It always comes down to serving people. It always comes down to a person, that you will help them in life. It's always going to come to that; and if we avoid connecting and engaging with people in life, we are never going to fulfil all of these things, it just isn't possible. It requires an engagement with people; so here it goes. Let's have a look at it. Add to your - giving all diligence, or being really passionate and zealous about this, add to your faith. So you've come to believe in Jesus Christ. Now he's saying: add to your faith virtue, so I looked up the meaning of the word virtue. The word virtue means these two things: it means excellence; or purity. So we'll just stick with the word purity.
Purity has to do with the motivations of your heart, and has to do with also sexual cleanness, because sexual uncleanness defiles our capacity to love God, and to love people. It builds walls in our heart, and hardens our heart from being loving people; so what he's saying is then: as you work, as you serve, check out the motivations of your heart; and check out the purity of your life, what kinds of things you're looking at, what kinds of things you're touching, what kinds of things you're involved with. What is operating in your life as you serve?
He's saying: add to your faith purity, because God is separating for Himself, or calling on people to be clean. It's not going to mean, we're not going to have wrong motives at times, or we're not going to have sexual temptations. What it means, He's saying: be diligent to work on your life, so these areas clean up as you journey with God; and you may have, or have come into your Christian life with, areas where there's been major sexual sin, major bondage of sin. Then make it a point of focus for your life, that you will address these hidden bondages that keep defiling your life, and you begin to work to develop cleanness and purity. Courses are run in the church. These things can help you to address those areas of your life.
So He says: add to you; so it's obvious, it must be possible to add to us, and the Holy Ghost will continually work on you to challenge your motives, and also to point out where what you're doing is actually defiling your relationship with God. So be sensitive to the Holy Spirit, and be aware of His promptings: hey, your motivation in that wasn't so good, or there was uncleanness in your thinking. There was uncleanness in your heart, or you're entertaining things in your heart. So He said: make it your pursuit, you will separate yourself from the defiling influence of sexual sin in the world.
Now listen young people, it just comes at you left, right and centre; like a bombardment comes. It comes through the media, it comes through the school, it comes through the culture; and what He's saying is: if you're going to be fruitful you've got to add purity to your life. You've got to actually be committed to sexual purity, to purity on the inside, and in your relationships. Why? Because you can never represent Christ well, if sexual sin is operating in your life. It brings a condemnation, and it steals your testimony with those who know what you've been doing.
So what he's saying is: clean up your act, begin to commit to sexual purity. Why? Because He said: God will deal with all of this thing, this defiles people, and stops them engaging in intimacy in all levels of life. So there's Verse 1: add into your life; so that's a bit of a journey. How many say that's a bit of journey? All of those over 60 would say: yes, it doesn't go away. Doesn't go away until after you die. You've still got to push against this thing, and maintain purity in your life; otherwise it just will keep coming in, and when it comes in, it will steal intimacy with God, and it will steal out your testimony.
You ever noticed, no matter how great people have come into governmental office, if they fail sexually, somehow it disqualifies them out of the office? Doesn't matter how big it is. You know, the President of the United States failed sexually; he's out of office. Great giftings, great charisma, great potential, did a lot of great work; but fell out of office through just this whole area, didn't deal with this thing in His life. Number one, sexual purity. Okay, number two: I said add to purity, add to purity knowledge. That's word is experiential knowledge you've got, in other words, commit to growing in knowledge, spiritual knowledge, and spiritual understanding; so we need to apply ourself to learning from God.