We Need a Knowledge of an Irresistibly Glorious God
—Battling the Unbelief of Lust
Categories: Christian Living, Holiness, John Piper, Mortification of Sin, Sola Fide
Written By: JM Vergara | This Post has been viewed 905 times.
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...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 saved1. How do you lay hold on eternal life? Paul gives the answer in 1 Timothy 6:12 [show] [12]Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. (ESV)
—”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 [show] [14]For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. (ESV)
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 [show] 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. [2]For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. [3]For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; [4]that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, [5]not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; [6]that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. [7]For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. [8]Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you. [9]Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, [10]for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, [11]and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, [12]so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one. [13]But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. [14]For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. [15]For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. [16]For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. [17]Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. [18]Therefore encourage one another with these words. (ESV)
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 [show] [24]"What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are--the Holy One of God." (ESV)
The knowledge he has in mind here is knowledge of God described in 2 Corinthians 4:6 [show] [6]For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (ESV)
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.
- Matthew 24:13 [show] [13]But the one who endures to the end will be saved. (ESV); 10:22; 1 Corinthians 15:3 [show] [3]For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, (ESV); Colossians 1:23 [show] [23]if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister. (ESV); 2 Thessalonians 2:13 [show] [13]But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. (ESV) [↩]
- see Galatians 4:8 [show] [8]Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. (ESV); 1 Corinthians 2:14 [show] [14]The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. (ESV); 2 Peter 1:3-4 [show] [3]His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, [4]by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. (ESV) [↩]