What Is The “Covenant of Purity”?

Leaders and their congregations are committing to the “Covenant of Purity” as a covenant before the Lord, with one another and in submission to the pastor and leadership of the congregation. The call of this covenant is to consistently, comprehensively and tenderly resist all forms of sexual immorality in our midst.

Sexual immorality is not only a personal issue or private matter. If you confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and you belong to the Body of Christ, your friends, family, have every right and even responsibility to challenge immorality in your life. We are responsible to hold each other accountable in the Lord and to keep the Church from defiling sin.

This is a sober season for the Church and for us as individual believers. The days and weeks immediately ahead could be among the most important in our lives and congregation. “We must pay more careful attention” (Heb.2:1) to what Jesus is saying to us in this season, lest we spiritually drift away with the current of the spirit of the age.

There is a corporate grace for us as individuals when we go together in this Covenant of Purity. Corporate grace provides an additional dimension of God’s strength and power as well as the encouragement and help from our friends who love us. Walking this out together will be much more effective than facing this “giant” by ourselves.

Leaders Must Lead the Way

Spiritual leaders must lead the way in repentance by identifying areas of compromise and sin and turning from it in repentance. They must be willing to be honest with God, and honest and transparent with their own families and lead them into repentance. Humility and leading by example are powerful principles in God’s kingdom.

Leaders who manifest a proud and stubborn spirit and an unrepentant heart and fail to lead the way in humility and repentance with their spouse and family, cannot expect repentance to be a reality in their congregation. 

Spiritual leaders will be judged for tolerating sexual immorality in their congregation, even if they themselves are righteous. Leaders must choose to respond with either the spirit of Eli (1Sam 4) or with the spirit of Phinehas (Num 26:?). Eli tolerated sexual immorality in connection with the house of the Lord, whereas Phinehas (also a High Priest and descendant of Aaron as was Eli) dealt with sexual immorality decisively according to the standard of God’s word.

Jesus’ Warning to the Church

In the letters Jesus wrote in the Book of Revelations, He rebuked two Churches for tolerating sexual immorality in their midst.

The first letter was addressed to the Church of Thyatira. He began by commending the Church: “I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance and that you are now doing more than you did at first” (Rev 2:19). Then Jesus added a word of rebuke: “I have this against you; you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. . . [and] misleads my servants into sexual immorality….” (Rev 2:20).

Jesus warns those at Thyatira who followed Jezebel into sexual immorality, that unless they repent of her ways, they will experience the same judgment she will (Rev 2:21-23a).

The spirit of Jezebel is a manipulative spirit of sensuality that seduces individuals to sexual immorality.  This spirit is pervasive and just as dangerous and destructive in the Church today. Jesus’ warnings to the Church of Thyatira is a clear warning to us as well. We must stop tolerating and participating in sexual immorality in His Church.

Jesus sent another letter to the Church of Pergamum with a similar warning.  After commending the church for remaining loyal to Christ in a very wicked city where Satan reigned, He rebuked them for tolerating “the teaching of Balaam”. This teaching enticed Israelites to sin by committing sexual immorality. Jesus warned the people at Pergamum that unless they repent of this false teaching and their subsequent sexual immorality, He would soon come “against them with the sword of My mouth” (Rev 2:13-16).

The sword of the Lord will come to either free us or to judge us, depending on how we respond to His warning. If we voluntarily “judge” ourselves with the sword of God’s word, then He need not judge us in a more severe way with His sword. “For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God” (1 Pet 4:17). Jesus’ rebuke and warning is not a rejection but an invitation to deliverance from sexual immorality.