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 saved[i]. 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.
A Greater Gospel
I hope you can see that this is a greater gospel than the other one. It’s the gospel of God’s victory over sin, not just his tolerance of sin. It is the gospel of Romans 6:14: “Sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” Almighty grace! Sovereign grace!
He breaks the power of cancelled sin,
He sets the prisoner free;
His blood can make the foulest clean,
His blood availed for me.Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. This is God’s demand and this is God’s gift. It is all of grace. That’s why the only fight we fight is the fight of faith—the fight to rest so fully in the grace of God—to be so satisfied with the glory of God—that temptation to sin loses its power over us.
The battle against lust is the battle against unbelief.
The crucial verses here are (1 Thessalonians 4) verses 5 and 8. We only have time to look at verse 5.
The Knowledge of God
In verse 5 Paul says, ” . . . not in the passion of lust like heathen [i.e., the Gentiles] who do not know God.” Do you see what that implies about the root of lust? Not knowing God is the root cause of lust. Take a wife (or: control your body) not in the passion of lust because that is what people do who don’t know God.
Paul doesn’t mean that mere head knowledge about God overcomes lust. In Mark 1:24 Jesus is about to cast a demon out of a man when the unclean spirit cries out, “I know who you are, the Holy One of God!” In other words, Satan and his hosts have some very accurate knowledge of God and Jesus, but that is not the kind of knowledge Paul has in mind here.
The knowledge he has in mind here is knowledge of God described in 2 Corinthians 4:6—”the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ”[ii]. It’s the knowledge of God’s greatness and worth and glory and grace and power. It’s knowledge that stuns you, and humbles you. It’s knowledge that wins you and holds you.
It’s the kind of knowledge that you don’t have when you say ho-hum during the Hallelujah Chorus or grumble on the rim of the Grand Canyon. Hearing they do not hear and seeing they do not see. It’s not that kind of knowledge. It comes like it did for Lydia when the Lord opened the eyes of her heart. At one moment you think you will burst with its fullness, and suddenly there is a chasm of longing for more. It’s the knowledge we call faith—the assurance of things hoped for the conviction of things not seen.
It’s a knowledge that is so real, so precious, so satisfying to your soul, that any thought, any attitude, any emotion, any addiction which threatens to hinder this knowledge will be attacked with all the spiritual zeal of a threatened life. This is the fight of faith that rages in the godly soul when lust lures the mind away from God.
The Pure Shall See God
I close with an illustration from an article in Leadership (Fall 1982). It was unsigned, but written by a preacher who for ten years was in bondage to lust. He tells the story of what finally released him. It is such a resounding confirmation of what I am trying to say that I want to quote the key paragraph.
He ran across a book by Francois Mauriac, What I Believe. In it Mauriac admitted how the plague of guilt had not freed him from lust. He concludes that there is one powerful reason to seek purity, the one Christ gave in the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
The thought hit me like a bell rung in a dark, silent hall. So far, none of the scary, negative arguments against lust had succeeded in keeping me from it . . . But here was a description of what I was missing by continuing to harbor lust: I was limiting my own intimacy with God. The love he offers is so transcendent and possessing that it requires our faculties to be purified and cleansed before we can possibly contain it. Could he, in fact, substitute another thirst and another hunger for the one I had never filled? Would Living Water somehow quench lust? That was the gamble of faith. (pp. 43-44)
It was not a gamble. You can’t lose when you turn to God. He discovered this in his own life, and the lesson he learned is absolutely right:
The way to fight lust is to feed faith with the knowledge of an irresistibly glorious God.
Do you know God this morning?
Are you growing week by week in the knowledge of God’s greatness?
Do you meditate on his Word day and night?
Do you ponder the pictures of his Son in the gospels?
Do you read solid books about his character and his ways?
Do you look at everything in your day as his creation?
Do you pray for a sensitive heart that can be ravished by the revelation of his glory?
I call you to make those commitments now for the sake of your own soul and for the glory of God.
—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.
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