On Lasciviousness pt 2: Sweeping the House and Filling the House

I concluded in part 1 that the real issue in lasciviousness is non-covenantal love, we need to be putting off non-covenantal love, and putting on covenantal love.

Covenantal love it’s a beautiful thing and it doesn’t need to be in marriage. Certainly it does if it’s going to be sexual or romantic in any capacity but love, there’s nothing wrong with love. You can do that all you want.

The Lord Jesus wasn’t married, but no one can say he wasn’t loving.

And the apostle Paul, he loved the church. He was given care over it and took great care for it. He didn’t just love the invisible church either, as if it were some theory and not actual people. No, he loved the church as it appeared. He didn’t love the spots and wrinkles, but he loved it such that it should be without spots and wrinkles. He writes to churches that didn’t understand basic things. The Romans evidently needed the whole religion laid out for them, but he spends the last chapter remembering them by name. Everyone forsook him, but he kept on at it.

So we have to put on the Lord Jesus Christ to understand covenantal love. We have to understand how he loved the church and how he called his people to love the church. 

We need to be in the sermon on the mount. We need to be looking at this. This isn’t just him describing his own righteousness that he imputed to us. This is him telling us what to do. He’s the Lord! This is him telling us what he wants us to do according to the law, this is him explaining the law: demanding it of us in our inward parts.

With respect to putting off lasciviousness and fornication, we don’t want to limit our work to sweeping the house and putting all things in order because if we don’t fill the house again with good things of the Spirit, we risk inviting even more demented and evil spirits than we had before. They’ll just go and tell all their friends it’s an open house. Our hearts are warehouses of sin, and unless we have the presence of the Lord, we can’t keep them. We can will all we want; will do and will and do constantly. But unless the Lord keeps the house, the watchmen labor in vain.

Or to put it another way, we can’t just be one step above Amnon, Eglon, Esau, Beltshazzar, and all those other evil, lustful, profane, and gluttonous men. We need to exceed the righteousness of Amnon.

So what does this mean for us practically. 

First, we should understand that the weapons our warfare are not carnal. By this we should understand that the means that we use are not sufficient of themselves. Whether it be prayer or Bible reading or psalm singing. Unless it’s done in the Spirit: done with the aid of the Spirit, then it’s all for nothing.

But thankfully, we have a sure promise of the presence of the Spirit given to us not because we have done something wonderful. Not because we’ve repented enough. Not because we’ve got some kind of enlightened understanding. But by faith. Oh and the faith is a gift too! Faith is the alone instrument of justification and God certainly, and surely sends his Spirit to sanctify the heart with the more faith wherever he finds it, that’s his covenant promise. You can rest on it; you can be certain of it: if you come to him and faith, he will never cast you out. He will never give up on you. He binds himself with an oath to it after an order of a more perfect priesthood.

WCF 7.3

Man, by his fall, having made himself uncapable of life by that covenant (that with Adam), the Lord was pleased to make a second, commonly called the covenant of grace; wherein he freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ; requiring of them faith in him, that they may be saved, and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life his Holy Spirit, to make them willing, and able to believe.

So here repentance is not a condition of the covenant of grace, faith alone is.

And yet,

WCF 11.2

Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification: yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but [worketh] by love

But what sort of good works?

Well we can see:

1. that they are such as God commands in his holy word
2. They are done in obedience to those commandments as fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith. 
3. By them we manifest our thankfulness. I’m so thankful that God found me: what can I render to the Lord for all his gifts to me?
4. We have the fruit of holiness with the end being eternal life.
5. The good works are not at all of ourselves, though paradoxically they must be done by ourselves in obedience. They must be understood as the work of the Spirit in you: because they really are. 
6. You act in faith knowing that you are being sanctified every step of the way with the help and power of the Spirit with the end being true holiness and eternal life.

With this in mind, we can look at shorter catechism 85.

Q. 85. What doth God require of us, that we may escape his wrath and curse, due to us for sin?

A. To escape the wrath and curse of God, due to us for sin, God requireth of us faith in Jesus Christ, repentance unto life, with the diligent use of all the outward means whereby Christ communicateth to us the benefits of redemption.

This question and answer is countenancing the whole of justification and sanctification, with a focus on the duty of man for Gospel Obedience. The emphasis here is not about what God has done in election (as we might consider as a thing that must be believed about God), but under the duties of man.

God enables us by faith to repent and thus escape his wrath and curse that must fall on those who do not repent and do not obey the gospel. So repentance and good works cannot be included as part of the condition for justification, but they are necessary fruits of faith.

WCF 15.3: “Although repentance be not to be rested in, as any satisfaction for sin, or any cause of the pardon thereof… yet it is of such necessity to all sinners, that none may expect pardon without it.”

Another paradox, but one that must be rightly ordered. It does not cause pardon or provide satisfaction for sin since even the most heartfelt and sincere of repentance remains tainted by sin. And yet God requires that kind of repentance from anyone that wants to expect pardon. God must be respected and honored as God both in his power to save and in obedience to his word. 

We don’t get the glory for doing the works or having faith, even if it were possible to do them in our own strength. But it’s not. We actually do need him to work faith in us from out of complete darkness and then we need him to enable us to do good works consistent with that faith.

That’s why you put on the Lord Jesus Christ: to put on his gospel to meditate on these things and the glory of him in saving a sinner. Receiving you as you were and then cleansing you. Not for anything in you but because he’s gracious: he was merciful to you. And he continues to be.

Devotions

We also have the outward and ordinary means of grace. In the case of lasciviousness, it must be met with private devotions.

