If you are a believer in Christ, you have been saved and
redeemed from your "old life".
But, what happens when you can't seem to break free from an individual
sin or sins? I believe that this article,
by Steve Gallagher will shed some light on the oftentimes difficult
topic of sexual sin and how to be truly free.
Steve Gallagher asks the question," How can you be saved and still doing this? You can, if you have a sincere heart and belong to Christ, your days of bondage are coming to an end".
Larry
How Can I Be Saved and Still Be Doing This?
by Steve Gallagher
This may come as a surprise to many readers, but sexual sin in and of itself has never sent
anyone to hell any more than a person’s morality can secure him or her a place in heaven. People
are sent to hell because they have never been converted—regardless of how moral or immoral
their outward behavior might be.
Having said that, the practice of willful sin, of any kind, could certainly be considered as
evidence of an unredeemed life—even for a professing Christian. So does that mean if someone
is given over to sexual sin that it is proof he is headed into hell? Maybe, maybe not.
I tend to lump “Christian” sexual sinners into two basic groups: those who are sincerely striving
to disentangle themselves from their past life of sin and those who are exerting only enough
effort to fool themselves and those around them. Determining which group a man or woman is in
is no easy matter.
Experience has taught me over the years to look for certain indicators as to an individual’s
actual spiritual condition. The following are the sort of unspoken questions I consider when
dealing with such a person.
1. How does this person respond to a convicting sermon, article or passage in the Bible?
Insincere “Christians” tend to avoid sin-confronting messages and those who present them.
Instead, they are attracted to peddlers of easy-believism. This, of course, is no new phenomenon.
When Isaiah was trying to win the Jewish people back to their God, he faced a great deal of
hostility and resistance. He wrote, “They are always rebelling against God, always lying, always
refusing to listen to the LORD’s teachings. They tell the prophets to keep quiet. They say, ‘Don't
talk to us about what’s right. Tell us what we want to hear. Let us keep our illusions. Get out of
our way and stop blocking our path. We don’t want to hear about your holy God of Israel.’”
(Isaiah 30:9-11 GNB)
How different is the attitude of a man or woman who truly wants to be free! He is drawn to
Scriptures that bring a sense of conviction about his sin; he is attracted to preachers who present
an uncompromising message; he seeks out counselors who will tell him the truth about himself.
This person may still be caught up in some form of habitual sin, but he will not attempt to silence
the voice of the Holy Spirit in his life—in fact he longs for it.
2. How does the guilt of sin affect the person?
Guilt is a natural reaction to sexual sin and is not necessarily an indicator of a person’s spiritual
status. Most unbelievers and pseudo-Christians (people involved in church life and yet
unconverted) will feel a degree of shame about being involved in sexual sin because of the social
stigma attached to it. However, that sense of shame is shallow and comes and goes.
On the other hand, the true believer who keeps failing will nearly always experience guilt on a
much deeper level. Their overriding concern is not the possibility that their sin might be publicly
exposed, but that their fellowship with God has been greatly compromised. When a true believer
gets off track spiritually, he undergoes constant inner turmoil. The Lord, in His mercy, makes
sure that His son feels miserable until he rids himself of the ongoing sin in his life and makes
things right with God.
3. Does this person feel compelled to “fight the good fight?”
Whether or not a person is really battling the pull of temptation is another good indicator to his
spiritual condition.
I cannot recount the times men have told me that they “struggle with” pornography or some other
form of sexual sin, and, when I begin to ask them about their ongoing war with temptation, they
recount a long list of failures. “Where’s the struggle?” I ask incredulously. “You have only told
me about a life of defeat; you haven’t said anything that leads me to believe that you are actively
fighting those carnal urges! The fact that you are using terminology such as ‘struggle’ only
indicates that you are exaggerating your spirituality while minimizing the seriousness of your
problem.”
One common denominator among those who successfully fight their way out of the terrible hold
of sin is that they are always trying to move forward spiritually. They may have failures, but they
never quit fighting.
It may take some time for an individual saved out of a life of wickedness to find real freedom
from it. The hold of sin can be extremely powerful, but one thing is certain: if this person has
truly been converted, sin will not—cannot—hold him indefinitely.
The Apostle John forever debunked the notion that a true believer can practice sin when he
wrote, “The man who claims to know God but does not obey his laws is not only a liar but lives
in self-delusion… The man who lives “in Christ” does not habitually sin. The regular sinner has
never seen or known him.” (1 John 2:4; 3:6 Phillips)
There is something, or rather Someone, inside a bona fide believer that will not allow him to rest
until he finds freedom from the hold of willful sin. How can the Holy Spirit indwell a professing
Christian who regularly practices evil? Or as Paul put it: “How can light and darkness share life
together? What common ground can idols hold with the temple of God? For we, remember, are
ourselves living temples of the living God, as God has said: ‘I will dwell in them…’”
(2 Corinthians 6:14b, 16 Phillips)
In the final analysis, if a person is sincere, he will end up on the right side in the end; if he is
insincere, he will find himself locked out of the Kingdom. It’s really as simple as that.
