BLOG: Spiritual Growth: Killing Sexual Sin, Part 2



WRITTEN BY MELISSA H. STRAUTMAN, LMT

Spiritual Growth: Killing Sexual Sin, Part 2
Companion blog to “Killing Sexual Sin, Part 2” from the study Spiritual Growth

The sexual revolution from the 60’s really jump-started our current culture’s immorality.  Compatibility in relationships, especially in the sexual arena, is now the governing hierarchy instead of two people working toward holiness and reflecting the image of Christ and His church.

The Census from 2012 shows a rapid decline in marriage in the US and an amazing increase in couples living together in sexual sin.  Women who choose to cohabitate are five times more likely to suffer domestic abuse.  Couples who cohabitate are 64% more likely to cheat on each other.  Only 27% of Americans disapprove of cohabitation before marriage.  That’s a lot of Christians buying into the message that fornication is an acceptable sin to determine compatibility.  Given the fact that there are two divorces registered every minute in our country; it’s obvious that sexual compatibility clearly isn’t the key to relationships that society tells us it is.

Mobile-Morality

You can’t teach people sex without limits and be surprised when they exceed your sensitivities regarding whatever limits that you think they should have.  You can’t teach sex without limits and be surprised when you arrive at sex without limits.  You [culture] got what you wanted.  You got what you’ve been teaching.  When sex began to be presented in the schools as a ‘behavior’ that only requires consent we are teaching that morality isn’t fixed.  We are teaching that morality moves with someone’s consent.  – Pastor Steve Wilson

If morals about sex can move then they can be removed, and then you have sex without morals; thus leading inevitably to sex without consent.  If the moral constraint is removed, you cannot control the outcome.  Human consent will never be a powerful enough force to control sexual appetites.  Something has to hold the moral compass needle steady.  What is that?

From Pastor Wilson’s Desk

God’s plan for sexuality is in a monogamous marital relationship.  That common grace (marriage) is extended to believers and unbelievers alike.  Sexual morality falls into the category of all moral imperatives.  It is written on the human heart.  The unbeliever can benefit from the grace of marriage, and the grace of sex within marriage; many do. They cannot, however, marry or share in sexual intimacy for the glory of God.

A rightly informed conscience – naturally – is adequate to hold the moral compass needle steady.  Sinners, however, abuse their conscience and therefore it fails to serve them well – to their demise.  In the culture (unbelieving world) we have desensitized the human conscience by teaching our children to ignore it – and instead focus on the free experience of sexual appetites as long as there is consent.  Consent cannot control morality.  The rightly trained conscience could [control morality] – with varying degrees of success.  Only God can energize fully the conscience and restore its intended constraints.  That, even in a believer, is a work in progress.

The word of God alive in a Christian, willingly committed to obedience, motivated by God’s glory is the truly successful way (the sanctified way) to enjoy life.

You can’t tell a pagan man (unbeliever) that he can ignore nature, ignore his conscience, and marry whomever his heart’s desire is, even if it is another man, and wonder why tomorrow all manner of deviancy presents itself.  Scripture illustrates the full gamut of that deviancy, and our current society illustrates the same: incest, pedophilia, bestiality and more.  We have to stop being shocked when mobile-morality continues to move.  Society will forever feel the need to appease those crying out for more progressively aberrant behaviors to be normalized.  All of this is really about further numbing our consciences and satisfying lusts that society redefines as love, peace or inherent freedom so that we dare not openly object.  After all, truth is only relative to what you define it as, right?

Scripture is far from silent about this.

1 Thessalonians 4:1-5
Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God.

How to fight sexual sin

  1. You must desire understanding
  2. You must avoid temptation

In Proverbs 2:1-12, Solomon tells his son (& God tells us)…

1 My son, if you receive my words
and treasure up my commandments with you,
2 making your ear attentive [listen] to wisdom
and inclining your heart to [want] understanding;
3 yes, if you call out for insight [knowledge of My ways]
and raise your voice for understanding,
4 if you seek it like silver
and search for it as for hidden treasures,
5 then you will understand the fear of the Lord
and find the knowledge of God.

If you regularly want to make good choices, then you have to regularly cultivate a love for the word of God and pursue understanding.  Ignorance is not bliss.  A lack of conviction necessarily translates to a lack of truth, wisdom and integrity.

6 For the Lord gives wisdom;
from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;
7 he stores up sound wisdom for the upright;
he is a shield to [protects] those who walk in integrity,
8 guarding the paths of justice
and watching over the way of his saints.
9 Then you will understand righteousness and justice
and equity, every good path;
10 for wisdom will come into your heart,
and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul;

When God gives you this understanding, it will aid you in avoiding temptation.  This is where your protection begins.  Stay away from anything and anyone who speaks perversion or directs you away from God’s expressed commands.

11 discretion will watch over you,
understanding will guard [keep] you,
12 delivering you from the way of evil,
from men of perverted speech,
13 who forsake the paths of uprightness
to walk in the ways of darkness,
14 who rejoice in doing evil
and delight in the perverseness of evil,
15 men whose paths are crooked,
and who are devious in their ways.
16 So you will be delivered from the forbidden woman [man or sexual deviant],
from the adulteress with her smooth words,
17 who forsakes the companion of her youth
and forgets the covenant of her God;
18 for her house sinks down to death,
and her paths to the departed [dead];
19 none who go to her come back,
nor do they regain the paths of life [you could die in your sin]

Nobody likes internal struggle that curtails freedom in pleasure, but it has to become your desire to avoid the lure and seduction of all sin.  Calling on God to aid you as He said He would in your life is a no-brainer called faith.  He has promised to be faithful and finish what He started in you; to transform you into the image of a non-sinning Christ.  That means you, Christian, will win this fight because it’s already God’s will.  Don’t forget; Jesus also prays to God on your behalf.  Defeat in sin is not part of a redeemed believer’s future.

So embrace the struggle now.  Struggle and seek understanding like silver, search for it as for hidden treasure.  That’s your job.  The rest is His.  You can and will boast in the Lord’s defeat over sexual (or any) sin in your life.  Just get busy doing what He’s told you to do (Proverbs 2).


Next week we will look at sexual sin with a view on God’s discipline.  I hope you will subscribe to this blog and keep learning all God has to teach through these lessons taught by Pastor Steve Wilson of Grace Community Church of Bowling Green, KY.   You can listen ahead to next weeks lesson here: Killing Sexual Sin, Part 3, January 7, 2018.

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