Building A Future, Why Purity?

Why purity? Other than God calling us to a pure life, lived by a pure heart:

Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, 1 Peter 1:22

God specifically calls us to keep the marriage bed pure. Hebrews 13:5 Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.

You know, its funny, how we like to ignore things we don’t think apply to us. But that passage above, it really catapulted Dirt’s and my quest for a better way for our own girls and then to share it with others. Marriage should be honored by all. Honored, not just dealt with, suffered through, eyes rolled at. By all, not just those who are married and not just the marriage you are in, the reality of marriage should be honored by all.

That whole honor the marriage bed has never been easy since the Fall I am sure, but it is doubly hard these days. Marriage is attacked at every point it would appear. Dirt and I believe that marriage is so easily attacked, whether we are talking the concept, the institution, or actual individual marriages, because we really do not understand what marriage is. Mostly, because we don’t deeply know the God who created it and why. And if you don’t know something really well it is hard to honor it or stand up for it when others dishonor it.

We, Cultural Christian Americans, foolishly think we know how to fix bad ones, marriages gone wrong. But Dirt and I are not so sure. Because we, Dirt and I, don’t see the “fixers” just opening their Bible and listening to the Holy Spirit. Yes, some are, a few are and we have gained strength and encouragement from those of whom we know and those we don’t know but hear of. But on the average, fixers aren’t fixin they are mixin’ in a little, um a lot actually, of that which Paul warns against in Colossians 2:8 See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.

Our human society loves to talk about balance. Balance and self-esteem. Both manifestations of self-love. Both murderous to purity. Therefore, both damaging to the marriage bed. This absurd idea that we need to gain a balance between degradation and legalism needs to be flushed from our brains, collectively and individually.

Not unlike the whole self-centered issue, where self-loathing is no more than the other side of the self-absorption coin, with pride on one side and self loathing on the other; prudishness is just the other side of the perversion coin, the opposite side from promiscuity. God doesn’t want us balanced some where in the middle, sandwiched between the two like the copper in the middle of the quarter. He wants us to discard that ill gotten, ill paying, coin altogether. He wants us to see what He first intended, what He has reconciled to us now through His Son, Jesus Christ, what we can have and hold on too in the midst of this perverse generation that sees only promiscuity or prudishness or sandwiching themselves somewhere in the middle.

He wants us, His children to delight in the gift He gives to those He brings together through marriage. The gift in marriage that proceeds subsequent gifts tied to what the gift is given for. He wants us to see that He invented it and gave it to us, for us. He wants us to see that laying together as husband and wife brings a knowing to one another that surpasses any other sense of knowing. That laying together communicates far more than words, cuts far deeper through the mire than counseling ever could. When husband and wife, the couple under God, enter into one another, takes the other in, that is when they soar beyond man invented psycho babble intended to repair or build.

We, God’s people, need to see that laying together comforts, man and wife, one or both, in a time of grief or pain. We need to see that it is a healing balm, a relief from the pain the fallen world dishes out. It renews and restores. It rebuilds strength. It is the closest connection two people can have. Genesis 24:67 Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he married Rebekah. So she became his wife, and he loved her; and Isaac was comforted after his mother's death.

We need to see that laying together invites us in on an edge of who He is, our Creator. Procreation. Often this is the only outcome of the marital gift we see, in our narrow mindedness, as common to both the man and the woman. We suppose that to the man it is given as a source of pride and proof, to the woman as an outlet for who she is, a nurturer, a needed distraction from over nurturing the man. And what a load of hogwash that absurd view is. Not only is it not the only common result of husband and wife relations, the result is far more than a source of pride and an outlet for nurturing.

Each one of the godly outcomes of laying together are given to both the man and the woman in spite of the twisted and perverted cultural sense of things. The man and the woman, husband and wife, become one through it, like no two people can become one, as only we can with God at God’s hand. I cannot achieve that oneness, that one flesh-ness, even with the children that ushered forth from my body. It is the one bond that I see cannot even be broken by an issue of faith. I am called to be ready to leave brother or sister, father or mother, child even, for the sake of Christ. But I am not allowed to leave myself for the sake of Christ. Only if an unbelieving spouse insists on leaving, am I given to let them go, it is their call from lack of Faith, not my call from a position of faith. ( This permission actually comes from Paul himself not from God. 1Corinthians 7:12-16)

In this incredible oneness, both the man and the woman enjoy the many beauties of being husband and wife. Perhaps on any given day it is the man who needs the comfort that the marriage bed provides. The wife may need it the next day. One day the wife needs the pleasure and laughter it brings, the next week the man or both at the same time.

This is the beauty that purity protects. And not just mere physical purity although it is huge, but spiritual purity as well. Who or what do we set up as an idol? What do we give way as more important than God? With what do we cheat on Him with? We feel uncertain and untrusting when we enter a marriage from an impure stand point. We find it difficult to allow another person the access to our very being that the relationship between a husband and a wife can achieve, is meant to achieve in Christ.

Would it be right to say that we are most reconciled when we are most vulnerable? Certainly to be reconciled one must first become vulnerable. Open yourselves up, trust Christ to redeem your very soul, care for you, lead you and present you to His Father.

When we talk about marriage, we are talking about our, the church’s, relationship with Christ and visa-versa.

For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. Ephesians 5:29-33.