may try to keep your little pet sin hidden at home, but when the door is ajar, that dog will soon be out in the street.
I’ve covered this before so we’re not going to belabor this, but Paul’s letters seem to indicate that there is also a kind of renewing of the heart that takes place when we study His Word. Paul’s prayer request for the saints. He says in 1Th 3:12 And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you: 1Th 3:13 To the end he may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints. Paul speaks of a process through study by which your heart MAY be stablished, that your heart MAY become fixed or settled into a permanent state, that your heart MAY emotionally mature to a degree that it is operating in perfect synergy with the doctrines of grace such that it has achieved blamelessness evidenced by a Godly walk. That is a process of renewal to the heart through Bible study.
Some Christian teachers would say, “pureness is the journey, not the destination.” According to this verse, pureness is the journey and the destination. Paul wants your hearts unblameable by the time the Lord returns for His church. It’s a race to achieve total pureness inside and out by the time the Rapture is here, because once the Rapture is here, you will be pure for all eternity.
#5 – God Calls for a Pure Conscience
Did you know that Paul also twice beseeches us to have a pure conscience?
1Tim 3:9 Holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience.
Faith is no mystery. Faith is our assent to the hope God provides us in His Word, resting on His authority without any visual evidence, because “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Rom. 10:17). We’re so firmly settled in our conviction of hope in God’s promises that we possess in our souls a substance called faith.
Yet, when you study conscience in the Bible, a conscience is not always a perfect moral compass. Solomon wrote Pro 16:25 There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. Paul wrote to Titus, “Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled” (Tit 1:15 ). In the unbeliever, everything is corrupt internally, especially the conscience. Paul would say in Acts 23:1, “Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day.” Paul lived in all good conscience even when he murdered believers because he thought he was doing God’s will, but he carried out all those wicked acts because he did it all ignorantly in unbelief.
I wouldn’t say that you can’t let your conscience be your guide, but that you must allow your conscience to be guided by His Word.
Conscience. Con = with; science = knowledge. With knowledge.
You cannot have a pure conscience without truth, and you cannot know truth without His Word. Your conscience is like a ship with a broken masthead drifting in a sea of confusion without the knowledge of His Word, without embracing the body of revelation given to Paul. 1Ti 3:9, “Holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience.” Holding the mystery of the faith is to cling to that section of the Bible written specifically to you, called the mystery, the body of revelation given to Paul for believers today. You are to hold fast to the mystery, cling to that body of revelation given to Paul.
This will give you a clear conscience. You will have a clear conscience about how you live your life as a believer, because you understand the mystery.
BUT you also have to be careful to not screw up your conscience as a believer, too. You remember in 1 Tim. 4, Paul was talking about the men who advanced this great apostasy in the church, and Paul described them personally. He said they are, “Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron” (1Ti 4:2). They were speaking lies in hypocrisy. They abandoned the truth. They spoke lies and they were living in a manner that was inconsistent with the lies they spoke. They knew they were lying, and they weren’t even doing the things they were telling other people to do!
So the result of abandoning truth, telling lies, living in hypocrisy, was that they seared their own conscience. The Greek word for seared with a hot iron is kauterizo from which we get the modern term cauterize. Men used to cauterize wounds to numb the pain. So these men, these false teachers, branded their own conscience as with a hot iron. Spurgeon said, “As a hot iron deadens the part which it burns, so is their conscience no longer sensitive, and they can utter falsehood unblushingly.”
A believer can screw up so badly, he can cauterize his own consciences to such a degree that he is “past feeling” as Paul mentions in Eph 4. It is possible for a believer to abandon the faith, speak lies, and live in open rebellion to God and cause his conscience to be so cauterized, so numbed from the pain of the wrongness of everything, that he can be past feeling just as he was before he got saved. Thus, Paul brings attention to a pure conscience.
#6 – God Calls for a Pure Walk
Paul tells Timothy in 1Tim 4:12 …be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity. His walk was to be above reproach. The word “purity’ (hagnos) is always used with a moral sense. It is not limited to sins of the flesh, but covers purity in motive as well as in deeds. The result of pure thinking, a pure heart, a pure conscience is a pure walk.
#7 – Prayer Motivates Purity
This is just a personal observation. But being in constant prayer, constantly talking to God in prayer keeps you motivated to stay pure. By talking to Him regularly, you always sense that He is near, which inspires purity.
Sometimes when you do something wrong and then you pray, it’s like an elephant in the room, and I feel like I have to address it with God. It’s like prayer is an accountability process at times in order to keep me on the straight and narrow path. William Kelly said, “the highest motive of all is that which should never be wanting — a sense of the presence of the Lord, and of the state which befits each of the saints so sovereignly blessed in His grace.”
Conclusion
So how’s your walk? How’s your inner thought life? It’s good to have a check-up. Because a pure life brings a lot of peace and joy. Living righteously, living a pure life can lead to inner peace and a sense of fulfillment, knowing that the way you are living aligns with Scripture and with everything you know you are in Christ.
SUPPLY OF GRACE 
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