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One Flesh: What does it Mean?
You might expect after reading the previous chapter that I will now call for a return to a culture similar to Schmiel and Abby's. I will not. The world has changed, and we will never return to Schmiel and Abby's time (and would we want to?). I, or course, would like to see modern culture become friendlier to godly sexuality, but the only way I know of to bring that about is to call Christians to God's best. If we find His grace for our sexuality, we will be equipped to influence those around us.
How can we experience God's best at a time when we are surrounded by so much immorality? How do we flee when billboards, phones, TVs, computers, and societies broadcast it at us in a continual stream? What can we do when even the people we love – our husbands, wives, sons, and daughters – may be caught in its trap?
Obviously, we need to find a way to walk in purity in the middle of a culture of impurity. Fortunately, the word of God makes it clear that this is not only possible, it is a natural result of our faith. In fact, when Christianity entered the Roman world of the first century, it faced similar (and in some ways worse) immorality to what we see today.[10] Paul wrote to the Christians of his day:
I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, …since then you would need to go out of the world. (emphasis added)
Paul expected Christians to be around sexually immoral people, even though he knew that this would bring temptations. He also wrote:
This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, … who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. (emphasis added)
Roman culture included prostitution, sexual slavery, homosexuality, sex with young teenagers, and other forms of perversion. The Christian concept of sex being reserved for a man and woman in marriage was not the norm. And not only did the early Christians not totally remove themselves from those who were lewd around them, many of them also carried emotion-charged memories of having participated in their own uncleanness with greediness. Paul said they were to no longer walk in that way, which implies that they once did.
Yet the Spirit of God enabled them to not only stand firm against the temptations they faced, but also to become agents of change in their world. Over a period of centuries, Christianity transformed the sexual views of many nations that came from the Roman empire. Jesus said the kingdom of God would be like leaven, slowly spreading and changing people (Luke 13:20-21), and it succeeded in doing that!
Paul knew that this could happen. When he described the approach we should take to sexual sin, he said that our actions are to be an invitation for those around us to rise from spiritual death:
But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, …But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light. Therefore He says: "Awake, you who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light." (emphasis added)
In the Introduction to this book, I said that when Christians avoid even godly discussions of sexual sin, they remind me of people trying to avoid a disease.[11] They tend to obey Paul's command to flee sexual immorality (1 Corinthians 6:18) by physically removing themselves from contact with it. This is totally appropriate when the temptations come in the form of movies, internet sites, or people trying to directly tempt us, but when it also includes avoiding people who struggle with sexual issues, it makes it tough for us to make manifest by the light God's plan to help them.
In view of the increased sexual immorality in western society, and especially in view of the fact that sexual immorality has spread to large numbers of Christians, I believe we should consider a different approach. Rather than simply avoiding the disease, more of us should become doctors, nurses, and helpers for those who are falling prey to it. But before we can do that, we need a vaccination to protect us. We don't want to naively assume that we can be around those caught in this sort of sin without being pulled into it. We must have God's answers.
What does this vaccination look like? I can think of no better prescription than 2 Peter 1:5-8:
But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound (are increasing – NASB), you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This scripture tells us that if we have the qualities listed above (faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love), and these qualities increase until they abound in us, we will be described by the phrase, "you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." That sounds like a pretty good vaccination to me, one that not only protects the healthy but also heals the sick. These traits will give us the inner strength of the Spirit that is the best sort of protection against ungodly infections of every type. We won't be perfect, but our spiritual immune system will improve to the point where character traits like love, self-control, and patience will enable us to resist sexual sin. We will still need to physically flee some situations, but in others we will have the ability to be around those who carry sickness without succumbing to it.
… giving all diligence, add to your faith… (emphasis added)
The starting point of 2 Peter 1:5-8 is faith, and a healthy faith is based in the power of God:
And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (emphasis added)
When Paul visited Corinth, he didn't try to appear impressive. He had just come from Athens (Acts 17:16-18:1), a city that was known for its impressiveness. It was famous for producing world-influencing philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and in Paul's day, it was still a center of Greek thought (Acts 17:18, 21).
Paul spoke at the Areopagus (Acts 17:22), which was a part of the city that had a close view of the Acropolis, a large set of buildings that towered over the city. Even today, almost two thousand years later, the Acropolis is a remarkable sight that speaks of the mighty accomplishments of the ancient Greeks. I visited Athens several years ago, and the Acropolis just about took my breath away. It sits on a large hill and rock structure that rises above the city. It contains great pillars that in Paul's day were part of a temple called the Parthenon, a stunning visual wonder and architectural accomplishment. I could picture its ancient grandeur as it declared the glory of the intellect and culture of the first-century Greeks.
