Sexual purity and the Spirit

Christians are to take seriously our calling to sexual purity because we can—because we are empowered by the Holy Spirit who lives within us. Society says that it is not even possible, so don’t even try. And Paul says at the end of 1 Thessalonians 4:8, but he gives his Holy Spirit to you. What a blessing it is for us—not only to be told that you must not live in sexual immorality—but then we are told: and you need not either. Boys and girls, men and women together, we cannot—we are sinners—and God will cleanse us by the blood of Christ. But we have the Holy Spirit, so in him, we are able, and he lives within us. And so all the world says that it is not even possible to be a virgin, or  for a man and a woman to be faithful to each other over forty or fifty years. Christians say, You forget that we have the Holy Spirit living with us. In fact, Paul puts it here in the Greek—the Spirit of holiness. And so God’s Spirit is in us, and he is a Spirit who gives power for holiness. And so we do not live in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know the Spirit.

We live in holiness and honour, and we do so knowing that the Holy Spirit lives within us. Let me read Paul’s very well-known verses. He says, He who is joined to the Lord is one in spirit with him. Therefore, flee from sexual immorality. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own. You were bought with a price. What is the application? So glorify God with your body. You belong to him. He purchased you from sin with the blood of Jesus. Glorify him in purity and holiness. Well ultimately, I think we can say that Christians uphold and preserve and cultivate sexual purity for the same reason that a bride keeps her purity in anticipation of her wedding. We have turned from the world that we might give our love in holiness to Jesus Christ. It is not for nothing that we are together called the Bride of Christ, and we are to present him—for love’s sake, for his sake—in purity and holiness. In fact, according to the Bible, the real perspective is that this is Christ’s work in us. It is he who, through his Word, by the ministry of the Holy Spirit, is preparing the bride for himself. What does Ephesians 5:1–33 say? He has cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish—a beautiful bride prepared for her Lord.¹

Richard D. Phillips