“Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God” Matthew 5:8. If there is anything God glorifies, it is purity. Little wonder why the Messiah came through the Virgin Mary…she had a level of purity that God could work with. Even as humans, we tend to incline more, towards people with pure hearts. No one would like to do business with someone whose motives are unknown or blurry. People are scared of commitment because they are unsure of the motive of the other person. So, when you find a person with a pure heart, pure motives, it feels like you have found a treasure. In a very polluted world, we need a constant reminder of the need to maintain purity, for ourselves and as an honor to God who loves us dearly.

 The type of purity I would be focusing on today is sexual purity.  

The most common form of impurity in our present world today, is sexual impurity. Sexual sins have become so normalized that they are even praised and encouraged in songs, social media and basically every platform used to spread information to masses. The need to save sex for marriage has been regarded as useless. I hear a lot of funny statements like “I’m keeping myself for my husband” and so usually, such people are quick to go into sexual sins with the guy they’re engaged to because “we’d be married soon anyway”. But this is a breach of the agreement we signed with God when we joined the family of Christ. Sex outside marriage be it with your husband-to-be or anyone else, is sexual immorality and the bible records it as a sin (1 Corinthians 6:18; Revelations 21:8). Dear Christian ladies, you are not to stay away from pre-marital sex because you’re keeping yourself for your husband. You are to do so because you are keeping yourself pure as God wants and using your body to glorify and honor Him (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).

Though a lot of people do not recognize this as a standard for purity these days, we as believers have who we look at for the standard and He says we need to abstain from sexual sins as one way to maintain purity. This message of sexual purity is a general message. All children of God, female and male are to keep the standards which God has set for us, using our bodies to glorify Him. And no, watching things that could make your mind race is not advised. In our maintaining of sexual purity, purity of the mind is also very important. Jesus said to us in Matthew 15:8-19 that we should not be so concerned about what goes into us (food) because eventually, it comes out. But we should focus on our words because these things start as thoughts and they are formulated in the mind…evil thoughts and plans, sexual immoralities and all other sort of sins start from the mind. The things we expose our mind to as Christians and people generally, go a long way into forming who we become. Avoid things that can pollute your mind with sinful thoughts.

Feeding yourself daily or regularly with lyrics from songs that may rile you up, movies, videos or books that may cause you to fantasize about the wrong things is very dangerous to your ability to maintain purity. We only grow and learn from the things we expose ourselves to. These things cause us to lust and if improperly managed, we’d find ourselves falling deeper into sin.

Purity is not only beneficial to God as He loves to work with pure vessels, it is also very much beneficial you. Many people often feel empty and weird after engaging in immorality and this is an aftermath that is preventable by abstinence. STDs, embarrassment, fear of “people finding out”, shame and the list goes on are things that abstinence saves us from. It also teaches you self-control on a whole different level.

Every believer at the point of belief has been a made a new creature. That means, they have been restored and their purity is renewed. Even though you might have had a not-so-wonderful past, your faith in Jesus has given you a new slate to rewrite your story and that purity has been restored (Titus 2:14). The real deal then becomes maintaining that purity that God has now given you. However, you will fail fatally if you try to do it on your own. Temptation is way stronger than will power or resolution. Have you ever resolved to not do something but find yourself going back to that exact thing the next moment? Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. There is a need to introduce a force greater than that temptation, into the equation. There is a need to involve the Holy Spirit, the bible does not call him Helper for nothing (John 14:15-18). He was given to us by God to help us in all things including doing God’s will, maintaining purity, in this case (Philippians 2:13).  

So yeah, maintaining sexual purity even this perverse world is not impossible. It is more important for us to remain pure that we may see God, than for us to give in to the deceptive and ungodly encouragements of this world. God gives us strength to maintain purity and we should as His beloved children, endeavor to remain pure, as a holy acceptable vessel unto God.

“For this is the will of God, that you be sanctified: that you abstain and back away from sexual immorality; that each of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor…For God has not called us to impurity, but to holiness” 1 Thessalonians 4: 3-4, 7.