Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Mercy Not Sacrifice

Home
About
My Book
Archives
More
- Theology
- Culture
- Politics
- Sermons
- Bible
- Devotions
- Daily Office
- Podcast

Home
Progressive Christian
The difference between spiritual purity and moral cleanliness

The difference between spiritual purity and moral cleanliness

Last updated on: July 17, 2014 at 1:59 pm by Morgan Guyton

The difference between spiritual purity and moral cleanliness 2014-07-17T13:59:26-05:00 Morgan Guyton

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Leviticus 10:10 says, “You are to distinguish between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean.” Matthew 5:8 says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” These two verses describe two different frameworks for understanding holiness, which I would term moral cleanliness and spiritual purity. Moral cleanliness understands holiness as faithfully following God’s rules and boundaries because it pleases God for us to follow His rules. Spiritual purity understands holiness as purging the competing passions and loyalties from our heart so that we can be purely devoted to God. I believe that Christian holiness is about spiritual purity, but many of my fellow evangelical Christians believe it’s about moral cleanliness. Let me explain.

The primary question that moral cleanliness asks is: Am I obeying what God has said to do? This of course presumes that God has told me everything that I’m supposed to do in the Bible. Moral cleanliness runs into trouble when we encounter situations in life that the Bible did not explicitly anticipate (which of course can never be admitted to without the moral system collapsing). For moral cleanliness, holiness is a matter of conforming my behavior to a set of commands. How I am transformed internally by my behavior is not relevant to moral cleanliness. The opposite is what matters: any internal spiritual transformation I undergo is valued by the degree that it results in correct behavior. The sole concern of moral cleanliness is obedience to a set of commands. So if I’m doing something that impacts someone else, it’s irrelevant to consider whether they appear to be harmed or helped by what I have done. What matters is whether I have obeyed whatever command from God is presumed to apply.

Spiritual purity values moral cleanliness, but only as a means to an end. The presumption is that whatever commands God has laid out have one of two purposes: to do justice to the people around us (loving neighbor) or to purify our hearts in relation to God (loving God). The goal is to maximize the love inside us and outside us; it goes deeper than correct behavior and obedience to commands. An example of this logic can be found in Jesus’ statement “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27). Jesus is saying that God gives us commands like honoring the Sabbath for our benefit, not so that He can take pleasure in watching us follow the rules He gave us.

It is because Jesus sees the Sabbath in terms of spiritual purity rather than moral cleanliness that He feels perfectly comfortable breaking the rules of the Sabbath for the sake of allowing the sick and lame to experience the spiritual benefit of Sabbath for the first time in their lives. Because of His acute sympathy with their pain, there was no point in His trying to celebrate the Sabbath without healing them first. It would have morally clean of Jesus to refrain from healing on the Sabbath in obedience to the command, but He would have been spiritually impure as a result. To Jesus’ religious rivals who were operating under the moral cleanliness ethic, Jesus’ actions were completely incomprehensible. He disobeyed what God said to do. End of story. It doesn’t matter that it spiritually purified the paralytic to have his sins forgiven and gain the ability to walk. Jesus could have healed him on a different day, because the Sabbath is a holy day to focus on God alone. Always. No exceptions.

All of us who grew up evangelical have had drilled into us the Romans Road polemic from the apostle Paul that says we cannot be saved by following the rules but only by God’s grace alone. We have been taught to believe that moral cleanliness is an insufficient basis for holiness because it does nothing to protect us from becoming spiritual “whitewashed tombs” (Matthew 23:27) like the Pharisee who prayed, “I thank you God that I’m not like other people” (Luke 18:11). And yet, instead of moving past an understanding of holiness as rule-following into a deeper understanding of holiness as inward spiritual transformation, so many evangelicals have simply built a new Torah out of Paul’s pastoral instructions to specific churches in specific contexts to replace the old Torah that he said we could not be saved by.

Instead of the paradigm shift that Paul so emphatically exhorted the Galatians and the Romans to make, we simply apply the old paradigm of rule-following to a new set of data. We have created new marks of “circumcision” out of the teachings of the man who polemicized against the concept of circumcision (and circumcised or didn’t circumcise his own disciples Titus and Timothy for purely strategic, pragmatic reasons). So many evangelicals today are Paul’s perverse neo-Galatian exegetes. How can he not be shaking his fist at us from heaven!

Now, by no means am I saying that we should not diligently dig through the inspired teachings of this amazing apostle for the purpose of decluttering our hearts of all their idols so that only love can reign there. But to turn the teachings of the man who said that “all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse” (Galatians 3:10) into the new law to be obeyed for the sake of obedience is to miss the most important point he had to make.

One of the most ignored statements that Paul makes and perhaps the key to understanding how to interpret everything else he says is Romans 14:14: “I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean.” In other words, our behavior is clean or unclean according to how it impacts the purity of our hearts, not according to its conformity with a set of commands, even if they’re Paul’s commands, which Paul gives us for the purpose of helping us purify our hearts. (Now it’s fair to say that we would be utterly lost in trying to purify our own hearts without God’s Biblical teachings and we should not insist on understanding how everything God teaches contributes to that purpose before doing it.)

God doesn’t want us to follow His rules in order to show Him that we’re being obedient. God wants us to use His means of grace in order to become temples where we share in His ecstasy. God doesn’t want a bunch of sanctimonious sycophants who never stop saying, “Do you see me? Do you see me? Look at how much I’ve sacrificed for You. Look at how devoted I am to You.” God just wants to share His joy with us. We can’t taste the joy if we’re spiritually cluttered with idols, so God gives us the inspired teachings of scripture to help us get rid of those idols and delight in the only One who can fulfill our desires.

But it just so happens that one of the biggest idols that can clutter our hearts is our moral cleanliness even if we’re just putting on our show for an “audience of One.” And people who need God to see how correct and clean they are often step all over other people God wants to share His joy with. They throw other sinners under the bus as part of their flamboyant exhibition of righteous zeal. That’s why the only thing acceptable to God is for us to accept His mercy unconditionally and utterly without a trace of entitlement. If we become obstacles to other people receiving God’s mercy, no matter how morally clean we supposedly are, what do you think God will have to say to us when we go to face Him?

Previous Post

January 5, 2014

When the Equal Rights Amendment was "gay marriage"

Next Post

January 6, 2014 "I am who I am" (#sermon #podcast)

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Advent Beauty Will Save the World Bible Big Picture: Ephesians Bloggers Book Christian salvation and the Beautitudes Culture Daily Office Danceable Homiletics Deadly Sins Deep Roots: Genesis Devotions Dominican Republic May 2011 El Principio Misericordia (The Mercy Principle) Five verses God tattooed on my heart Fundraising FutureGospel Good Biblical Words Henri Nouwen Interview Jennings' Christian Imagination Jesus inside the beltway Jesus Is My Candidate Jesus vs the Pharisees Jesus vs. Plato Journey to Eternity Looking Back on 2012 Love Actually Monday Merton Monday Merton Music Occupy the manger On Earth As It Is In Heaven Original Sin Podcast Poetry Politics Prayer Psalm 119 Radical Jesus 101 Reviews Sermon on the Mount Sermons Spanish Bible study Special Series Spiritual but not religious Synchroblog Theology Things that made me think Thomas a Kempis Ugliness Into Beauty Uncategorized Viaje Dominicano 2013 Walking in the Valley (Lent) Welcome: It's More than a Mat Wild Goose 2013 Wrestling

Select a Month March 2022 January 2022 December 2021 September 2021 April 2021 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What river did the Israelites cross to enter the Promised Land?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Jordan River Nile River Red Sea Euphrates River