You wake up in the middle of the night, you’ve got the itch, you reach for your phone. But then bring up the psalms on it. Turn on the light and sit up: it’s a night watch! You’re being called to worship, so sing like your life depends on it.

Psalm 134.

Bless the Lord all you his servants,

As you serve with one accord 

Bless the Lord in your night watches,

In the dwelling of the Lord 

Lift your hands within his temple,

Bless the Lord and raise them high

Let the Lord bless you from Zion,

He who made both earth and sky

Then open Matthew 4 or any other place and read like you need it to slay a serpent coiling around your soul. These are weapons! Look to Christ and remember how he met the devil in that moment of temptation. The devil promised everything: “All the kingdoms of the world! Right now! All the drink, all the power, all the pleasure, all the women! Just give up everything! Give up on the salvation of those filthy sinners! It’s all yours anyway!”

And how did the Lord defeat him and send him fleeing? By remembering the doctrine of worship. 

Resist the devil. He’s a coward and will flee when you resist in the Spirit. I promise it, but no, better, God promises it. The devil will be back when he thinks of some other scheme, but you’ll have the Spirit then also and you can send him running away humiliated again.

The weapons of our warfare are powerful. Do you believe this?!

This is only the beginning of the battles though, and you need to be equipped with the Word to know where to go to fight back. There are so many searchable bibles. Tech keys us in with porn just as readily as it can key us in with the word of God.

ChatGPT. Possibly the tool the devil means to use to destroy the human race, but you can use it to help you find the right scripture or find the right psalm. Just tell it to reply like a puritan minister and it’ll be based and beautiful.

Only don’t let the Spirit get away. When you feel the power starting to drift from you, and you’re getting tempted and focusing too much on the attacks of the conscience, or the world is creeping into your thoughts, beg him to come back! Like a child lost in the mall! Pray, fast, whatever it takes! And he’ll find you and remind you he was there the whole time. He had an eye on you.

That’s the consolation that comes from Godly sorrow. It works you up to zeal! To revenge! So you bring your body of sin to heel and strike it in the throat by the power of almighty God.

You say “but I thought it was dead!”

Well if it gets up kill it again. Double tap this time. And don’t stop til it stays dead and God calls you home.

Understand: this war is why the martyrs could go with joy to their deaths. They’d been fighting that battle over and over and over again, and they see the end! The battle is almost won! Victory is in sight! They didn’t go to the flames as lovers of death and pain like some freaks, but as lovers of the Lord and seeing him call them to suffer for his name as their honored entrance into glory.

Sacraments 

 Remember your baptism. Whenever it happened, you can rejoice that you’re in a more sanctified state now than back then. And if you don’t think you are, then why? What gives? Do you have some form of godliness but not the power of it? Or some kind of faith that isn’t working by love? You better not stay that way: you better repent! Search yourself, search the scriptures, figure it out while it’s the day of salvation. You don’t want to be one of the many saying “Lord, Lord, I thought we knew each other!? I thought you were such a one as myself!” That’s not the time to have that set in order before your eyes. 

Rom 6:1-4

1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?

2 God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?

3 Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?

4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

Those who are baptized should walk in newness of life. It’s what the sign means. It’s the sealed oath you’re bound to keep. Gospel obedience: you’re sworn to do it.

Rom 8:13

13 For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.

But how can I mortify the deeds of the body without the help of the Spirit? You’d better pray! You better pray to have the inward cleansing of the Holy Spirit: for him to give you what your baptism signifies. God gives good gifts. The Spirit will run to meet you when you start praying for him earnestly. And boom: now you have the power by faith to start putting off the works of the flesh. Believest thou this?

Same with the Lord’s supper. Week by week you’re called to repent, examine your heart and then come to his gracious feast. Not to be dead and go through the motions, drinking damnation: storing up wrath in your gullet. Purge out the old leaven and keep the feast since you’re called to the wedding supper of the Lamb: many are called and few are chosen. We could go on but my own corruptions are still too fresh.

Getting Assurance

And then when you persevere in godliness long enough to get your assurance renewed: mark it on your calendar. Mine is on my calendar. August 4th. I’m not sure what I’ll do for it next year, but I look forward to meeting him on it and hope my testimony will be the same: “Thus far the Lord has helped me”. Ebenezer. I woke up on it like out of some wonderful dream. I’d been hardly sleeping, hardly eating. And I wake up bathed in sunlight elated and reciting the ending of that movie with Scrooge, saying to my soul, “You there boy, what day is it? Have I missed it?” 

“Why no, sir, it’s the Day of Salvation.” And I’m thinking “It’s today! It’s today! I hear History voice and my heart isn’t hard. I didn’t miss it! Dress this slothful fellow that wants to lay in bed and slay him for the Lord of Hosts, it’s His Day of Salvation!” 

Half manic, I’m thinking, “Ebenezer…Ebenezer…what does this mean? I know he said it somewhere.”

Thus far the Lord has helped me.

So I go to work, and what do I see?

No appointments all day til like 6 at night. Worst I’ve ever seen it. And just as I’m tempted to get angry and fret or complain in my heart, I think, “I’m being called home because I have work to do there.”

So I block my schedule for the morning and get to work purging everything that didn’t serve the Lord Jesus Christ that I could find. I was surrounded by games and toys and entertainment. I had purposed to sell it and give to the poor, but I thought the Lord doesn’t need my money, and I would rather just destroy all these things so they won’t be a snare to anyone else and so I don’t value it enough to want to have to go through it.

