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Dear Disciple,
Today we finish up the exhortation from Colossians 3:5 to put to death sexual immorality.
We live in a sex drenched culture. You can’t even buy produce at the grocery store without some sexual deal staring at you in the check out lane. It’s all over TV and movies. It’s a click away on the internet. So, it is hard to walk the path of purity. The Lord said that to look at a woman lustfully was to commit adultery in the heart with her. We are told to fell sexual immorality because it is a sin against our own bodies, in that our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. We are to glorify God in our bodies. Have you ever wondered what God’s will is for your life? Well, I don’t even know you, but I know the answer. “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 (1 Thessalonians 4:3-4).
I know, people say we’re hung up about sex, we’re uptight, we’re repressed, we need therapists, etc. But the beautiful thing which our good and loving God has created has been perverted, and we would rather have it His way or not have it. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”
So, in body, mind, and heart, we are called to remain pure. And, if we are married, we are to be faithful in every way to our husbands or wives. Much works against us, inwardly and outwardly. Dennis Prager once said, and I think he was basically right, that men have an insatiable desire for sexual variety, and women have an insatiable desire for sexual intimacy. OK, so this is a generalization, but it speaks to what generally gets men and women respectfully into trouble. The denial of either desire causes pain, real emotional and psychic pain. There is no known cure for this pain. Dealing with and accepting this pain is part of what it means to grow up and become a true adult.
Dear disciple, though there is no known cure for this problem side of death and resurrection, we do have the power of the indwelling Spirit, and we have the promise of God who says that He will not allow us to be tempted beyond what we are able to bear. And if seeking to remain pure for our own good is not enough motivation, then the good of others should be. All sexual immorality, even private, involves sin against others. Some how, some way we are dehumanizing others or we are encouraging them to be untrue to their own need to be sexually pure. And so, to love our neighbor as ourselves means to uphold his or her integrity and purity in this regard, and never to treat him or her as a mere object of our fantasy or pleasure, and never in anyway to lead them down the road to sin themselves. Who knows what struggles they face to be true and to be pure, and there we are with our look, our flirt, our suggestion, and we may be undoing what they have worked so hard to do.
And so, dear disciple, when the Apostle Paul, led by the Holy Spirit, and speaking the words of God to us, says put to death sexual immorality, he means it, and God means it. There is a better way, the way of love, which we will get to soon. Peace. |
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