The Beauty of Purity

"Justin, you may now kiss your bride." I watched excitedly as my friend stooped down to his smiling new wife. They planted their lips together for the very first time. People began to laugh as that first kiss drug on for five, ten, fifteen seconds. Then, scooping her up in his strong arms and beaming ear to ear, Justin strode quickly down the grass aisle, oblivious to the hailstorm of shutters, flashes and movie cameras.

Looking back over Justin’s courtship with his new bride, I find the beauty of purity illustrated in a way that I cannot argue with. Even I was skeptical when Justin confided in me that he was actually going to enact the 3-inches rule of his own accord in their relationship. "Come on," I chastised him, looking at his engagement picture a few months later, "you didn’t even hold her hand or put your arm over her shoulder." Without wavering a millimeter, he again told me that they were saving everything for the wedding.

The night before the wedding, as we were doing the rehearsal, I couldn’t help being skeptical as they made sure to always keep their hands three inches apart. "You can at least hold hands in your rehearsal," I thought, "for crying out loud, what harm is it going to do now?"

I’ve read pages upon pages of articles and books on the beauty of purity and courtship, and somehow even through all of that I was still a skeptic. I still thought that most of this stuff was legalism and a bit over-stressed. Yet Justin took most of it dead serious. He went through parental authority, made sure he obeyed their wishes to the smallest iota concerning their daughter, and when the time came to begin courting, he dedicated his physical love for the proper time.

In light of all this, I was suddenly thrown back. All the books, papers, videos and discussions had done little or nothing to waken my eyes to this stunning beauty. I was cold at heart. But suddenly there, seeing a couple far ahead of myself in an understanding of the magnificence of purity, I became convinced that this was the way for romance.

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 9:6 that the one who, "sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully." (NASB) Obviously the context here is different than the one we are discussing, but I believe the principle still applies. To some, including myself, it looked as if Justin and Audra were depriving themselves of a legitimate joy, but in reality they were sowing for the future. They were giving to get, dying to live and sowing to reap. I realize that this isn’t at all my own idea, you’ll probably find it in most courtship and purity books (I believe I read something similar in the book When God Writes Your Love Story), but it didn’t become real to me until I saw it lived out. I’m not endorsing courtship or dating, but what I do believe in is responsibility and purity. I hope that you will not have to wait to be convinced as long as I did.