Three Cheers for Purity Culture

Introduction
One of our increasingly pagan culture’s new favorite punching bags is so-called “purity culture.” Apparently some folks believe that before Joshua Harris published his book “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” that evangelicals believed in impurity. And weren’t those the golden days of yore? But tthe thing to keep front and center is simply the point that Christianity is the target with these attacks. Christianity is a purity culture: Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8). It’s one of the beatitudes. And Hebrews makes much the same point: “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14). 

Sexual Fraud
Jesus taught specifically that part of what He meant by purity was sexual purity: “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and notthat thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell” (Mt. 5:27-30). Adultery begins in the heart with lust, and it would be better to take drastic measures to fight it there before it destroys your life and drags you down to Hell. 

A quick search on X brought up one so-called “sexual educator,” who boasts of being the creator of the “purity dropout program,” who wrote recently, “I’m going to go ahead and say it bc so many people raised in purity culture worry about this: I personally don’t think it’s disrespectful to have private sexual fantasies about people you know. As long as they remain your private thoughts, they are no one else’s business.” Thank you very much for speaking so plainly, ma’am, but Jesus would beg to differ. Jesus says that the end of that road is Hell.  

Likewise, Paul famously wrote, “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” (Phil. 4:8). And elsewhere: “For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication: That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor; not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God: that no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter: because that the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have forewarned you and testified. For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness” (1 Thess. 4:3-7). 

So this is purity and holiness: abstaining from all fornication, every form of sexual immorality. And the reason given is that sexual immorality is a form of fraud that God will judge. Sexual sin is a form of theft. This is why the Bible also admonishes husbands and wives not to deprive one another sexually, calling that another form of fraud (1 Cor. 7:5). You can steal from your brother by taking what is not rightfully yours, and you can steal from your brother by withholding what is rightfully owed. 

The Center of Biblical Purity Culture
Now a quick skim of some of what is called purity culture includes, apparently, things like purity rings, purity vows, and purity balls, none of which I know much about. And these seem to me to be traditions of men that may or may not do any good. If they’ve helped you, I do not object, but there’s nothing about them specifically in the Bible, so certainly not required. But to the extent that human traditions often tend to get in the way of the simplicity of God’s word, I would insist that we already have all that we need. Christ has given us His mark of our purity, His sign of our allegiance to Him, and the basis for our Christian fellowship: baptism. In some ways, I would generally discourage these extrabiblical traditions for a similar reason to why I discourage tattoos: you are already permanently marked with the name of Christ in your baptism. 

“Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water” (Heb. 10:22). Take note: the efficacy of baptism is not merely in having gone through the ceremony. The ceremony is objective before God and makes claims on you (whether or not you meant it at the time). But what it objectively means calls you to subjectively, internally embrace and believe, similar to the objectivity of a wedding ceremony and the exchange of rings. You must internally embrace what has objectively been declared. So in baptism, We are not saved by merely having our bodies cleansed by water, but rather, we are saved by having a clean conscience toward God which is only possible by evangelical faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus (1 Pet. 3:21). And that is what your baptism proclaims.

So Christian baptism is the center of true, biblical purity culture. It is the sign and the seal of our purity in Christ. This purity is both accomplished and final through the gifts of regeneration and justification, and it is an ongoing work of the Spirit in the process of sanctification. Because Christ died for all who believe, all who believe in Him are fully and completely cleansed of all their sins, past, present, and future. Full stop. Faith receives this absolute absolution, and there is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:1). Did you catch that? There is not a single charge that can be brought against God’s elect (Rom. 8:33). It is God who justifies, and if God justifies, there is not a single hint of impurity that can condemn (Rom. 8:34). This is because Christ Himself intercedes for His people. He stands before the Father for every single one of His people. And who can separate us from His love? This is the center of Christian purity culture. We are pure and holy because Christ is pure and holy. We are accepted because Christ is accepted. We are justified because Jesus is risen from the dead. 

Yet Scripture also teaches that this justification, this definitive sanctification is the necessary beginning of truly becoming holy. God declares sinners righteous. God doesn’t declare good people righteous. Christ came for prostitutes and tax collectors. Christ came for pimps and abortion doctors and sodomites and the trans-confused. Christ came for church kids getting handsy in the backseat of the car. Christ came for elders with porn problems. But He didn’t merely come to forgive them. He came to deliver them. He came to cleanse them and to give them His Spirit so that they would walk out of the jail cells of their sins and the sins of their fathers and walk in the Light as He is in the Light. By His death, we are enabled to die to our sin, and by His resurrection, we are raised to newness of life. 

