Purity
Purity in scripture is a single condition with two faces — the body washed in water and the heart washed of its sin. The same vocabulary that pronounces a leper clean is taken up by the Psalter to ask for a clean heart, and the prophets and apostles carry it through to the conscience. Where Yahweh himself speaks, his words are pure; where Israel is asked to draw near, only the one with innocent hands and a pure heart will stand. The opposite condition — impurity — is named with equal precision: ceremonial uncleanness in the camp, sexual depravity, defiled hands, double-mindedness, a tongue set on fire of hell. The arc below moves from the pure character of Yahweh and his word, through the access conditions of the holy place, into sexual and moral purity, into the limit-question of self-claimed cleanness, and out to the new heart promised through Christ. The mechanics of the washings themselves are traced in Purification and Defilement; this page is about the condition.
Pure Words and Pure Commandments
What is pure begins with Yahweh's own speech. "The words of Yahweh are pure words; As silver tried in a furnace on the earth, Purified seven times" (Ps 12:6). His commandment, like his words, holds the same character: "The precepts of Yahweh are right, rejoicing the heart: The commandment of Yahweh is pure, enlightening the eyes" (Ps 19:8). And again, "Your [Speech] is very pure; Therefore your slave loves it" (Ps 119:140). The contrast appears in Proverbs, where the test of pure or impure speech is who hears it — "Evil devices are disgusting to Yahweh; But pleasant words [are] pure" (Pr 15:26).
The Pure in Heart and the Holy Place
Access to Yahweh is conditioned on this same purity, and the condition is laid down without softening. "Who will ascend into the hill of Yahweh? And who will stand in his holy place? He who has innocent hands, and a pure heart; Who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood, And has not sworn deceitfully. He will receive a blessing from Yahweh, And righteousness from the God of his salvation" (Ps 24:3-5). The pure heart is paired in the Psalms with hands washed in innocence — both gestures together: "I will wash my hands in innocence: So I will go about your altar, O Yahweh" (Ps 26:6). The civil rite stands behind the figure: when an unsolved killing pollutes the land, "all the elders of that city, who are nearest to the slain man, will wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley" (De 21:6).
The pastoral epistles inherit the same anchor and press it inward. "The end of the charge is love out of a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned" (1Ti 1:5). The deacon must hold "the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience" (1Ti 3:9). Paul writes to Timothy, "I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers in a pure conscience" (2Ti 1:3). And the apostolic charge runs the same direction in the second letter: "flee youthful lusts, and follow after righteousness, faith, love, peace, with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart" (2Ti 2:22). Peter draws the same line from soul-purification to fellowship: "Seeing you⁺ have purified your⁺ souls in your⁺ obedience to the truth to unfeigned love of the brothers, love one another fervently from a pure heart" (1Pe 1:22).
Sexual Purity and Impurity
The clearest single demand of New Testament purity is sexual. "For this is the will of God, [even] your⁺ sanctification, that you⁺ abstain from whoring; … not by immoral sexual passion, even as the Gentiles who don't know God; … For God called us not for impurity, but in sanctification" (1Th 4:3,5,7). The same triplet of terms recurs throughout the corpus. "Put to death therefore your⁺ members which are on the earth: whoring, impurity, immoral sexual passion, evil desire, and greed, which is idolatry" (Cl 3:5). "But whoring, all impurity, or greed, don't let it even be named among you⁺, as becomes saints" (Ep 5:3). Of those who have given themselves up to sexual depravity Paul writes that they "delivered themselves up to sexual depravity, to work all impurity with greed" (Ep 4:19). The slavery image makes the imperative concrete: "as you⁺ presented your⁺ members [as] slaves to impurity and to iniquity to iniquity, even so now present your⁺ members [as] slaves to righteousness to sanctification" (Ro 6:19). And Romans names the consequence Yahweh permits: "Therefore God delivered them up in the desires of their hearts to impurity, that their bodies should be shamed among themselves" (Ro 1:24); "and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, became passionate with each other, men with men, shamefully having sex together, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was due" (Ro 1:27).