And I won’t go back to games or sitting to be entertained (like I’m something special), save for the enjoyment of children and others. It won’t be in my home: but I’ve got three TVs I don’t know what to do with. I don’t need to be entertained. I don’t need to be a consumer of things that aren’t sanctifying. I go through my phone and it’s full of stupid memes and things to get mad about. Why do I need that? God called me to peace. Jews probably aren’t going to succeed at wiping white people of the face of the earth and if they do, God won’t be dethroned and there will be a resurrection anyway. So why surround myself with memes reminding myself to stay angry about things I have no control over, or about things the gays and liberals are doing and how stupid they are? The real fight is in my soul and our enemies are to be fought by winning them for Christ. Not mocking their blindness while I’m in the grip of my blindness. They’re lost and dying in filth and they need help like I did.

Psalm 131

My heart is not exalted Lord,

Nor haughty is my eye,

I do not deal in matters great,

Or things for me too high

I have composed and calmed myself soul,

I’m like a little child.

Now weaned he on his mother rests,

With soul subdued and mild.

Yes like a child who has been weaned,

My soul is calmed in me.

Hope in the Lord oh Israel,

Now and eternally.

Sisterhood

I’m blessed to have a very beautiful little sister, and though I’ve not always been nice or good to her, I’ve always cared about her honor and wellbeing. We know by nature how to love our own sisters with tender affection and without romantic affection. The Egyptians and Canaanites Abraham journeyed among understood this, perhaps better than he did. Everyone involved understood that it’s abnormal for a man to marry his sister, otherwise Abraham saying Sarah was his sister wouldn’t serve to conceal his marriage to her. 

With the law revealed to forbid any lawful marriage between a brother and his sister, we now understand the very thought processes that would be needed to lead up to marrying our sisters are abominable. But we are told,

1Ti 5:1-2

1 Rebuke not an elder, but intreat him as a father; and the younger men as brethren;

2 The elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity.

We can therefore see that our natural affections for our sisters are meant to extend to all women. The home is a training ground where we learn to model chaste covenantal love toward women. All of us with sisters know how to do that, unless you need a lot of help like an Amnon would. We don’t tolerate such thoughts for a moment (we should hope) and when the flesh or devil strike with them in a moment of perversity, we know how to reject them forcefully and with disgust.

We can exercise the same power, now with the strength of the Spirit and not merely rooted in natural affections Canaanites could drum up, to resist lusting after any woman. It’s not burdensome. Sin is the burden.

Now I consider how natural affection makes me want to protect the honor of my little sister, but then my natural man thinks I have some right to lust like an animal after any other young woman I want. This is pure hypocrisy that shouldn’t be named among the people of God. Those other women are in covenant relationships with their brothers and fathers, and extended families and nations, and are likely baptized into covenant with God with you. Or she may be a stranger or your enemy, both whom the Lord has also commanded you to love. 

So however you look at it, you have a responsibility to use the same protective, honoring, chaste love you learned with your sister on all women. There’s your “game”. Game to win the Lord’s heart and be sons of your Father in heaven. But note that the affection we learn with our sisters is light and playful: not stiff and formal, and has an assertiveness that remembers her as the weaker vessel. There’s no need to be joyless with a woman as if that were pleasing to the Lord, but in every interaction focus your heart on winning the Lord and his smile, and not as some game to seduce a woman, because he sees and he judges hearts.

So even if we don’t or can’t have marriages, we can still have covenantal love toward everyone, not just to women and not just to the church, but to everyone, even our enemies. And even if everyone scorns you, you have the love of the Lord which you have been scorning by expecting love reciprocal from other sinners.

Applying the word to your life in faith with the help of the Spirit is your winning strategy. These aren’t dead letters and lists of rules, and they can’t merely be done outwardly (and yet must be done in the sight of others). Reading scripture, hearing it, applying it to yourself, going to church, baptism, Lord’s supper, prayer, mortification of sin in the heart: these all have the power of the Spirit of God with them, so when they’re exercised in faith, they must be helping you in the principal thing: that you be sanctified. Don’t have the attitude of a fool in Israel that thinks he’s justified, so he doesn’t think he needs to be sanctified. No, if you’re justified, prove it by getting sanctified with the help of the Spirit.

A statement on lasciviousness

Edit: Please forgive the inconsistency of voice. I shift frenetically from attempts to be dispassionately instructive, to prayer, to excoriating my flesh, to addressing the reader. This sin worked itself in me in a way that blinded me and these notes reflect possibly my first allowance to look upon the weight of what I’ve done with the eyes of the Spirit.

Fair warning edit: this is around 30 pages.

I’m still pondering over my way. I don’t want to be too hard on myself but I also want to never fall into these things again, so it has to die root and branch. Branch: throw it all out and guard my heart at all times against it. Root: eradicate whatever doctrine gave me the idea this was ever acceptable. What was the leaven that got in my soul that gave birth to this death?

I remember when I first became a Christian I read the words of Christ about adultery and that his real concern is adultery in the heart, and it seemed clear to me and so I rejected all adultery of heart and actions for many years. 

But over time I got the idea that faith is all that matters and not repentance, or that repentance need only be a token returning to God, since moral perfection is impossible in this life. So I let myself indulge in pornography occasionally, and each time I would come back from it feeling less and less terrible about myself. 

Eventually I sought an explanation for why it didn’t trouble me any longer, and figured it must be because it’s a matter of Christian liberty and that I was wrong to have ever felt bad about it in the first place, as if I were throwing a yoke on myself that God had not put there.

But in order to even get to that point, I had to have uncrucified lusts. I had to have allowed in unbiblical ideas about human sexuality, else I would’ve opposed my lusts and brought them into subjection to Christ.

