A Man’s War for Sexual Purity, Part I

The UNIT is a television show about a group of army special operations soldiers. Their identities are hidden or falsified so their cover will not be blown. They perform military missions that no one else is trained to do or wants to know about. Their orders remain top secret and hidden, often even from the highest of ranking officials. Their work is rarely known, seen, or even acknowledged by others. But what they accomplish never holds less than a high significance for the safety and security of the country. Yes, it is just a television show, but it illustrates much about how the war for sexual purity in a man’s life must be engaged.

Sexual purity in a man’s life never comes without a battle. This war will be one of the toughest battles he will ever face. The enemy is relentless in pursuing and punishing him if he remains passive. Many men try to avoid the war while others simply try to ignore it. But the enemy will not retreat. The battles that have to be fought are often intense and may or may not be known to most people. But until a man engages the enemy and wages war to kill it, he will find no rest and no peace. An aggressive strategy is the only hope for a man to experience victory over sexual temptation and sin. The war rages and awaits every man to enter the battle. It will not be easy, but the gospel gives hope and promise of victory. The war for sexual purity must be strategically fought on three battlefields: the heart, the mind, and the body.

The heart is the first battlefield in the war against sexual immorality because it is the core where every major life component (mind, will, emotions, desires, etc.) converges to shape the defining motivations of life. This is the most intense ground for battle. Proverbs 4:23 teaches that we are to guard the heart above all else because it is the source of life. This is no small command. A Christ-follower must be vigilant in defense of their heart. This fight is for the health and well-being of their very life. That which controls our heart controls all of life. Until God’s grace so consumes the heart that sexual immorality finds no room for existence, a man will not only struggle with defeat and condemnation in this area but will experience little victory in mind and body.

Paul challenges the Christians in Thessalonica to continue grow in the way they were to walk in life in order to please God. The first mention Paul gives in sanctification is abstaining from sexual immorality in contrast to how people in the world who do not know God were living. God has not called Christians to impurity, but in holiness. Men who live for Jesus must be consumed with a vision of sexual purity for life. This call must first be rendered complete in the heart of a man in order to experience victory over sexual sin and condemnation. The only way this will happen is to believe, as Paul says in Romamns 6:11, I am “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” This is surely no passive reality but a truth to be firmly established within the heart by faith. A man must engage the battle for his heart with this truth. Sin does not go away or improve when left alone. It must be mortified. If a man is slack or passive in engaging the battle for his heart, sin will take root, grow, and consume him. When a man reckons in his heart that he has been crucified with Christ, that he no longer lives, but Christ lives in him (Gal. 2:20), then he will experience freedom from sin and will offer his body to God as an instrument of righteousness (Rom. 6:13).

Have you received God’s work in Jesus Christ on the cross for your life by faith? Are you laboring to lessen the condemnation of sexual sin, trying to overcome the urges and temptations by sheer force of your will alone? Is your heart full of desires that compel you to think and act in ways that you know are contrary to God’s will? Confess these desires to Jesus. Repent and ask him to forgive you. Read Romans 6:1-14. Ask God to establish the truth of his Word within your heart. Thank him that he is faithful to forgive and to cleanse (1 John 1:9). Share your prayer with a brother in Christ who can encourage you and pray for you. Do not forget. Take time to meditate on Romans 6:11 for the next several days. Let Holy Spirit lead you.