by Keith Sharp
On my initial trip to Africa, I was shocked as we got to the church building where I was to first preach. Across the dirt street was a shallow pool with a concrete bottom, enclosed by concrete blocks, and sheltered by a tin roof held up by four poles. An open, dirt drainage ditch supplied its water. People waded in the pool to fill buckets for domestic water use. No wonder deadly diseases are endemic! But there is a kind of uncleanness far worse that affects many of us who would cringe from using such filthy water.
The apostle Paul exhorted the Ephesian Christians:
This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness (Ephesians 4:17-19).
Let’s learn how to avoid this spiritually lethal filth, uncleanness.
The New Testament idea of “uncleanness” has an Old Testament background. Uncleanness under the Old Covenant was rooted in physical filth but went far beyond this. For example, there was to be no uncovered human waste in the camp of Israel (Deuteronomy 23:12-14). Laws of uncleanness pertained to clean and unclean foods (Leviticus chapter 11), purification following childbirth (Leviticus chapter 2), leprosy (Leviticus chapters 13-14), purification following bodily discharges (Leviticus chapter 15), and touching a human corpse (Numbers 5:2). Animal sacrifices and ceremonial washings purified them from outward impurity (Leviticus 16:18-19; 22:3).
But the prophets pointed to the New Testament by emphasizing moral purity (Isaiah 6:5) and pointed to the time when all the people of the Lord would be clean (Isaiah 35:8; Zechariah 13:1).
In Christ moral purity is required, not physical or ceremonial. Sin that proceeds from the heart defiles, not food or uncovered human waste (Matthew 15:10-20). Every kind of food is clean (1 Timothy 4:4-5). The Lord’s disciples shocked the scribes and Pharisees because they didn’t wash their hands before they ate (Matthew 15:1-2). The Lord wants clean hands and hearts (James 4:7-8), the morally upright conduct that proceeds from a pure heart.
In the New Testament “uncleanness” denotes every kind of unlawful sexual practice.
For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also forewarned you and testified. For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness (1 Thessalonians 4:3-7).
The opposite of uncleanness is holiness. Uncleanness includes “fornication” (Ibid) and “lewdness” (Ephesians 4:7-9), but is broader, encompassing all sexual sins. Dirty movies, TV shows, magazines, web sites, words, etc. are all unclean, morally impure, and we must keep ourselves clean from such filth.
The unclean sinner must be purified to serve God. The alien sinner must be baptized to be cleansed (Ephesians 5:25-27). This must be preceded by faith (Galatians 3:26-27), repentance (Acts 2:38), and confession of faith (Romans 10:8-10). The child of God who sins must confess his sins (1 John 1:9). This must be preceded by repentance and followed by prayer for forgiveness (Acts 8:22).
The ceremonial uncleanness of the Law of Moses that excluded Israelites from the congregation and from service to the Lord is a shadow of the moral filth that the holy Lord God will not allow in His presence. “But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints” (Ephesians 5:3).