The Corinthian correspondence sets the rule without abstraction. "It is actually reported that there is whoring among you⁺, and such whoring as is not even among the Gentiles, that one [of you⁺] has his father's wife" (1Co 5:1). "Stop being a whore. Every sin that a man does is outside the body; but he who goes whoring sins against his own body" (1Co 6:18). "Now concerning the things of which you⁺ wrote: It is good for a man not to have any sex with a woman. But, because of the whoring going on, let each have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband" (1Co 7:1-2). Paul recalls the wilderness penalty: "Neither let us go whoring, as some of them went whoring, and 23,000 fell in one day" (1Co 10:8). The Numbers narrative behind the warning shows the same line drawn at the door of the tent of meeting: "And, look, one of the sons of Israel came and brought to his brothers a Midianitish woman in the sight of Moses, and in the sight of all the congregation of the sons of Israel, while they were weeping at the door of the tent of meeting" (Nu 25:6). And against a recurrence in Corinth, "lest again when I come my God should humble me before you⁺, and I should mourn for many of those who have sinned before, and didn't repent of the impurity and whoring and sexual depravity in which they participated" (2Co 12:21).
The same demand reaches into desire itself. "Beloved, I urge you⁺ as sojourners and pilgrims, to abstain from fleshly desires, which war against the soul" (1Pe 2:11). "Walk by the Spirit, and you⁺ will not fulfill the desire of the flesh" (Ga 5:16). "Then the desire, when it has conceived, bears sin: and the sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death" (Jas 1:15). The Old Testament wisdom literature already anticipated this turn from act to glance: "I made a covenant with my eyes; How then should I look at a virgin?" (Job 31:1). "For why should you, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, And embrace the bosom of a foreigner?" (Pr 5:20). "Don't lust after her beauty in your heart; Neither let her take you with her eyelids" (Pr 6:25). Sirach drops the warning into a maxim: "Wine and women cause the heart to be lustful" (Sir 19:2). And the marriage seal stands as the boundary: "Neither will you commit adultery" (De 5:18); "[Let] marriage [be] had in honor among all, and [let] the bed [be] undefiled: for whores and adulterers God will judge" (He 13:4); "[to be] sober-minded, chaste, workers at home, kind, being in subjection to their own husbands, that the word of God not be blasphemed" (Ti 2:5).
The figure of the chaste virgin provides the contrasting picture. The 144,000 in Revelation "are those who were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These [are] those who follow the Lamb wherever he may go. These were purchased from among men, [to be] the first fruits to God and to the Lamb" (Re 14:4). Jude reaches back to Sodom for the negative example: "As Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, which committed sexual depravity and homosexuality as do these [men], are set forth as an example, serving a penalty of eternal fire" (Jud 1:7). Peter writes that those who "walk after the flesh in the desire of defilement, and despise dominion. Daring, self-willed, they do not tremble to rail at dignities" (2Pe 2:10). And of the Christian community in Diognetus the practice is summed in a single line: "They eat together, but do not sleep together" (Gr 5:7).
Sirach holds the picture together with two of its sharpest images. "Two types [of men] multiply sins, And a third brings wrath: A lustful soul burning like fire, Which is not quenched until it is consumed; A fornicator in the body of his flesh, For he does not cease until the fire consumes him; [And] the fornicator to whom all bread is sweet, For he will not leave off until he dies" (Sir 23:16-17). And against this, "Grace upon grace is a modest woman, And there is no weight [of gold] worth a self-controlled soul" (Sir 26:15).
The Self-Claim and Its Limits
A recurring proverb sets the limit on self-claimed purity. "Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?" (Pr 20:9). "There is a generation who are pure in their own eyes, And [yet] are not washed from their filthiness" (Pr 30:12). "The way of him who is laden with guilt is exceedingly crooked; But as for the pure, his work is right" (Pr 21:8). Micah turns the limit into Yahweh's question to a deceitful merchant: "Shall I be pure with wicked balances, and with a bag of deceitful weights?" (Mic 6:11). The Psalmist himself records the moment when the gesture seems to have failed: "Surely in vain I have cleansed my heart, And washed my hands in innocence" (Ps 73:13).
The Pauline maxim turns the whole problem on its perceiving subject: "To the pure all things are pure: but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but both their mind and their conscience are defiled" (Tit 1:15). And against the self-claim Paul places the imperative: "Lay hands hastily on no man, neither share in other men's sins: keep yourself pure" (1Ti 5:22).
