purity #4

How do we find purity?

I listened to a song recently that seemed to me to sound like purity was a kind of golden rain that comes down from heaven and makes everything beautiful again.
I do agree that purity is a gift from God, but it is a gift that cost Him a lot and it does also take effort on our part to work it out.

Jesus blood makes us clean.
Right at the beginning God said that someone had to die to pay the price for sin. For centuaries people made animal scarifices again and again to try to keep right with God.
Then God became man as Jesus and did what we could not do by paying the price for us. We can pray for the cleansing power of Jesus blood to be over us to wash away our sins.

Baptism makes us clean.
When we are baptised we share in Jesus death and resurrection. Going under the water is a symbol of how Jesus died and rose again. It signifies that our old life and all it's sin has died and we rise as a new creation in Jesus.
Of course we have to keep choosing to live in the new life. But the truth is we can live a new life, all the old stuff is dead, and we can claim the power of our baptism to put to death the things that keep bugging us from the past.

The Holy Spirit makes us clean.
The Holy Spirit is God the Spirit living in us. God is pure and holy, so if we have the Holy Spirit in us then we have the power to live pure and holy lives. The Holy Spirit is sensitive and so brings a sensitivity to our conscience. We find we do not want to do the things that offend Him, and when we feel that absence of his presence it nudges us to put things right.