All things [are] pure to the pure; but to the defiled and unbelieving nothing [is] pure; but both their mind and their conscience are defiled.
This verse answers a dispute about religious rules — what is clean, and what is unclean. It moves the question inward, from the thing to the person.
The word is not about a list of allowed things. It describes what a person is like inside, and how that person then sees the world.
To the pure all things are pure: everything in creation has a proper place and function. To be pure is to have unmixed motives and character. Such a person sees things in their proper perspective, with a simplicity that nothing has corrupted. But sin's corruption has defiled and tainted those who have no faith, and they think nothing is pure.
No one is born pure, and no one earns it by careful living. This purity has a source outside us.
We were all once like that. Not all of us were coarse, and not all of us were openly shameful, as some were. But now, through grace, we were washed, we were sanctified, we were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. This is where Christian purity comes from, and it is all the more truly ours because it comes from God... To such people all things are pure, because they themselves are pure. It is no longer a question of going without this or that.
The statement has no exceptions attached, so it settles a long argument about food and fast days.
"To the pure all things are pure." How plain and assuring to those who are subject to the Lord! How useless it is, when such a statement stands, to say that "the church" forbids eating meat on a Friday or in Lent! This does not deny the value of a real fast. A fast is truly of grace when there is a fitting occasion for it. But the New Testament never makes it a general law, and it is certainly not the sham of eating fish and eggs.
The second half of the verse explains why rules cannot help. A defiled person does not need to meet anything unclean; the problem travels with him.
One thing was called impure, another was banned by a rule. God claims the heart. To the pure all things are pure. The person whose heart is defiled does not need to look outside himself to find what is impure. But looking outside is convenient, because it lets him forget what is inside. The mind and conscience are already corrupt.
The verse names the two parts of us that should judge and hold us back. Both of them are defiled, and that reaches even a person's religion.
Nothing is pure to the defiled and unbelieving. Both their mind and their conscience are defiled. That is a terrible moral verdict, but a true one. Their lower nature is corrupt, and that is not all. The highest part of them is just as defiled — the very part that ought to delight in good, and that dares to discuss divine things and God Himself. Religion in such a condition is at least as impure and loathsome as anything else.
People have used this line to excuse sin. It speaks about what a pure person may use, not about what a pure person may want to do.
Here we do well to watch against a very common misunderstanding of the opening words of verse 15. They do not mean "to, or in, the mind of the pure," but for their use. How many victims of passion and lust have tried to squeeze an excuse and a cover for their sins out of this holy saying! They tried in vain — and this happens especially among men and women who are accepted as holding a sacred position. May we be kept from every illusion of the flesh and every deception of our subtle enemy.
- Purity received. A believer is pure because he was washed, sanctified and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of God. Purity comes from God, not from self-discipline.
- Purity that sees. To be pure is to have unmixed motives, and so to see everything in creation in its proper place and function.
- Purity that frees. All things are pure to such a person. So banning meat on a Friday or in Lent settles nothing. A real fast has value only as grace, on a fitting occasion.
- Defilement that spreads. The one whose heart is defiled is already impure, with nothing outside to blame. Rules about things are convenient: they let him forget what is inside.
- Defilement that reaches the top. Mind and conscience are defiled too — the very parts meant to delight in good and to speak about God. So religion in that state is as loathsome as anything else.
They profess to know God, but in works deny [him], being abominable, and disobedient, and found worthless as to every good work.
Paul is writing about teachers who use religion for money and whose lives contradict their words. This verse asks the hardest question a religious person can face: if works can deny God, what is a claim to know Him worth?
These men are not atheists. They keep the language of God while their conduct cancels it. One writer sees the same pattern spreading well beyond them.
Someone will say, no doubt, that such people do not know God. That is certainly true. They know neither the Father nor Jesus Christ whom He sent. Yet they may, and even do, claim to own God. Men in the Christian world do the same today — all except the openly hostile and unbelieving. This is surely not religious progress. The seed of it was already there in the days of the apostles. The fruit is everywhere in our day, and it will go on advancing to greater ungodliness.
Paul does not just say their claim is weak. He files three charges, and each one measures their works against God's own.
The evil of their works plainly refutes their claim to know God. God's works are the complete opposite of theirs. His are unmixed, true, and fruitful. Theirs are abominable, sunk to a depth like the lowest idol worship — for it is idols that God calls "abominations." They are disobedient, with no concern at all for submission to their Creator. And as regards every good work, they are rejected as worthless. Someone may trifle with the things of God, his heart never honestly turned to the Lord Himself. How low he may sink without seeing the horror of his condition!
The claim in this verse is a claim to knowledge. But knowledge can sit in the head and leave the person untouched.
Knowledge without affection. Men have ideas about Christ, but are not warmed with love for Christ. Their knowledge is like the moon — it has light in it, but no heat. The knowledge that hypocrites have of Christ has no saving influence. It does not make them more holy. It is one thing to have a notion of Christ, another to draw strength from Christ. The knowledge of hypocrites is a dead, barren knowledge: it informs, but does not transform.
How does anyone end up here? One writer traces the slide back to its start.
To turn back to false teaching, and to use religion as a way to make dishonest money, opens the door to every natural tendency of the flesh. It leads to ungodliness. In this way souls become defiled in "mind and conscience." The end is a terrible condition: people profess God while their works deny Him in practice. In God's sight such people are "detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work."
These teachers have not walked away from God openly. That is what makes their case so serious.
Open apostasy is not the question here, for they profess to know God while in works they deny Him. They are guilty in their contempt for any revelation from God, and even more so when they scorn the fullest and final one. For, as men admit, the corruption of the best thing is the worst corruption. Such a state paves the way for apostasy.
Paul's verdict has a positive counterpart later in the same letter. These men are unfit for every good work; the believer is to be ready for it.
The apostle would have Titus press readiness for every good work. God calls the believer to be not only a righteous man in practice, but a good man. So our Lord went about doing good here below. If we cannot heal those oppressed by the devil as He did, the apostle still urges us here to be ready for every good work. Where people hold and confess the truth, and are busy doing good, that is a real and effective testimony to Christ.
- Profession — these people claim God with their mouths. The problem is not what they say. It is that saying is all there is.
- Denial — their works refute the claim. God's works are true and fruitful; theirs are detestable, disobedient, worthless.
- Root — religion used for money defiles the mind and conscience. A defiled conscience can go on claiming God without shame.
- Drift — this is not an open break with God but the corruption of the best thing, and it opens the road to one.
- Remedy — the answer to "unfit for any good work" is readiness for every good work. Truth confessed and good done bear witness together.