The Separated Life (II) Purity

Believers are called not only to have a separated life in terms of their social relationships (the previous sermon), but also in terms of their personal purity of body and mind. After an introduction as to how God makes an unholy people holy in a legal sense, as well as a decisive inward work of sanctification at conversion, the sermon sets forth four things in the verse important to our progressive sanctification: 1) The perspective the Christian ought to have in regard to the challenge of personal purity; 2) The Christian's own agency in his sanctification; 3) The two kinds of impurity which must be removed; and 4) The ongoing struggle for personal purity and the incentives provided in the text. The text is taken to have primarily reference to sexual sins, both in body and mind, and is related to similar teaching in other epistles.