The Greek noun hagneia (ἁγνεία) means purity, chastity, or moral cleanness — freedom from moral corruption, specifically (though not exclusively) in sexual matters. It derives from hagnos (G53, pure, clean, chaste) which itself relates to hagios (holy). Hagneia describes both sexual purity and broader moral integrity. It appears twice in the New Testament, both in Paul's pastoral letters to Timothy (1 Timothy 4:12; 5:2), where Timothy is instructed to model purity and to treat younger women with hagneia.
Hagneia is the New Testament's call to embodied holiness — the recognition that the body matters and is not morally neutral. Paul's instruction to Timothy to treat younger women with "absolute purity [hagneia]" (1 Timothy 5:2) reflects the radical counter-cultural ethic of the early church in a highly sexualized Greco-Roman world. Christian purity is not Victorian prudishness but the proper ordering of all human relationships under the Lordship of Christ. The body is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19–20), and sexual sin uniquely violates that temple. Hagneia is also not merely external behavior but an inner orientation of the heart — Jesus's beatitude, "Blessed are the pure [katharoi] in heart, for they shall see God" (Matthew 5:8), makes purity a prerequisite for the beatific vision.