Yet Paul's experience at Athens was so distasteful that when he left it for Corinth, he determined to be the opposite of Athens. While Athens was about human achievement and gifting, Paul chose to appear humanly "unachieving" and ungifted. He came in weakness and with trembling.
Paul explained his reason for doing this in the first two chapters of 1 Corinthians. He stated that God has decided to reveal Himself to the world in a way that does not originate with the revered thoughts of any culture (1 Corinthians 1:18-21). Instead, He reveals Himself through a message that looks like foolishness, and yet it is wiser and more powerful than anything we could come up with on our own: "the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men" (1 Corinthians 1:25).
Human cultures, both ancient and modern, are not up to the task of delivering us from the plague of sin. We need thoughts, understanding, and enablement that don't have their origin in mankind; they can only come through a revelation of God's Spirit:
But as it is written: "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him." But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit…
God wants our faith to rest in His unveiling of truth to our hearts through his revealed word (which has been recorded in the Bible). Without the Holy Spirit stirring the words of the Bible in our hearts, we cannot see or hear what we need. It never enters our hearts. It only comes to us as we humble ourselves before the Living God and cry out for Him to give us supernatural wisdom and power. We need to live in a way that is impossible for us on our own, a way that is revealed through Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
This is especially important to understand when dealing with sexual sin. The best way to fight something that is as strong as death is with something that is stronger than death. Often, we compare the strength of our misled sexual desires to our own resources – our willpower, the sometimes helpful but limited counsel of psychology, various therapies…. We conclude that these cannot stand up to what we feel. It has entered our bodies and become a part of us in the unique way that only sexual sin can. We feel helpless before it.
Not surprisingly, western culture has looked at broken sexuality and increasingly decided that the best we can do is to accept abnormalities (as long as they are not too dangerous for us or others). The hope is that if we can practice what feels normal for each of us in the healthiest way possible (with a condom and with moderation), we will be happy.
Our hearts are blinded because we don't know the power of God. Without spiritual reality to support truth, we feel justified in embracing lies. We believe our only option is to call evil good and learn to live with it.
God has revealed Himself in the Bible. He helps us to see in its pages who Jesus really is, what He has done, and why we can trust Him. We gain more than just intellectual knowledge; the Holy Spirit speaks through it to birth within us a conviction that is empowered by God Himself. We are touched by spiritual reality, and this draws us into believing.
With sexual sins, that reality tells us that even if we and a thousand others have failed to walk in purity, Jesus will "work and will" in us in a way that can bring true purity (Philippians 2:13). This supernatural anticipation is especially important for sexual sinners, because so many have tried to change and failed so many times. Many have lost hope for anything better. Though their discouragement is understandable, the word of God calls for us to believe that He is greater than our experience:
We are acceptable to Him because of what He has done on the cross, not because of our actions (Hebrews 10:19, 22, 4:15-16).
We can keep His commandments because we are a new creation in Him, not because of our strengths or weaknesses (2 Corinthians 5:17).
When He was crucified, we were crucified. When He was raised from the dead, we were raised from the dead. Because of this, we no longer need to submit to sin (Romans 6:5-11).
He lives inside of us (Colossians 1:27), and who could be better at handling whatever issues we face than He is?
This sort of Bible-based conviction is what faith is about. Nevertheless, it is important to be realistic about how difficult it can be for a human being to embrace it. When our experience speaks a different message, this can be extremely confusing. Here are words I wrote to describe my feelings after more than twenty-five years of sincerely trying to walk in faith. I had successfully controlled my sexual actions for the past eighteen of those years. Yet in spite of that, my emotions continued to act in ways that defied what I believed I should feel:
I had given my life to Jesus over twenty-five years earlier and had fought diligently to follow Him, but the long battle had worn me down. I wasn't sure how I was going to make it through another twenty-five years.
It felt as if I was dying on the inside – turning into an obedience automaton. I served God with my mind and body, but my personhood was being lost in the process. There was ever decreasing joy and ever increasing self-discipline, wavering hope as I marched through a life of duty.
…
My discontented and rebellious emotions desperately wanted to claw their way into the open. They felt like a suppressed evil monster. I was fighting with everything I could to keep them from bursting onto the scene and hurting everyone around me. I kept them under lock and key, but they were becoming relentless …building pressure …threatening to break out like an alien parasite from a horror movie. The more I used sound decisions to cap them the more they churned and weakened my defenses. If I didn't find answers soon, they were either going to escape and do their damage, or I might have an emotional breakdown.
