Relationships: Keeping the Marriage Bed Pure

These days there is a lot of talk surrounding the idea of purity in Christian circles.  At Disciple Nows, church camp, and Sunday School classes we can hear sermons of keeping ourselves pure for marriage.  We hear the same things over and over about what it means to be pure, but I fear that we stop short so often.  We don't talk about how purity isn't just about not having sex before marriage.  It's not just about not cheating on your husband or wife.  It goes deeper.  Purity is a condition of the heart.

Purity is defined as the condition or quality of being pure; freedom from anything that debases, contaminates, pollutes.  I notice the definition contains the word "anything."  That's an all-inclusive word; it means that there is no exception.  So, if our emotions or thought life is contaminated, we aren't practicing purity.  In practical terms, if we are lusting after someone or if we are day-dreaming about someone in an inappropriate way, we are not living pure lives.

I also believe that the other way we stop short in the discussion of purity is marriage.  We tend to be clear about the idea that adultery is wrong, but the fact is, we have a narrow view of what adultery is.  Adultery isn't just the physical act of being sexually involved with someone that isn't our spouse, it's also emotional, and our thought life about that person is something that can lead us away from our spouse.

Purity isn't just to get you to marriage; it's to be a continuous act within your marriage.  Hebrews 13:4 tells us, "Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous."  What that means is that we have to treat our marriages with the great honor that they deserve, we have to work at them, and we have to fight for them.  If marriage is the most tangible picture of the gospel, then we should strive to present it to those who do not God in a way that will only point to him, bring him honor.  That doesn't mean it will be perfect, but it does mean that we should fight to keep the contaminants of our marriage out.  Yes, let us abstain from being physically adulterous, but let's not stop there.  Our focus should be on loving our other half with all that we are so that we connect to them emotionally and that our thoughts do not wander from them.

The danger is that we often do not guard our minds, and our thoughts dictate our actions.  We act on what we believe.  Before we ever take action, we have spent time thinking about whatever the issue is.  It never "just happens."  We must refocus our thoughts and our emotions will follow. We cannot be thinking about someone else and expect to have a deep connection with our spouse.  It will never work because we aren't honest.  

Purity is not something we attain and just get to check off our list.  We have to continue to keep the marriage bed undefiled.  It is a constant battle.  Titus 2:12 says that we are in "training to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age..."  We can train ourselves to refocus our minds and root our emotions in truth so that we may live purely.  We can choose to refuse the ways of godless world, but it takes work and self-control.  We have to practice purity in our marriages each day.

Let us rid our marriages of anything that is contaminating or polluting so that we may keep our marriage bed pure.