I reasoned that the lasciviousness condemned in Gal. 5:19 must correspond to specific sins outlined in the law of God like incest, bestiality, and sodomy since sexual feelings and engagements of themselves are not immoral. I reasoned you have to find each sexual sin outlined specifically, otherwise you risk putting a burden on people. 

So therefore whenever the Bible talked about lust, wantonness, lasciviousness, etc. it was referring to the desire to do something forbidden explicitly in the law. And because the Bible doesn’t condemn the natural use of a woman, the desire for it and engagement with those desires couldn’t be sinful. I drew the line at sexual activity with other people as obvious fornication, but would not condemn sexual activity alone.

I had allowed myself to believe two lies, with the one catching the other whenever it was expedient:

1. Repentance of specific sins is optional and excess concern about following the moral law would tend towards legalism and upend the sufficiency of Christ’s atonement.
2. My practice did not qualify as sinful.

I’ll encourage the reader to ponder how to answer these lies for themselves, but I dare not leave you in the same darkness since I have a response to myself now.

(As an aside, you have to speak with your heart and ask why it is disobeying the Lord. No answer is to be taken as acceptable, but it will tell you where to search in the scripture to counter the lies and excuses you’re using to justify yourself with something other than the cross of Christ.)

My failure was not seeing purity as the standard to be cherished, but as something to be worked around. Something to be satisfied or indulged within some confine. I felt that marriage had been denied to me, and took it as a given that my desires deserved satisfaction.

But then I asked the question, “why did God ordain marriage at all?” It’s not principally because God wanted us to have an outlet for our sexuality. God’s revealed reason was so man would not be alone. Adam didn’t need help to prevent uncleanness when he was innocent. So the aloneness didn’t refer to needing a sexual counterpart to channel his desires or “needs” into, but rather that man should not be without a covenant community. He should have other people helping him do the work of glorifying and enjoying God.

Thus our sexuality is made to exist in the context of the covenant community. It’s made to reinforce bonds within it, not with just anyone because if you do that it’s going to hurt people and sever bonds, confuse the resulting offspring, etc. Rather it must be with your marriage partner.

The key verse for me is where it says “possess one’s vessel in sanctification and honor, and the not in the lust of concupisence” (1 Thess 4:4-5). This implies that one can use their own marriage for the lust of concupisence. That would mean sex is not made to be unleashed or indulged, like filling yourself to the nostrils on food, but rather used for sanctification and honor. We are to eat and drink to the glory of God. So sex is made to build someone else up, remind them they’re loved, and not forsaken, and comfort their distress. It’s not for self-seeking, hence why you must never refuse your partner, but are also called to moderate yourself.

But we don’t need a marriage to be sanctified. We can be built up, comforted, reminded that we’re loved and not forsaken in many other ways than the marriage bed. Chiefly by the Lord himself and seeking him in the word and prayer, and in worship by singing the psalms.

Furthermore, covenant-exclusive sexuality ensures an element of moderation because it ensures you have a person you’re accountable to. When you have no accountability you find there’s no end to the depths of sexual desire. You just dig deeper until you don’t know who or what you are any more, doing things that would make a demon blush. 

You can’t moderate sex on your own, it has to be given, else it becomes self-seeking sin by its nature.

So it’s not the case that the requirement to be pure in heart is limited to the unmarried, and once you get married, “thank goodness I don’t have to do that any more”. And it’s not a consolation prize that you should be left “abandoned” to not marry and have to reserve your energy and time for the Lord. That’s the chief end of man. It’s the whole point of everything. The apostle says “I think it’s good for people to be as I am. I can serve God without having to worry about what might happen to my wife and children if I weren’t around or if I had to be martyred or lose my means of providing for myself.”

But marriage is absolutely not a concession to sin. God did not institute it thinking, “Well they’re going to sin if I don’t give them this.” It was to establish order within the community of men and show forth his glory.

The Lord Jesus was made of like nature with ourselves and was tempted in every way we are, and without sin. He had no nature of sin from which corruptions arose, but he has a body like we do. 

It’s also important to note that he still has a body and he is still pure heart and he’s unmarried, 2000 some years later. I complained about being unmarried at 40. He no longer suffers the trial of temptations that he did when he was with us. Yet still the Lord is perfectly happy that way. He abides ever still. It’s a non-issue for him because he has the perfect fellowship of the Saints and of the Father, perfect joy in the Holy Ghost: and we can enjoy that too, by faith. We can be called right into his gates with praise.

But while he was in this trial of temptations prior to his resurrection he never once had an impure thought or impure glance, and that was the standard He called people to at 30 years old as a man. He wasn’t asking us to do something impossible, but something basic and required to the Christian life. 

This is the Lord and he knew our frame, he lived it, and he knew that we are dust and yet he said to not commit adultery in your heart. Not even in your heart. It’s the temple of the Holy Ghost who dwells in you. 

You must not pollute that.

And yes, if marriage presents itself to you in Providence and it’s wise and it’s not going to distract you from the service of God: sure do it. You’re not sinning by doing that. But get your heart in order. Guard the doors of it like you’re guarding the temple of the Holy Spirit. 

Because that’s what it is. 

Take a whip of cords to whatever impure thing that comes knocking on it. That is holy ground and sanctified and not to be polluted. And if it persists, pray. You can pray at all times. And you should pray all the time, not just when you have your eyes closed. 

Let those lusts contend with the Almighty: you have a God that will bring the wheel over them. 

