Pure
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ἁγνός is the adjective form of the purity word family — it describes persons, things, and qualities that are pure in the sense of being unmixed, uncontaminated, free from moral or spiritual defilement. The local NT index currently counts about 8 uses and ranges across three distinct domains.
Reader summary
Full entry for ἁγνός (G53) · Open the biblical lexicon
ἁγνός is the adjective form of the purity word family — it describes persons, things, and qualities that are pure in the sense of being unmixed, uncontaminated, free from moral or spiritual defilement. The local NT index currently counts about 8 uses and ranges across three distinct domains.
The BSB source-word alignment has 8 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include pure (5), [as] a pure (1), [is] pure (1), innocent (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at 2 Corinthians 7:11. Its strongest book concentrations include 2 Corinthians (2), 1 John (1), 1 Peter (1), 1 Timothy (1).
ἁγνός is the adjective form of the purity word family — it describes persons, things, and qualities that are pure in the sense of being unmixed, uncontaminated, free from moral or spiritual defilement. The local NT index currently counts about 8 uses and ranges across three distinct domains. In 2 Corinthians 7:11, it describes the Corinthians' zeal to demonstrate their own innocence in the matter of the offender.
In Philippians 4:8, it stands in the remarkable list of virtues Paul asks the believers to meditate on: 'whatever things are pure.' In 1 John 3:3, it describes God himself — 'he is pure' — and then immediately sets up the call for the believer to purify themselves to match. In Titus 2:5 and 1 Peter 3:2, it governs the conduct of wives as a quality of visible witness to their husbands and the watching world.
The breadth of usage is theologically important: ἁγνός is not primarily a sexual term, though it encompasses sexual purity. It is a quality of transparency and moral cleanliness that runs from personal ethics through communal conduct to the nature of God himself. When 1 John says 'he is pure' and 'everyone who has this hope purifies himself, even as he is pure,' the word anchors purity in the divine character.
The believer's call to purity is not a legal standard to be measured against but a theotic one — it moves in the direction of who God is. That is the pastoral weight ἁγνός carries: it is not just a moral category, it is a christological one.
ἁγνός appears eight times in the NT across multiple authors and contexts — personal ethics, communal conduct, wisdom characterization, and the nature of God. This breadth makes it the most versatile word in the Greek purity cluster, and its appearance in Philippians 4:8 as one of the things believers should habitually think on gives it a formational as well as an ethical function.
And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as Christ is pure.
The most theologically decisive use of ἁγνός in the NT. John first says of Christ 'he is pure' — establishing purity as a divine attribute — and then grounds the believer's purification in that attribute. The logic is theotic: we become what we behold. Purity here is not a legal standard we comply with but a Christological trajectory we move toward. The eschatological hope (seeing him as he is, 1 John 3:2) generates the ethical response: the one who genuinely expects to see Christ purifies himself now in the direction of what Christ is.
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think on these things.
ἁγνός appears in Philippians 4:8 alongside truth, honor, justice, loveliness, and good report — a list that defines the shape of the renewed mind's meditation. Purity here is a cognitive and formational category: what the mind dwells on is itself a moral act. The preacher who handles this passage can show that biblical purity begins before behavior — in the habits of attention that shape the imagination long before the will is exercised.
But the wisdom from above is first of all pure, then peace-loving, gentle, accommodating, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial, and sincere.
James names ἁγνή (pure) as the first and foundational quality of heavenly wisdom. The ordering is deliberate: purity precedes peace, gentleness, and mercy. This suggests that the other virtues depend on purity as their foundation — wisdom that is not pure will be a kind of cleverness that can be turned toward manipulation, partiality, or hypocrisy. The preacher can use this passage to show that wisdom without purity is not the wisdom that comes from God.
Consider what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what zeal, what vindication! In every way you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter.