Grace and Law 
With all obedience in the Christian life, there is always the temptation to take what is meant to be grace and turn it into a law-work. This is what Paul came righteously unglued about in Galatians. Beginning by grace, will you now continue by the law? Paul asked, and he answered his own question by saying, Hell no. But the point isn’t that Christians therefore stop caring about obedience and holiness. No, the point is that everything depends upon the engine driving the action. Christians are supposed to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling, but only because God is at work in them willing and doing according to His good pleasure (Phil. 2:12-13). We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, for good works, which He prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them (Eph. 2:10). 

So with all Christian holiness, from working hard to support our families to serving the poor to evangelism and sexual purity, there is a way of turning the grace of obedience into a whip that really is satanic. But the problem is not the obedience; the problem is human hearts. Having grown up in the Christian church, I’ve witnessed a number of instances of children growing up in Christian homes who cannot wait to leave the church when they turn 18. But it wasn’t “purity culture” that drove them away, it was fear and harshness and hypocrisy.  

“There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet is not washed from their filthiness” (Prov. 30:12). Pharisees are people who cleanse the outside of the cup but on the inside its full of mold and bits of sewage. And in that state, Pharisees often travel land and sea, from homeschool conventions to courtship conferences, to make their kids twice the sons of Hell than themselves. But the problem in those cases was impurity in the heart and hypocrisy in the home. You cannot give what you do not have. And some parents have tried to hoist purity on their kids with impure hearts. The solution is not to give up on purity. The solution is to actually get clean. But you cannot get this by law. You cannot get this by merely trying harder or coming up with new rules. You cannot make up for your failures. You can only get true obedience by grace. But if these parents who have unclean hearts would simply confess their sins and be truly cleansed on the inside, they would be forgiven and then the work of teaching purity would become a complete relief rather than such a burden. 

In other cases, as with Joshua Harris, the problem doesn’t seem to have been hypocrisy and harshness so much as a failure to protect from pride. There are particular warnings about ordaining a man who is too young, lest he be puffed up with pride and fall into the condemnation of the devil (1 Tim. 3:6), as well as not ordaining too hastily, and the warning is tied to purity: “Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men’s sins: keep thyself pure” (1 Tim. 5:22). And the same thing applies generally to families and churches that are actually walking in true purity. The central motif in that community needs to be gratitude. Purity is a glorious gift of God, and there is no room for boasting. What do you have that you did not receive? God puts down the proud but lifts up the humble.

Conclusion
The last thing to note is that sinners sin. And this is about as profound as saying that politicians lie. But what I mean is that you can find in every Christian community real failures. You can find pastors and elders who have sinned grievously, you can find fathers and mothers who have sinned grievously, and you can find sons and daughters who have sinned grievously. That isn’t really a shock. We are Christians. We believe in original sin, and we believe in the enemies of the world, the flesh, and the devil. But those who hate Christ want to weaponize these real failures against the Church and against God’s people. They say, “See?! That’s what your purity culture gets you! Tone it down. Drop all that abstinence before marriage business. A little bit of lust is normal.” 

Those who hate Christ want His people to quiet down and stop talking about purity, blaming our love and celebration of purity for the heartbreaking failures of some. But this is fundamentally because they hate purity. And they hate purity because they hate Christ. They know their own sins, their own uncleanness, their own filth, and they hate the light of Christ that exposes their works of darkness. And in their pride they refuse His grace. They refuse His purity. And ironically, many of the fiercest modern critics of purity culture launch their attacks in the name of protecting women, in the name of fighting sexual abuse. But all they are doing is encouraging more grooming. 

So we will not stop. We will not stop because Christ is our purity. Christ is our holiness. We have no purity or holiness apart from Christ, but we have Christ, and we have been made whole. We love chastity, and we love the marriage bed because it points to the perfect and faithful love of Christ for His Bride the Church, whom Christ is cleansing from every spot and wrinkle. So sure, maybe a little less on the purity rings, and a little more on the gift of baptism. Maybe a little less on purity balls and a little more on the glory of Christian weddings and the potency of building faithful families. 

So three cheers for purity culture. Three cheers for the purity of Christ. And three cheers for the purity of Christ’s bride. For the few instances of real horrific failure and sin (and there are some gnarly ones), there are many millions of Christians who grew up in faithful Christian families and churches – not perfect families or churches – but communities honestly trusting in Christ, confessing sins, forgiving one another, holding one another accountable, and honoring the marriage bed. I think God is at work, and I think the lines are being drawn, and the modern attacks on purity are driven by a great fear that the resistance is actually quite formidable.  

Photo by mrjn Photography on Unsplash