But do not engage with them. Do not willfully engage with them. To willfully engage with them is to be precisely what Paul was talking about when he says to have a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof. 

What? Do you think God’s power is not sufficient to help you keep his commandment? To do the basic of what he requires? To help you abstain from what most animals don’t engage in? 

The standard is that you crucify those lusts and make no provision for the flesh. You have not yet resisted unto blood. He might require you to give your body to be burnt. To be sawn asunder. Do you so despise your flesh and your comfort that you could accept that? Would you accept it as God’s cheerful Providence with a song on your lips that you’re going home? 

Come out of the tombs. Be clothed and in your right mind.

So bring forth your lust and say “Crucify! Crucify!” When it begs for water, give it vinegar, and shove a spear in its side when it seems to not be dead. Because that’s what your lusts cost our Lord Jesus Christ, and he demands, as your Priest, as the Lord of the Covenant, that your lust be crucified with him. Not optional. You’re not keeping it. 

You say “what do you mean, how can you talk that way because up on that cross is where I ought to be!? I ought to be up there with all those disgusting things I did hanging around my neck, not him. Not the Lord!”

Yes you should, and unless you put them up there with him, that’s precisely where you’ll be. 

Because you’re either walking in the flesh and obeying the lusts thereof, or you’re in the Spirit, obeying Christ, having put on Christ by faith.

Rom 8:13

13 For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.

There’s no option three. Option three would be, putting Christ to an open shame and making him out to be the priest of sin, claiming to put him on but secretly obeying the flesh and serving its lusts. This is betraying the Lord with a kiss. This is what it is be clouds without water, trees without fruit, foaming out your own shame and to have the blackest of darkness reserved for you forever. 

Don’t choose option three. 

Repent because he’s able to keep you from falling and present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. It’s his delight to present sinners faultless, even those who tried option three for a time. 

But it must be by his covenant of grace, not by trying to cut your own deal that’ll let you keep your sin. Because one thing God hates more than anything else is some other priest showing up trying to make some other deal as if the one he made with man that involved his Son being crucified wasn’t good enough.

So my errors were twofold: distorting scripture to serve my lusts, and distorting the gospel to keep them. It was all because I let a subtle distortion creep in, and a very popular one at that. But he kept me from falling. My steps were established by the Lord: though I stumbled I was not utterly cast down because he held me by the hand. I lingered in Sodom, but he guided me out by the hand. He left the 99 and found me, tangled up in thorns, and said, “Let’s get you out of that and bring you home.”

Seeing therefore Jude was talking about me, I’m further resolved not to separate myself. How interesting that a pattern of self-pollution should lead me to despise the covenant community, given that human sexuality was created to reinforce that community. To build and encourage it and have it ordered in marriages and families. 

I want to bear some burdens and suffer the people of God. Other people don’t have to be perfect right this moment. I don’t need to worry about what they’re doing in order to mortify my own sin. The same Lord is Lord of all, and is rich in mercy and knows how to gather his sheep. He proved it to me. He doesn’t need my help being angry about other people’s sin. As if the proud and disdainful pouting of a perverse man would make any difference. I’m also done despising government and thinking I’m too good to be ruled. I know the Bible, I know the catechisms, I know the confessions, I read the puritans, and I messed up the basics. I let something grotesque creep into me. I need help. But most of all I’m done being ungodly. Look what Enoch said of me, “ungodly, ungodly, ungodly”. He walked with God, and saw the beauty of that life. But God has convinced me. 

I can’t let this go. It’s too precious, and rare. How often can a hypocrite be made to see his sin and repent? Camels don’t go through eyes of needles. What manner of Man is this, that the foaming and raging waves of the sea obey him? 

So I want to contend earnestly for the faith: not academically just because it’s interesting or emotionally satisfying, but earnestly because it’s my gospel. It’s mine: it’s in me and it’s glorious. He found me and brought me back to the fold. He began a good work and wouldn’t tolerate my interrupting it, so he found me in the horrible places I was and brought me home.

How I could’ve ever thought this degeneracy was a matter of Christian liberty is proof positive of being blinded by Satan. Blind Pharisee! I would’ve never said such a thing out loud that porn use was Christian liberty. So in my corruption I would “set the liberty aside” when I was regular church attendance for “conscience sake”. But it was always kept hidden in a dark corner of my soul, unmortified, in case I needed it. And so it would be hiding behind fair speeches and searching for reasons to divide so it could feast. It would say, “Ah! A failure in doctrine! The minister errs! What further need have we of witnesses?” But it’s as lazy as it is uncreative, and will not escape the sword of the Spirit this time. 

Look at the Jerusalem Council. 

The Jews saw the gentiles coming in with disgusting sexual practices and idolatry and thought, “It’s because they’re eating unclean meats and aren’t circumcised, so keeping those aspects of the ceremonies must have moral significance.” But the apostles held that these things provide no value in subduing the flesh, and yet they were still careful to uphold that the gentiles don’t have liberty to participate in idols’ feasts and commit sexual sins. And over and over and over the apostle says crucify the flesh, don’t walk after the flesh, don’t mind the things of the flesh, etc. so obviously, subduing the flesh must be important if we needed a presbytery to sort out what would help with it.

Rom 8:13 For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.

It’s gotta die. Not be managed. Not kept away somewhere. Die. The whole body of it needs to die. It is not optional, and it doesn’t matter what you say you believe if you don’t do it. And it’s not some general judicial mortification: it’s specific, the whole manner of living and the deeds have got to go together with the whole evil heart of unbelief that sustained it.

And again, 

Rom 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

Rom 8:9 But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.

