Lust Disregards God
The text says, take a wife (or control your body/vessel) “in holiness . . . not in the passion of lust.” (1 Thess 4:4) Holiness has to do with God—being set apart for God. So verse 5 goes on like this: “Not in the passion of lust like heathen who do not know God.”
Knowing God and acting like it keeps sexual desire from becoming lust. Look at verse 8: “Therefore whoever disregards this [the call for holiness], disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.” The root issue in lust is regard for God. Holiness is living in supreme regard for a holy God.
Lust is the opposite. Lust is sexual desire which is not regulated or governed or guided by a supreme regard for God.
God created sexuality. He created it good and beautiful. He created it for the good of his creatures. He alone has the wisdom and the right to show us how to use it for his glory and our good. Lust is what that sexual desire becomes when we give it rein in disregard for God.
In summary then, lust is a sexual desire that dishonors its object and disregards God. It’s the corruption of a good thing by the absence of honorable commitment and by the absence of a supreme regard for God. If your sexual desire is not guided by respect for the honor of others and regard for the holiness of God, it is lust.
Pondering the Danger of Lust
That’s the definition. Now the next issue is SO WHAT? Why is this a big deal? Isn’t sexual sin, especially when it’s just a desire and not an act, sin with a little “s”? Shouldn’t we get on with the big issues like nuclear arms and social justice? You’ve known people like that, I suppose. They say, Sexual attitudes and sexual behavior are a matter of relatively insignificant personal piety. What counts is whether you boycott companies in South Africa and oppose Star Wars defense systems. Sleeping around is simply no big deal if you are on the picket line at Honeywell; and flipping through Playboy is utterly insignificant if you are on your way to peace talks in Geneva.
That is the way the religious human mind reasons when a supreme regard for God has been forsaken. But that is not what God has said. What is God’s estimate of how important your sexual life is? Is it a big deal?
Verse 6 says, “that no man transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we solemnly forewarned you.”
This means that the consequences of lust are going to be worse than the consequences of nuclear war. All that nuclear war can do is kill the body. And Jesus said, “Do not fear those who kill the body and after that have no more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear. Fear him who after he has killed has power to cast into hell” (Luke 12:4-5). In other words God’s vengeance is much more fearful than earthly annihilation. And according to 1 Thessalonians 4:6 God’s vengeance is coming upon those who disregard the warning against lust.
Lust and Eternal Security
This past September I spoke to the student body of Wheaton Christian High School. I took as my topic, “Ten Lessons for Fighting Lust.” Lesson number 6 was, “Ponder the eternal danger of lust.”
My text on that point was Matthew 5:28-29 where Jesus says, “Every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.” I pointed out that Jesus said heaven and hell are at stake in what you do with your eyes and with the thoughts of your imagination.
After the message one of the students came up to me and asked, “Are you saying, then, that a person can lose his salvation?”
This is exactly the same response I got a few years ago when I confronted a man about the adultery he was presently living in. I tried to understand his situation and I pled with him to return to his wife. Then I said, “You know Jesus says that if you don’t fight this sin with the kind of seriousness that is willing to gouge out your own eye, you will go to hell and suffer there forever.”
He looked at me in utter disbelief, as though he had never heard anything like this in his life, and said, “You mean you think a person can lose his salvation?”i
So I have learned again and again from first hand experience that there are many professing Christians who have a view of salvation that disconnects it from real life, and that nullifies the warnings of the Bible and puts the sinning person who claims to be a Christian beyond the reach of biblical threats. And this doctrine is comforting thousands on the way to hell.
Jesus said, if you don’t fight lust, you won’t go to heaven.
The stakes are much higher than whether the world is blown up by a thousand bombs. If you don’t fight lust, you won’t go to heaven ii.
Justifying Faith Is Lust-Fighting Faith
Are we not, then, saved by faith—by believing in Jesus Christ? We are indeed! Those who persevere in faith shall be savediii. How do you lay hold on eternal life? Paul gives the answer in 1 Timothy 6:12—”Fight the good fight of faith: lay hold on eternal life.”
That leads us to our main concern this morning—to show that the fight against lust is a battle against unbelief. And the fight for sexual purity is the fight of faith.
The Great Error That Must Be Exploded
The great error that I am trying to explode in these messages is the error that says, faith in God is one thing and the fight for holiness is another thing. Faith gets you to heaven and holiness gets you rewards. You get your justification by faith, and you get your sanctification by works. You start the Christian life in the power of the Spirit, you press on in the efforts of the flesh. This is the great evangelical error of our day. The battle for obedience is optional, they say, because only faith is necessary for salvation.
Our response: the battle for obedience is absolutely necessary for salvation because it IS the fight of faith.
The battle against lust is absolutely necessary for salvation because it is the battle against unbelief.
Faith alone delivers from hell and the faith that delivers from hell delivers from lust.
—Battling the Unbelief of Lust, a sermon delivered on November 13, 1988 by John Piper
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Read the rest of this most spiritually profitable sermon on the Battle against the unbelief of Lust here. This sermon has helped me greatly in the battle against sin, all sorts of sin, even lust, showing me the surpassing greatness of the glories of Christ wherein there is no other satisfying and conquering thing that should consume our thoughts, our hearts, our minds and emotions, the whole of our life but Him and Him alone! You can also download it in mp3 here.
Footnotes
- Okay, so I got a lot of comments concerning this section of the excerpt. Dr. Piper could’ve done a better job to reconcile what was said here and the Biblical Doctrine of God’s preservation of the saints, but then let’s just do with what was given and try to discern what was intended to be said. Yes, a person cannot lose his salvation (John 6:44, Romans 8:29-39), but what Dr. Piper is saying here is that if the faith we profess is not a lust-fighting faith, a sin-fighting faith then by all means and purposes that is not saving faith at all. We are not at all regenerated in Christ Jesus. I think this sentence puts it very plainly for us: “Faith alone delivers from hell and the faith that delivers from hell delivers from lust.” [↩]
- 1 Peter 2:11; Colossians 3:6; Galatians 5:21; 1 Corinthians 6:10; Hebrews 12:14 [↩]
- Matthew 24:13; 10:22; 1 Corinthians 15:3; Colossians 1:23; 2 Thessalonians 2:13 [↩]
Very good sermon and comments. Oh that men would heed these things.
That is my same sung prayer! That these truths be so engraved into the hearts and souls of men, what a difference would it make to the Christian's life?! I pray that even we ourselves in our own persons would not lose sight of the surpassing beauty and transcendent worth of Christ over all things…and that, and that alone would constrain us to live…to mortify sin…to grow in holiness and sanctification…to love others…to preach the Gospel of free and sovereign grace…to glorify God in all life's endeavors. I pray to go to my own funeral tonight that my singleminded pursuit will be that of God and God alone. Lord help us all.
I would just like to comment that the empty hand of faith that lays hold of Christ, is the same empty hand of faith we need to cry out to God for deliverance from sins like lust. We must maintain the attitude that there is nothing good in me. Only Christ is good. We must trust God to deliver us. By faith we must cut off the hand or pluck out the eye. We must take the Sword of the Spirit and strike down the enemy. Never presume you can handle temptation. Flee from it. The spirit of lust is extremely deceptive. The siren call is irresistible unless we shut our eyes and shut our ears with God’s help.