Here ἁγνός describes the Corinthians' demonstrated innocence after godly grief produced repentance. This usage shows that purity can be the outcome of the repentance process — not just a precondition of relationship with God but a quality that godly sorrow restores. For the preacher, this is a pastoral note of hope: ἁγνός describes not only the sinless Christ but the repentant congregation that has demonstrated its integrity through grief, defense, and zeal.
Do not be too quick in the laying on of hands and thereby share in the sins of others. Keep yourself pure.
Paul's charge to Timothy to 'keep yourself pure' (ἁγνὸν σεαυτὸν τήρει) places ἁγνός in the context of ministerial discernment — particularly the laying on of hands in ordination or restoration. To ordain hastily is to participate in another's sin; purity requires the deliberate restraint that comes from not rushing processes of discernment. This extends the pastoral purity vocabulary beyond relational integrity to institutional wisdom.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Greek word. Ceremonial purity from defilement enabling access to worship, extending to moral chastity and sincerity.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
8 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
pure, chaste
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Read versepure, chaste
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Read verseFull New Testament corpus: 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, 140,628 tokens. Data source: honza/textus-receptus (data only), with authority check against byztxt/greektext-textus-receptus.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
This word appears as a noun across 7 case and number patterns. The form changes show how the word functions in a sentence; they do not change the basic lexical meaning by themselves.
Verse guides are not available for this word yet, so verse references remain plain evidence markers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 1 selected witness from 8 lexical occurrence verses.
ἁγνός is built from this root:
Describes the character believers pursue in anticipation of seeing Christ.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
ἁγνός is the word that shows purity to be a divine attribute before it is a human demand. That sequencing matters for the preacher. When purity is presented primarily as a demand — a standard Christians must meet — it generates either performance or despair. When it is grounded in the character of God himself ('he is pure,' 1 John 3:3), it becomes instead a direction of travel, a quality the believer is moving toward in the strength of the eschatological hope.
James shows that this purity is the foundation of wisdom, not just one virtue among others. Philippians 4:8 shows that purity begins in the patterns of mental attention — what the mind is trained to dwell on becomes the material from which the will is shaped. The preacher who works through the NT range of ἁγνός has a word that covers cognition, conduct, communal life, and the nature of God.
The pastoral opportunity is to refuse the reduction of purity to one category (sexual behavior) and restore it to its full scope: the quality of a life that is unmixed, transparent, unclouded by hidden agendas, and oriented toward the One who is pure by nature. That is a word congregations need to hear, and ἁγνός is wide enough to carry it.
1John.3.3
ἁγνός derives from ἅγος, a term used in classical Greek for the awe-inspiring quality of the sacred — the quality that made something untouchable by the unclean. This root connects ἁγνός to ἅγιος (holy) though they are not identical: ἅγιος emphasizes separation and consecration while ἁγνός emphasizes the quality of unmixed moral cleanness. Abbott-Smith distinguishes three senses: (1) free from ceremonial defilement, (2) holy and sacred in a general sense, and (3) pure and chaste in an ethical sense.
The NT uses predominantly the third sense, but the LXX background (translating טָהוֹר, tahor, in Psalms and Proverbs) preserves the connection between ethical purity and the purity required to approach God.
The Hebrew background of ἁγνός runs through טָהוֹר (tahor, clean, pure), the word used for both ritual cleanness and moral integrity throughout Psalms and Proverbs. The Psalter's refrain 'who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? He who has clean hands and a pure heart' (Ps 24:3-4) establishes that access to God requires purity — but the Psalms already move beyond ritual cleanness toward the interior orientation of the heart.
By the time the NT inherits this vocabulary, the trajectory is clear: the purity that matters for the new covenant is the purity of a life oriented toward God in truth and integrity. James's identification of heavenly wisdom as 'first pure' echoes the Proverbs tradition that wisdom and purity travel together. And 1 John's climactic statement — 'he is pure, and everyone who has this hope purifies himself, even as he is pure' — completes the arc from Levitical cleanness through Psalmic heart-purity to Christological conformity.
Purity is no longer primarily about what you can touch or approach but about what you are becoming in the light of who Christ is.
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