Sexual Healing

Q: We are not to take God's grace as an occasion to sin as Christians....I don't even want to sin once for what He did for me, but isn't anytime we go ahead and sin knowing we are giving in using His grace as an occasion to sin no matter how repentant we may be afterwards? Like tonight, I am really down and feel like I am going to sin on the computer....I am struggling not to as evidenced by being on your site and asking questions, but I still feel like I am going to...am I using His grace as a means to sin? By the way, I despise this sin of looking at sexual fetishes and perversions. 

A: Thank you for your question. As a single man myself, I understand the struggle you are going through and commend you for the strength you are displaying by trying to find help and answers. My prayer is that God can use what I am about to say to bring you some comfort and healing. Let me begin by saying that you are not guilty of using God's grace as a license to sin. The mere fact that you admit you do not want to sin and that you are seeking help for the sin you are trapped in, is proof that you are not abusing the grace of God. If there is one thing that I want you to take away from our interaction is this: God is not counting your sins against you. 2 Corinthians 5:19 clearly states "that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them." All your sins were taken away for eternity when Jesus died on the cross. While some may take this as a license to sin, the reason God did this was so that you can approach Him in confidence in order to get to know Him and begin to have a relationship with Him. And let me go one step further by saying that the real license to sin is found in teachings that say that all we have to do is answer an altar call, go into a confession booth, keep short accounts, repeat the so-called "Lord's Prayer," pray to dead saints to intercede on our behalf and so on. It is these practices that, in all honesty, are not taking sin seriously.

How many times have you tried to repent of your sins only to fall back into them? When you do this, what did you feel like? Let me guess, you felt or were made to feel that God was ashamed of you. Did you feel that God was sitting up in Heaven afraid to talk about you because you were an embarrassment? If you have ever felt that way, I am here to say that is not true. Hebrews 2:11 states, "Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers." Jesus is not ashamed to call you His brother because His sacrifice on the cross took away your sins and His indwelling life has made you alive to God. When God looks at you He is proud to call you His beloved son. Do not believe for one instant the lies that tell you otherwise. Too often Christians are taught that God holds their sins against them. Therefore, we deceive ourselves into believing that God is not only ashamed of us, but that our sins separate us from Him, that He will hide His face from us or that He turns His back on us until we repent or perform some sacrifice like those previously mentioned. However, the Bible tells a different story.

Sin is so bad that it deserves the death of God! Yes, God had to die for our sins. We not only do not have a life to give as payment for our sins, God would not even accept it as sufficient. That is why He died in our place out of His love for us. Hebrews 10:17-18 says, "Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more. And where these have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sin." God no longer remembers our sins and there is no sacrifice remaining for our sins. Therefore, all the sacrifices we engage in to try and get forgiveness and all the promises we make that we will get better next time are worthless. You do not need to ask God to forgive sins He has already forgiven. It is not an act of faith to continue to do so. That brings us to an even more important question: If God is not counting our sins against us, what do we do when we sin? First of all, we weren't really doing anything beforehand when we sinned. Secondly, what you do is live in thankfulness. Instead of apologizing to God, performing a sacrifice He will not accept and then dedicating yourself to ever-changing rules and techniques to try and avoid sin, you simply say, "Thank you." Thank you because you realize that your sins deserve death and that Jesus took the penalty you deserve. Then you, as Hebrews 4:16 states, "approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." Your focus shifts from you and your behavior to His grace and mercy. You go from trying to stop sinning to discovering why you weren't trusting God when you sinned.

God loves you perfectly. When He sees you He sees the sinless perfection of Jesus Christ. We all need to look at ourselves from God's perspective. In 1 Corinthians 6, the topic of sexual immorality is addressed. After giving a description of the sins that are practiced by unbelievers, the scripture then defines what we are as Christians. In 1 Corinthians 6:11, it says, "And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." In God's eyes, what are you now through faith in Jesus Christ? You are washed; cleansed of all your sin. You are sanctified; holy and blameless in the eyes of God. You are justified; you have the righteousness of Jesus Christ. That is your identity. John 1:12 says, "Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God." You are a child of God because of your faith in Jesus Christ. When God looks at you He does not refer to you as that guy who cannot overcome his sexual sin. He says there goes my child who I want to help overcome that which I have taken away. We all know that sin is wrong and it is never acceptable. But, we are never told how to overcome the sin in our lives. There is only one way to begin to see a decrease in the sin in your life. That is to get your eyes off of it and on to Jesus.

Rather than looking at your sin and saying it's wrong, I need to try and stop, ask yourself why am I committing this sin? There could be many reasons you are engaging in the sin; you are seeking relief from a stressful life, you are tired of the burdens placed on you by work or church or fill in the blank. Regardless, the one thing that I believe will help you begin to see your reliance on that sin diminish is to know who you are in Christ. I have already tried to establish the fact that you are a forgiven, holy and righteous, child of the living God. But, you are also unconditionally loved (Romans 8:38-39) and totally accepted by God (Romans 15:7). How many sins do we commit in an effort to be loved or accepted by others? Yet, we only discover that the love and acceptance of others is conditional, can only be received through the commission of sin in many instances and it does not meet the deepest desires of our heart. Remember, God made you to have the needs and desires you have. However, He made you in such a way that only He can fulfill those needs through His indwelling life. You have the life of God, in the Person of the Holy Spirit, indwelling you for eternity. There is no sin that can cause His life to leave. I encourage you to do a study on your identity in Christ in order to see for yourself how God sees you. Trust Him to guide you into a deeper knowledge of who He is, how much He loves you and who you are in Him. I know from my own experience that as you encounter more of His love, the pull of those sins will begin to go away. It is the difference between trying to stop sinning and learning to trust and depend on your God and His love for you.

May God continue to reveal to you all that you have already been given through faith in Jesus Christ. Grace and Peace.