Ceremonial Uncleanness
Beneath the figurative usage runs the ceremonial register from which the figures are drawn. The leper is examined and pronounced unclean by the priest: "if the hair in the plague has turned white, and the appearance of the plague is deeper than the skin of his flesh, it is the plague of leprosy; and the priest will look at him, and pronounce him unclean" (Le 13:3). The verdict recurs across variants — "But whenever raw flesh appears in him, he will be unclean" (Le 13:14); the bright spot (Le 13:25); the spreading lesion (Le 13:36) — and the leper's own cry seals it: "And the leper in whom the plague is, his clothes will be rent, and the hair of his head will go loose, and he will cover his upper lip, and will cry, Unclean, unclean" (Le 13:45). A house under the same plague holds its uncleanness too: "Moreover he who goes into the house all the while that it is shut up will be unclean until the evening" (Le 14:46).
Bodily discharges receive the same statute. "When any man has discharging out of his flesh a [genital] discharge, he is unclean. And this will be his uncleanness in his discharge: whether his flesh runs his discharge, or his flesh be stopped from his discharge, he is unclean. All the days that his flesh runs his discharge or that his flesh withholds his discharge, it is his uncleanness" (Le 15:2-3). The reason for the discharge laws is named: "Thus you⁺ will separate the sons of Israel from their uncleanness, that they will not die in their uncleanness, when they defile my tabernacle that is in the midst of them" (Le 15:31). And the Day of Atonement is described in the same vocabulary: "and he will make atonement for the holy place, because of the uncleannesses of the sons of Israel, and because of their transgressions, even all their sins: and so he will do for the tent of meeting, that stays with them in the midst of their uncleannesses" (Le 16:16).
A purification before approach is sometimes required even when the rite has not been kept perfectly. "For a multitude of the people, even many of Ephraim and Manasseh, Issachar and Zebulun, had not cleansed themselves, yet they ate the Passover otherwise than it is written. For Hezekiah had prayed for them, saying, The good Yahweh pardon everyone" (2CH 30:18). And the Passover crowds in John still go up early "to purify themselves" (Jn 11:55); after battle, "as to every garment, and all that is made of skin, and all work of goats' [hair], and all things made of wood, you⁺ will purify yourselves" (Nu 31:20). Sirach reflects soberly on the limit of the rite when sin is willful: "What can be made clean from an unclean thing? And how can that which is true come from a lie?" (Sir 34:4); "He who washes after [contact with] a dead body, and touches it again, What profit does he have by his washing?" (Sir 34:30). The Maccabean record reverses the picture from the inside of the sanctuary: under Antiochus's officers, "to sacrifice swine's flesh, and unclean beasts. And that they should leave their sons uncircumcised, and let their souls be defiled with all uncleannesses, and detestable things" (1Ma 1:47-48).
Cleanliness Before Worship and Hospitality
The everyday wash anticipates and accompanies worship. "Then David arose from the earth, and washed, and anointed himself, and changed his apparel; and he came into the house of Yahweh, and worshiped" (2Sa 12:20). Before Sinai, "Moses went down from the mount to the people, and sanctified the people; and they washed their garments" (Ex 19:14). Jacob couples the wash with putting away foreign gods: "Then Jacob said to his household, and to all who were with him, Put away the foreign gods that are among you⁺, and purify yourselves, and change your⁺ garments" (Ge 35:2). The Levitical wash strips the Levite of every defiling fragment: "And thus you will do to them, to cleanse them: sprinkle the water of expiation on them, and let them cause a razor to pass over all their flesh, and let them wash their clothes, and cleanse themselves" (Nu 8:7). The leper's cleansing rite, when the verdict reverses, follows the same pattern: "see if the plague is dim, and the plague has not spread in the skin, then the priest will pronounce him clean: it is a scab: and he will wash his clothes, and be clean" (Le 13:6).
Foot-washing is the same gesture stripped of debate, offered at the door to a guest. "Let now a little water be fetched, and wash your⁺ feet, and rest yourselves under the tree" (Ge 18:4). "And the man brought the men into Joseph's house, and gave them water, and they washed their feet" (Ge 43:24). And before going down to the threshing-floor, Naomi's instruction is a single sequence — "Wash yourself therefore, and anoint yourself, and put your raiment on you" (Ru 3:3). Behind the Pharisaic version of the practice the Lord names a different concern: "For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands diligently, don't eat, holding the tradition of the elders" (Mr 7:3).
