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Desiring God
God-Centered Resources from the Ministry of John Piper
For the last twenty years thousands of men from across America struggling with sexual sin have come to our intensive counseling workshop. Over half were pastors and missionaries. I wish our experience was unique. Several years ago a seminary professor told me: We no longer ask our entering students if they are struggling with pornography, we assume every student is struggling. The question we ask: How serious is the struggle? One missions agency told me that 80% of their applicants voluntarily indicate a struggle with pornography, resulting in staff shortages on the field. Pornography is just one level of sin, a form of visual sex, or heart adultery. Physical adultery includes an affair, multiple affairs, prostitution, and homosexuality. Other sexual behaviors within the ministry are such heinous unfruitful works of darkness . . . it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret (Ephesians 5:11 12). To face the crisis we must correctly understand the nature of the problem, ask God to search our own hearts, and be committed to restore each one caught in sexual sin in a spirit of gentleness (Galatians 6:1). I have pondered long and hard two questions: Why do people repeatedly return to sexual sin and why do people turn away from sexual sin?
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living in habitual sexual sin are dead in their trespasses and sin (verse 1). Dead, in a loss of spiritual life. Dead to finding satisfaction with God. Dead to living for his purpose. Holiness is dead. Wisdom is dead. Purity is dead. Love is dead. Like David, the sexual sinner has sinned against the Lord (2 Samuel 12:13), and in so doing has utterly scorned the Lord (verse 14). The horrible fact is they are by nature children of wrath (Ephesians 2:3). I believe addictionology plays down the seriousness of sin and the necessity of the work of God when it encourages the sexual addict to accept the theory that recovery will only be successful when they begin to believe that they are a good person at the core and just have a disease. Diagnoses always determine the method of treatment. So good people only need to get serious, follow the steps of recovery, and remain in recovery. The opposite is true. When dealing with sexual sin we must hold fast to the teaching of Jesus Christ, For from within, out of the heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, . . . adultery (Mark 7:21). By nature and by choice we satisfy ourselves, rebel against God, and have no accurate understanding of the depth of our problem. The heart is deceptive, and without supernatural change it will grow worse. The only hope is the grace of God . . . training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age (Titus 2:1112). Look closely and you will see that the sexual sinner is disappointed with pleasure in their pursuit of what is essentially false intimacy. As one pastor, who was living in two adulterous relationships, put it: This was the insanity; I no sooner finished the sexual act and immediately broke into tears, devastated by what I had done, but I only returned again and again to the same sinful relationship. As sinners we are created with desires for intimacy and for delight. Therefore, The way to fight lust is to feed faith with the precious and magnificent promise that the pure in heart will see, face to face, the all-satisfying God of glory (Future Grace, 338). Yet the sexual sinner, finding no pleasure in real intimacy with God, ultimately finds no pleasure in false intimacy. Real intimacy has both pain and pleasure; false intimacy offers the illusion of no pain, but in the end there is no real pleasure! A part of exchanging the truth about God for a lie (Romans 1:25) is that you end up with pleasure now, pain forever!
Descending Deception
Deception runs deeper than we think. Deception is inherent to the problem of sexual sin on two levels. First, there is the double life with clandestine liaisons, endless hidden hours on a computer, or the misuse of unaccounted time away from the office or home. The behavior is carefully hidden from view, but there are lies, then more lies to cover the lies. Face the facts: the motive for secrecy is to keep doing it. But secrecy of sexual sin also indicates a persons commitment to flee from the light. And people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil (John 3:19). The second level of deception is self-deception. If the heart is deceitful, it impacts the way we want to see the secret things in our lives, particularly secret sexual sins. The missionary can justify going to nude beaches; a pastor sees the value of an affair because it makes him happy; going to a prostitute on Monday is just a reward for hard work on Sunday. When you say, I will keep this part of my life a secret, what are you hiding? Hidden from view is a scandalous behavior that would certainly horrify any congregation or spouse. It is also a calculated contradiction of ones public image that if revealed would bring ruin. It also may be a relationship that you believe is so fulfilling you cant imagine ending it. Everyone thinks they are hiding their acts of sin: lust, cheating, porn, and adultery. Such thinking makes it easier to justify the secrecy for the greater good of ones marriage, family, ministry, job, and future. Such rationalization is universal to all secret sexual sin. After all, a lot of people would be hurt if they knew what I was doing. As one pastor put it, I was in a six month affair, at the same time preaching and counseling against adultery, and telling
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myself that God didnt care because the church was growing. In reality, it is not the behavior alone that is hidden. Secret sexual sin is an invasive poison to the soul, mind and the body. It is a poison deep within the recesses of the soul that keeps one from finding satisfaction in God and meaningful intimacy with others. This is a poison that will kill not only in this life, but also life eternal! For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure . . . has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God (Ephesians 5:5). Sexual behavior that is indistinguishable from the unbelieving world may indicate a person is not truly a child of God.
Conviction
After secret sexual sin is exposed we can make the mistake of focusing on the actions and attempt to eliminate behavior. We may be inadvertently feeding a false conviction rather than aiding true conviction. False conviction is a reflex reaction caused by self-disgust, a sorrow over the consequences of sin. True conviction is an abiding sorrow over the offence against God, and while not the natural response, it does demonstrate that God has begun a good work that he will complete. True conviction is followed by true repentance. False conviction is followed by counterfeit repentance that only sees the consequences of sexual sin and the pain it caused others. Often this leads to a temporary change in behavior without a heart change. Heart change is critical, For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexual immoral (Gk. porneia) or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater) has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God (Ephesians 5:5). There is no room for error when it comes to dealing with sexual sin. There is a demand to either repent or perish (Luke 13:3, 5). So there must be inner transformation of the heart because it is deceitful above all things and desperately sick (Jeremiah 17:9). Christians must take severe measures in killing this sin. This is the real danger: Every unclean thought would be adultery if it could (John Owen). Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality . . . (Colossians 3:5). The cross isnt a recovery program, the place to improve on what good is already there. It is a place to die. It is not a question of giving up sexual sin, but of giving up ones rights! But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness
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(Romans 6:1718). As dead sinners we lived in the passion of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind (Ephesians 2:3). Deceived, we foolishly think we can use our bodies as we choose when we are in love, when it brings us pleasure, when it makes us a whole person or feeds our spiritual well being. The truly repentant sexual sinner begins to grasp, You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body (1 Corinthians 6:19, 20). True repentance is radical change from the inside out. The basic meaning of repent is to experience a change of the minds perceptions and dispositions and purposes (What Jesus Demands, 41). Repentance is not just becoming sexually pure, but an inward change, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God (Colossians 1:10). Inward change leads to sexual purity. Repentance happens on the inside where heart change includes the development of an ingrained attitude to flee sexual immorality.
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find life in the shadows. Topic: Sexual Purity Dr. Harry W. Schaumburg is a speaker, author, and counselor specializing in the area of sexual sin in the church. He is the director of Stone Gate Resources and the author of False Intimacy: Understanding the Struggle of Sexual Addiction (1997) and Undefiled: Redemption From Sexual Sin, Restoration for Brok en Relationships (2009). He has been married to his wife Rosemary for 43 years, and they have two adult sons.
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