All things are pure

I had the privilege of studying Scripture with my husband this morning. This isn’t an unusual happening in our home but recent events have kept us from it for far too long. Studying Scripture with my husband is one of the joys in my life. Today we read through Titus. We’ve done it before and will probably do it again but that was the book for today. Something in it caught my attention…not for the first time…but it stuck with me.

To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled. Titus 1:15

This is a topic that comes up between my husband and I from time to time. It is something that gets brought up when the unregenerate point out that we do ‘such and such’ thing and therefore it must be an idol.

I’m not saying we…as regenerate people…can’t make idols of things. We can. The difference is we usually realize what’s happening long before we get to the point of letting it be an idol.

Somewhere on the journey to Christ that I have taken I got caught up in the healthy eating movement. Rather I got caught up in the healthy lifestyle movement and let it consume my eating. I’m still cautious in my eating but I no longer spend hours and hours researching it. In fact I no longer research it at all.

I well know that I let it become an idol in my life. I don’t know where I was in this journey at that point. Was I regenerate at that time? I don’t know. If I was I didn’t know it. Didn’t know what the true meaning of being born again was.

There are other things that have been idols in my life over the years. Some in the not too terribly distant past.

It happens. But once we’re regenerate we see it for what it is…sooner or later…and we are grieved by it. We turn back to the Lord, ask for forgiveness, and do better.

I’d never heard anyone define the difference between what is pure or okay for the regenerate as opposed to what it is…or isn’t… for the unregenerate until my husband.

I didn’t know until him that there were different standards for those that are ‘in Christ’ and those that aren’t.

I didn’t know that the regenerate live under the Lord’s grace and mercy but the unregenerate do not.  The unregenerate are left to their own desires, they’re left to chase after whatever idol catches their attention today…and tomorrow…and the next day. They’re left to their own desires because the Lord has given them over to them.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, ²⁵ because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. Romans 1:24-25

The Lord restrains those that are His. And He lets the others go.