The flesh has nowhere to hide from this. You’re either in it or you’re in Christ. And I’m not trading Christ for some disgusting habit and all the shame and secrets of it and vile doctrines keeping it alive.

And then I find this.

Heb. 10:26: it’s such freedom. Far from reading it and seeing the curse, the power and clarity of it lift the fog around the gospel in my heart. If to sin willfully and habitually invites God’s most frighting curses, what if I just stopped sinning willfully and habitually? I’m not deterministically bound to exercise my will in such a way that I should end up within viewing distance of Judas in hell for presuming to somehow have justifying faith together with an unmortified flesh that sits in the temple of God of my heart like some depraved secret emperor, a Nero or a Caligula, commanding and taking delight in the lawless deeds of others. No! That secret fool king of fools has no place in the temple of God, and I had better start using my will to kick him out to the curb. 

God isn’t going to force my will to do it: he commands it because he’s my Lord and expects me to obey. 

This disgusting King Eglon sat in God’s temple for years, getting fat off the shame of countless young women. Beautiful young women of my people, who ought to have been taught better, been guided, been married, been protected. Well now he’s got a sword in his gut, the fat closed around it, and the dirt came out. It’s on the cross, it’s finished, and not coming down as long as I have the will to keep it there.

And so Christ says watch. But what if my corrupt will breaks and I let Caligula and the harlots back in the temple of God? 

Watch, and pray that you fall not into temptation. 

Self-control is the fruit of the Spirit, and if you’re in the Spirit and not in the flesh, you have self-control to resist. 

And there’s no law against using self-control. You can do that all you want and it’s not going to hurt you. 

Lasciviousness is the opposite of that, and there’s laws against that: that’s the work of the flesh and if you do those works you’re not inheriting the kingdom of God. Aselgia, the opposite of selgia, whatever that is, probably continence. Whether you like pornography, or sodomy or raping people or filthy dreaming, or just being too selfish with your spouse, it’s all the same bitter root and it needs to die. 

Uncleanness, another damnable work of the flesh. God hates it. Akatharsis, to be without cleanness. We must be clean in our hearts: there’s no filth in the temple of God. And not just your heart, but your body and all its members are the temple of God.

1Co 6:15 Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid.

1Co 6:19 What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?

What? How could you not know this? Well now you know. 

Oh! I’m not my own. I have to possess my vessel in sanctification and honor and not in the lust of concupiscence.

1Co 6:18 Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.

Flee fornication: pornea, you dull-minded hypocrite! Harlotry. You’re not only offending God and profaning his temple, you’re destroying your own body. 

It’s called self-abuse by the old writers, and the King James writers had a homosexual as one who is an abuser of themselves with mankind. To misuse one’s sexuality is unnatural and self-abuse. It’s not innocent and it’s not neutral. You’re hurting yourself, you’re hurting your purity: which is more precious than your flesh. So you have to stop: it’s unclean and it’s lascivious. It’s taking fire into your bosom, just like the demoniac who would throw himself in fire. 

When Amnon raped Tamar, even though she lost her purity against her will, it still left shame on her. How much worse is it to destroy your own purity willingly? Amnon was a fool in Israel who was ruled by his lust. He thought it was innocent: “it was love” he told himself. So he used deceit and secrecy to take what he lusted after and threw her away when he was done. Lock the door behind her. Close the window, delete the history, and you’re off scott-free. It’s harlotry, it’s non-covenantal, and here’s another thing: it’s not consensual with that person. Perhaps she was consenting then when she did the video, but not now. You don’t know where she’s at now. Maybe she’s someone’s wife or mother now and wants more than anything to have those images disappear. Or maybe she’s dead. Those girls die young: drugs, murder, suicide…they’re in a dark world. Like Amnon you’re being a fool in Israel, stoking the fire of your lusts and burning yourself. It’s hurting you in ways you don’t see. You have to get some distance from it to see how it’s warped your affections and exercised your covetousness. It robs you of your inner peace and your ability to relate with others by driving you within yourself where you find no peace: viciously cyclical. And that’s just the ways it’s hurting you that are discernible to man: God says it’s harmful to you to let your lusts go unchecked, especially without marriage, calling it burning, and we should believe him since he sees our spirits.

It’s whoremongering. God will judge whoremongers. It doesn’t matter that they’re digital whores or that you don’t physically touch them. It would still be whoremongering if you hired a prostitute to come to your house and didn’t touch her, and it’s whoremongering if you just have images of her. The standard is purity of heart and yielding your members to Christ. Don’t make hedges around the law like a blind Pharisee.

And what if that has girl repented and she’s under grace? As we should hope and pray they do. Now you’re taking what God has made holy and using it like a dog. Not only are you defiling your own body, but you’re defiling a holy vessel like a Beltshazzar. There’s no neutrality or innocent fun here. Beltshazzar thought it was all just fun and games too. 

Now the writing is on the wall. Mortify it.

Do you see why you should hate your lust and the pride of life behind it? The depths it’s driven you to? 

You can’t hate it enough. 

Think about it: it dares to demand satisfaction before the presence of God. It says “I deserve” irrespective of anything else, even of what’s holy to God. What do you deserve? Wrath. To nurse lusts is the opposite of a Christian profession and requires repudiation of the truth. 

The very existence of pride means that lust is a spiritual matter. 

You can’t be self seeking. 

Puritan ChatGPT (you laugh, but it’s been very helpful) puts it this way:

“And here is the hard truth: pride makes lust spiritual. It is no longer just about pleasure. It becomes a system of dominion, of imagined superiority, of entitlement cloaked in false liberty. That is why it resists mortification—it loves the illusion of kingship. This is not only the pride of the eye but of the soul: “I have power. I have a right.” But God says, You are not your own.”