…
At the heart of it all was my sexuality. Though I hadn't sinned in my sexual actions for over eighteen years, desires and temptations continued to plague me regularly. I put guards on my eyes, mind, and body, but my obedience felt like emotional abuse. It was like I had to hate a part of me in order to love everyone else. As I beat back the erotic monster trying to escape from the cage I had built, I felt like the battle was shutting me down and tearing me apart.[12]
The struggle with desires that are strong as death can be beyond anything we imagined we could endure. It caused me to question the foundations of life, even my faith in God. If I had been persuaded by my emotions, I would have given up on the hope of continuing to walk in sexual purity. Fortunately, my faith wasn't based on experience, psychology, or even on an intellectual knowledge of the Bible; it was based in the word and power of God. I wasn't sure why obeying Him hadn't worked as well as I thought it should, but I knew He was involved in my life. Though I was angry and somewhat depressed that this hadn't translated into emotional freedom, I chose to continue to walk with Him.
In time, His power did transform my emotions. The Holy Spirit showed me the mistakes I had made (many of which were based on using a first line of defense approach to try to deal with sins that had already entered me). I stepped out in faith, He met me there, and I found the freedom I sought.
Faith is a second line of defense. When we can't find a way to avoid sexual temptation, we can believe that God will powerfully enable us to overcome it. Faith sees past the way things are to the way God will make them. (And in terms of importance, it is actually our first line of defense. It is foundational for everything else.)
…giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue… (emphasis added)
The word translated virtue in the above scripture is the Greek word aretee, which can also be translated as "manliness, valor, or excellence."[13] Putting this into language we use more commonly today, we would use words like courage, integrity, and responsibility. For example, we show valor by "being man enough" (courage, integrity) to be honest about what the word of God says. When it describes our sinfulness in an unflattering way, we face the fact that we need to respond to that based on truth. We take responsibility for our lives and decide to do whatever is required to walk with Jesus. In a sense, diligence, which is also mentioned in the verse above, is an expression of virtue. We live out the sincerity of our faith by diligently working to do whatever is necessary to add to our lives the qualities listed in 2 Peter 1:5-8.
For sex addicts, virtue is the opposite of denial. Rather than hiding our eyes from what is happening, we admit that our personalities have been shaped around activities that could destroy or disgrace us, our families, and others. We determine to do what we need to in order to deal with our real problems and to overcome them. We might not know what that is or how to do it, but virtue causes us to humbly and diligently seek to find out.
This takes courage and determination for all involved, which we may lack when we start, but we believe (faith) that God will give us what we lack. We commit to discover how to walk step by step into the excellence of His standard rather than to fall back to a standard that is compromised by our weaknesses.
Unfortunately, this can be extremely difficult. It is tough to face the level of wickedness that sexual sin may have incubated in our heart, especially when it feels like it is just who we are. We may fall into a number of sometimes contradictory reactions and coping mechanisms: condemnation, shame, rejection, fear, despair, self-justification, anger, retaliation, …. In the face of these, virtue chooses to do what it can to find God's way through the storm. It endures the war, reaching out to others for help when it needs to and refusing to sacrifice either truth or mercy – even though holding onto both may feel beyond our abilities. It trusts the Holy Spirit to teach us how to be brutally honest with ourselves without condemning ourselves.
Virtue is a third line of defense. It is a commitment that refuses to back down from the battle that has been placed in our hands. It enables us to make progress when faced with danger and discouragement, because we have already decided to pay whatever price is necessary to walk in God's plan.
Virtue takes the Bible and makes it "the words that God has spoken to me." It leads to brokenness. We see our failures and weaknesses and face up to the fact that we are unable to save ourselves. It brings us, sometimes on our knees, to a Savior who will meet us in our desperate condition, sustain us, and lead us out. Virtue continually turns to the word of God until it becomes living and powerful in us:
For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
Virtue doesn't rest until we experience a spiritual reality that churns in our psyche, powerfully discerning our inner workings and showing us God's way to live. We discover truths we never could have seen on our own. We find possibilities we were blinded to. Over time, this spiritual reality becomes stronger than death. It grows to be a fire that takes in and transforms sexual desire. It redirects and fulfills unquenchable longings. It offers a prize for which we are willing to surrender even sexual pleasures that pull us to surrender everything else.
But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ
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