Whatever is pure...

I’ve been wanting to write another blog post for a while, and I have a few started ones where I was feeling suddenly inspired but then gave up half way through. I think that the problem was that part of me couldn’t settle on something that I wanted to talk about. I was recently reminded of a brilliant verse in Phillipians that pretty much sums up everything that I am currently having issues with – in my own life, and also when looking at other brothers and sisters’ lives.

In Philippians 4:8 Paul writes… (NIV version)

“whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”

Looking at my own life and the struggles that I’ve been going through over the past few months in particular, and then when looking at other peoples lives and wondering how best I can encourage them as my siblings in Christ, I always seem to get stuck down in what seems to be the obvious problems i.e. the getting drunk, the unhelpful relationships, the sex, the swearing, the gossiping etc. And I think that we always try and find a way of putting limits on how far we can go. As sinful, selfish humans we try and push the boundaries of what is good and right and see how much we can get away with. We try and justify it as being relevant to the world when in actual fact we are just not being salt and light and not being different.

But in this verse, Paul is looking at it from a completely different angle, and an angle that I know myself and a lot of those close to me should be looking at our actions from. Instead of ‘what can I get away with’ its ‘what good can I do’. The question we should be asking ourselves is not ‘how bad is this action?’ but ‘how good is this action?’. Is it pure? Does it reflect the truth we have in our lives as Christians? Is it noble? Right? Lovely? Admirable? In doing it are we becoming praiseworthy in God’s eyes?

Is going out and drinking with our friends a pure and noble thing to do? (Even if we aren’t getting drunk)

Is going out clubbing underage a thing that reflects God’s commands for us? (see 1 Peter 2:13-14)

I think that The Message translation of this Philippians passage demonstrates really well what our intentions should be in EVERY action that we do:

"Summing it all up, friends, I'd say you'll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies."

“You’ll do best by…” Doing this isn’t only for God’s glory (although obviously that is of great importance) but its for our own good also! By following God’s instructions and filling our minds and our lives with these things we not only honour God with our whole lives but it says here that this is what’s best for us. There are so many other passages in the bible that talk about this (such as Jeremiah 29:11 and Romans 8) about how God’s plans are best for us, and I think that if we all started to live our lives by the ‘what good can I do?’ principle rather than the ‘what can I get away with?’ principle we would find that our relationship with God grows stronger and we would generally spiritually be in a much sounder place.