And so I’ve let it die, and behold I live!

So I’m purging. I’m going through and purging all the filth and waste and disorder I’ve let surround me. The ruins. The childish ruins of a childless man. He’s done. A dead man. The Spirit of God will not suffer his presence any longer. 

So many things. Things everywhere. Things out of place. Worthless extravagances of a wealthy man who thought to pull all he had through the eye of a needle. I didn’t even walk away sad, I didn’t blush at the thought of keeping my lusts and walking with Christ. I thought: “Well, that rich man just didn’t know how to not be distracted by his lusts! He didn’t know how to sear his conscience like me!” This degenerate man is getting driven out: leaf, stem, fruit, and root.

We’re not just cleaning house. We’re executing a regime. It’s the firing squad for everything in this place I live that does not serve Jesus Christ.

Lord, give me grace. It’s more work than for a single day. Let thy good work which thou hast begun be brought to completion. Turn this place into an altar to thyself which had been made to serve other gods. The god of self: that loathsome childless molech. Quit me like a man and let not my eye pity. Let not my eye spare.

The poison I ingested was a hypercalvinist idea. It was just a little leaven, but I didn’t take good heed to the little leaven. I thought that I could shake my fist at heaven and say, “You want me to obey? Make me. Force me through some sovereign means.” Somehow I did this knowing the holiness and severity of God. 

Lord give me grace. 

The presumption of election does not give the man the right to demand God to give him obedience when he refuses to obey.

We must pray for a new heart. We must pray for God to work in us and for the presence of his Spirit. And, yes, pray for new obedience: gospel obedience. God works in us to will and to do his good pleasure. 

So will and do his good pleasure! 

And do it with fear and trembling because it’s the work of salvation. 

Or as the confession has it:

“The end of holiness is eternal life”

And, 

“Their ability to do good works is not at all of themselves, but wholly from the Spirit of Christ. And that they may be enabled thereunto, beside the graces they have already received, there is required an actual influence of the same Holy Spirit, to work in them to will, and to do, of his good pleasure: yet are they not hereupon to grow negligent, as if they were not bound to perform any duty unless upon a special motion of the Spirit; but they ought to be diligent in stirring up the grace of God that is in them.”

There’s no waiting on special motions of the Spirit. Be diligent. Not negligent. Will and do. If you don’t feel like it, stir it up. Will to do it. 

And anything short of total obedience is LARPing Christianity. 

It’s hypocrisy. 

We don’t get to hold back a portion of the estate, and make like we’ve given all. 

And we must give all and declare we’ve given all at the communion table. 

Ananias and Sapphira are given as a figure so we know we don’t get to hold back a portion of the flesh or anything else that God demands all of: it’s the whole portion. Just like gave his whole Son. Not just some unfeeling portion of Christ that didn’t have to experience the wrath of God and cursed death of the cross. 

God is not in the business of negotiating with sinners: his gospel is a call for total surrender. 

You hold something back and God will see, call you a liar, and you will die. And thank God for his mercy that the life of sin is all he’s requiring and not my eternal soul.

Will his pleasure. Do his pleasure. Get to work with fear and trembling.

So I had to kill and (have been killing) this slothful flesh: this pathetic childish childless manchild that would say to the Most High in his heart, “Well he began a good work in me, so let him finish it!” What demented depravity! Shall the thing formed say to his Maker: “Make me”! Revolting Phariseeism. The hell I’ve been spared of. Let me be in sackcloth. There aren’t enough tears.

This is my confession and full throated repentance for polluting the Lord’s table on many occasions in the face of strong and faithful warnings that did not break through to my hard heart until about two months ago. I wasn’t ignorant: I was suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. But now the whole word of God has been opened to me.

James 1:22-25. How could I miss it? It says do the word or fall into delusion. All the learning and all the study is for nothing if I don’t do it. 

The word of God is not to satisfy our curiosity. It’s a weapon. And it’s the only weapon, the only defense against the kind of enemy I have: an insidious monster inside me that would ruin me and everyone I love. The word must be searched diligently and obeyed so I can hunt that thing down. It’s search and destroy. Kill or get killed.

I credit the love of my family and a faithful sermon on David and Bathsheba as the instruments God used to set things in order before my eyes. Thank you. It opened my eyes.

Far from being a man apart who despised God’s design in marriage and by extension the church itself, I find now that there are children in my life whose souls I adore. They will not see a disgusting serpent-hypocrite but a man in his integrity who loves them and labors in his soul to set an example for them. Not as a childless pathetic manchild. No more: now I fight. 

Thoughts of those children woke me from my slumber: I thought “if I die and have no children, I want them to have everything I have.” But then all around me it was the toys and games of a perpetual adolescent. Toys and games and things and porn. Waste and filth those beautiful children would have to route through to find something of value, like the books of reformers I’d left to gather dust in my closets. I had lots of Dungeons and Dragons books and notes. They’d find among them the worlds of fantasy a filthy dreamer had named after women he couldn’t have. Dungeons, wastelands, and Ruins I made like the ruins I made in my soul. Monuments all to unclean desires and distractions to waste my days, quench the Spirit, silence the conscience. 

No more. 

It rots in trash heaps where every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of Jesus Christ belongs. Willful sin will not be tolerated in my house and not in the temple of my heart.

But I’ve found there’s grace enough. Please forgive me. I was blind. Textbook blindness of mind, hardness of heart, strong delusions, and vile affections. It came out of pride: unmortified pride. But to hell with that pride and all its evil fruits. Let it die in the daylight. 