A Pure Heart from Yahweh
Where self-cleansing fails, the prophets lay the gesture in Yahweh's own hand. "I will turn my hand on you, and thoroughly purge away your dross, and will take away all your tin" (Isa 1:25). "And I will sprinkle clean water on you⁺, and you⁺ will be clean: from all your⁺ filthiness, and from all your⁺ idols, I will cleanse you⁺" (Eze 36:25). The promise is repeated at refining heat: "and he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi, and refine them as gold and silver; and they will offer to Yahweh offerings in righteousness" (Mal 3:3). And the day of Yahweh's coming is itself the agent: "But who can endure the day of his coming? And who will stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap" (Mal 3:2). The Daniel oracle names the same eschatological purification: "Many will purify themselves, and make themselves white, and be refined; but the wicked will do wickedly; and none of the wicked will understand; but those who are wise will understand" (Da 12:10).
The Psalmist owns the position. "Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, And cleanse me from my sin" (Ps 51:2). "Look, you desire truth in the inward parts; And in the hidden part you will make me to know wisdom" (Ps 51:6). "Purify me with hyssop, and I will be clean: Wash me, and I will be whiter than snow" (Ps 51:7). "Create in me a clean heart, O God; And renew a right spirit inside me" (Ps 51:10). Sirach echoes the imperative: "Turn from iniquity, and purify your hands; And from all transgressions cleanse your heart" (Sir 38:10). Jeremiah issues the same command to the city: "O Jerusalem, wash your heart from wickedness, that you may be saved. How long will your evil thoughts lodge inside you?" (Je 4:14). And Isaiah pairs the human and the divine sides of the move: "Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; put away the evil of your⁺ doings from before my [Speech]; cease to do evil" (Isa 1:16); "Come now, and let us reason together, says Yahweh: though your⁺ sins be as scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they will be as wool" (Isa 1:18).
The New Cleansing
The Hebrew letter takes up the figure and locates the cleansing in Christ's blood. "For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctify to the cleanness of the flesh: how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, cleanse our conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" (He 9:13-14). The earlier rites are named for what they were — "[being] only (with meats and drinks and diverse washings) carnal ordinances, imposed until a time of reformation" (He 9:10) — and the limit is named too: "Or else would they not have ceased to be offered? Because the worshipers, having been once cleansed, would have had no more consciousness of sins" (He 10:2). What follows is a different drawing-near: "let us draw near with a true heart in fullness of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and having our body washed in pure water" (He 10:22).
The apostolic letters press the imperative through to the conscience and the conduct. "Such were some of you⁺: but you⁺ were washed, but you⁺ were sanctified, but you⁺ were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God" (1Co 6:11). "Having therefore these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God" (2Co 7:1). "Husbands, love your⁺ wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and delivered himself up for it; that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word" (Ep 5:25-26). "If a man therefore purges himself from these, he will be a vessel to honor, sanctified, meet for the master's use, prepared to every good work" (2Ti 2:21). "Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you⁺. Cleanse your⁺ hands, you⁺ sinners; and purify your⁺ hearts, you⁺ double-minded" (Jas 4:8). "If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin" (1Jn 1:7). "Everyone who has this hope [set] on him purifies himself, even as he is pure" (1Jn 3:3). And the Lord's own word over his disciples is the pattern of the figure: "Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes it away: and every [branch] that bears fruit, he cleanses it, that it may bear more fruit" (Jn 15:2); "Already you⁺ are clean because of the word which I have spoken to you⁺" (Jn 15:3).
Pure Things Worth Thinking On
Paul finally lists "pure" among the proper objects of Christian thought. "Finally, brothers, whatever things are true, whatever things are honorable, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report; if there is any virtue, and if there is any praise, think on these things" (Php 4:8). The Old Testament wisdom maxim makes the converse claim: "The way of him who is laden with guilt is exceedingly crooked; But as for the pure, his work is right" (Pr 21:8). And the closing image of Revelation gathers the figure into the great washing: "These are those who come out of the great tribulation, and they washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb" (Re 7:14).