One need only look at the different paths Saul and David took. Every time King Saul disobeyed
God, he attempted to justify his behavior, shift the blame off himself or minimize the sinfulness
of his actions. Insincerity characterized his entire life with God.
How different it was for David. Once Nathan the prophet confronted him about his sin with
Bathsheba, all of his defenses wilted. He crumpled into a heap and exclaimed, “I have sinned
against the Lord!” Out of that heartfelt sorrow came forth the earnest prayer found in Psalm 51.
And there, in the sixth verse, he penned the words that perfectly describe what God is after:
“Sincerity and truth are what you require…”
How can you be saved and still be doing this? You can, but if you have a sincere heart and
belong to Christ, your days of bondage are coming to an end.
2012 www.purelifeministries.org. All rights reserved.
Because we take the Gospel for granted and it
has become so familiar to us, we see it as something for the unsaved and
not for us. This article by Tim Challies points us to the reasons why
preaching the Gospel to ourselves is important everyday.
Larry
Preach the Gospel to Yourself
Tim Challies
Jerry Bridges was talking about preaching the gospel to yourself and being gospel-centered long before it was cool to do so. One of the great burdens of his ministry has long been to have Christians understand that “the gospel is not only the most important message in all of history; it is the only essential message in all of history. Yet we allow thousands of professing Christians to live their entire lives without clearly understanding it and experiencing the joy of living by it. … Christians are not instructed in the gospel. And because they do not fully understand the riches and glory of the gospel, they cannot preach it to themselves, not live by it in their daily lives.” In other words, we teach people just enough gospel to get saved, but then move on to other things. Bridges wants us to understand that we never move on from the gospel.
In the third chapter of The Discipline of Grace, Bridges provides a powerful, thorough review of the gospel and does this by looking at Romans 3:19-26. He offers an exposition of that passage and through it leads to this imperative: Preach the gospel to yourself. Let me provide an extended quote that gives some of the how and the why:
To preach the gospel to yourself, then, means that you continually face up to your own sinfulness and then flee to Jesus through faith in His shed blood and righteous life. It means that you appropriate, again by faith, the fact that Jesus fully satisfied the law of God, that He is your propitiation, and that God’s holy wrath is no longer directed toward you.This is the gospel Bridges wants the Christian to preach to himself day-by-day. “When you set yourself to seriously pursue holiness, you will begin to realize what an awful sinner you are. And if you are not firmly rooted in the gospel and have not learned to preach it to yourself every day, you will soon become discouraged and will slack off in your pursuit of holiness.”
To preach the gospel to yourself means that you take at face value the precious words of Romans 4:7-8: “Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him.”
It means that you believe on the testimony of God that “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). It means you believe that “Christ redeemed [you] from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for [you], for it is written ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree’” (Galatians 3:13). It means you believe He forgave you all your sins (Colossians 2:13) and now “[presents you] holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation” (Colossians 1:22).
Turning to the Old Testament, to preach the gospel to yourself means that you appropriate by faith the words of Isaiah 53:6: “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
It means that you dwell upon the promise that God has removed your transgressions from you as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12), that He has blotted out your transgressions and remembers your sin no more (Isaiah 43:25). But it means you realize that all these wonderful promises of forgiveness are based upon the atoning death of Jesus Christ.
It is the death of Christ through which He satisfied the justice of God and averted from us the wrath of God that is the basis of all God’s promises of forgiveness. We must be careful that, in preaching the gospel to ourselves, we do not preach a gospel without a cross. We must be careful that we do not rely on the so-called unconditional love of God without realizing that His love can only flow to us as a result of Christ’s atoning death.
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| Preaching the Gospel to Yourself |
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| Freedom from Sexual Sin |
The conscience is awakened, but the mind is not changed. Therefore, when the guilt and fear of God that motivated this awakening of conscience has passed, their desire for salvation cools and they return to their own ways.
They are overwhelmed by fear of man. For a time the fear of damnation overcomes this fear of other people, but as the sense of danger passes, so too does their boldness.
They are full of pride, unwilling to face the world-ward shame that comes with the gospel.
And finally, they refuse to face their own guilt and the danger that will come to them if they do not receive forgiveness for wrongs done.