If this witness can provide any good to anyone else who’s under the burden of similar sins, please share it or any portion of it. Let my shame be Christ’s glory.

I’ve seen a man who’s shown me everything I’ve ever done and I’ve got gospel clarity like I never have. The whole sermon on the mount is open to me. Christ isn’t merely describing what his perfect righteousness entails. He’s binding us to obey the law in the heart, and not just whatever hedges we invent in our minds around the letter of the law so it seems like we’re doing it outwardly.  We need to exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees. We can’t merely have the name of a Christian while preaching covetousness, lusts, murmuring and other abominations in the temple of God within our hearts and keeping it all concealed like God doesn’t see.

So guard your temple. 

All these abominations were not in the gospel I professed or thought I believed. I knew better than that. They were in the gospel that my works proved that I believed. That’s how insidious sin is. And it all began because I didn’t watch. 

I murmured against God in his temple: “Can he set a table for me in the wilderness? Can he provide a wife for me from among the feminists?” 

That lying prophet must be thrown out and cut into pieces. 

Speak to yourself in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, making melody in your heart to the Lord. Meditate on his promises and the mysteries of election, justification, and sanctification. All the ways he’s been good to you and never left or forsaken you. For where you treasure is, there your heart will be.

Faith alone is the instrument whereby we lay hold of Christ and are thus given justification apart from any moral good works, including repentance. But repentance is of such necessity that none may expect pardon without it. And it must include repentance of all sin, not merely a token of outward gross ones, but heart sins as well. And it must include full purpose of heart to continue in it. God sees through half-hearted repentance and can’t be fooled. A repentance that includes a “secret” purpose to return to sin later can’t really be called repentance when the Person we’re repenting to can see our hearts better than we do. 

The man in the flesh can make a counterfeit of the works of the Spirit, but the Spirit would never make a counterfeit of the works of the flesh. 

Thus you know them by their fruits and show your faith by your works. 

There’s a kind of faith that hypocrites and unregenerates vainly use to deceive themselves into thinking they’re in the estate of salvation. And so we must have inward evidence that we earnestly endeavor to walk in his commandments in order to be assured we aren’t vainly deceiving ourselves. And so none may expect pardon without full repentance: and that includes what’s in the heart. And so we must repent. 

And if God in his grace chooses to overlook some of the sins we are blind to on the last day (as he certainly will if anyone is to be saved, since no doubt the thief on the cross had many), it’s God that judges that and not me. I don’t get to pick which sins I get to leave unmortified. It’s for me to repent of all of them, knowing I’m an unprofitable servant. God requires sincerity.

This is the cry of my heart: that we consider all our ways and repent.

If you know me, any wrongs you may have done me, I forgive you. Hold me to that. And I hope you can forgive me for being a terrible witness of Jesus Christ. I was a child that would not drink the milk.

But now to hell with my pride and all its evil fruits, let it die the death in the daylight. If this witness can provide any good to your soul, please let it. Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as before. As I did when I provoked God. Because he’s near you and in your heart: in him we live and move and have our being.

Go to Christ in faith and repent. You’ll be saved. 

I was worse than anyone I know. And he found me, pulled me out of a filthy pit: the filthiest pit you can fall into. I was a hypocrite Judas would blush at. But now that fool is dead, and behold I live. 

Don’t have a form of godliness and deny the power of it. Christ abundantly saves. Faith alone justifies: by it he declares you righteous in his sight. It’s a gift: eternal life.

But there is a form of faith that does not take hold of the righteousness of Christ. 

The only things that are devoted to destruction in the new testament are the body and motion of sin in the Christian and anyone who will not repent before their dying breath. But today is the day of salvation.

Like Johnny Cash sang, “Some are born and some are dying”. Kill that sin before it kills you. Kill the lust kill the pride kill the waste, the sloth, the grumbling against God, and the desires for things contrary to his will. Everything in you that made ruins of your life and dared to challenge God and his holiness. Kill them all: you don’t need them. A man dead to them finds life enough. 

Keep them dead. 

Kill them again when they come to challenge your place in your Lord. 

Keep them dead: repent with full purpose of continuance therein because anything less is not of the right sort. 

God sees.

You don’t occasionally let your guard down and let monsters into the temple of your mind. You hunt them down and strike them dead and bring them to an open shame because they brought Christ to an open shame. And at the last day, say, “Lord I am your unprofitable servant. I did only what was my duty and failed miserably.” And you will be received into everlasting habitations. Because it’s grace. 

I’ve found something glorious here. Don’t miss it. I almost did. I came so close to missing it.

Share this. Share it with a pastor so he knows his labor isn’t in vain. Or with someone who needs the gospel. It’s such a treasure: it’s the treasure I’ve sought all my life. Share it with someone who would mock it. 

And hold me to it. 

Don’t let that repulsive old man come down from the cross and drag me to hell. I’d have no rest day nor night for eternity to sin against the light I’ve been given. I despised government and the church because I despised God’s design in marriage, and high-handedly said “It is good that I should be alone”. So help me so I can be delivered from this body of death. 

And search the scriptures. See if these things are so. Come and see! Come see a Man who told me everything I ever did! Could it be the Christ?! 

Come and see! 

You can come to our church and see. He’s walking among the lampstands there as well as in other places. Christians are not some special caste that get some pass to sin: thank God I see that now. 

So wherever you’re at you can come and see and there’s no one so far gone that Christ would refuse you. 

But come and see while it’s still today.