August 10
“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)
In this discussion, I’d like to separate out and talk about this issue in the three areas it primarily affects: Body, Mind, and Heart (or Soul?). Perhaps I am oversimplifying this subject a little too much, but it seems to me that when Paul speaks of ‘immorality,’ he is primarily talking about physical acts that involve our bodies. But we also know from Jesus that if a man lusts for a woman, he is committing adultery with her already in his heart, and since we know that adultery is immorality, it follows that the heart as well as the body can commit immorality.
We can be guilty of immoral acts of the body – physical acts of adultery, fornication, homosexuality, etc., etc., etc., basically any ungodly, unnatural physical act that we perform with our bodies; immoral thoughts of the mind – mental sins such as viewing ‘pornography’ or constructing evil fantasies in our minds, or making lewd, suggestive, or immoral comments to others, or making plans to commit immorality of any kind; and immoral emotions of the heart – lusting and harboring strong desires for people other than our spouses in our hearts. No doubt we could find the flaws in this way of thinking about the issue, but for the sake of discussion, let’s go with this for now.
This way of thinking about the problem may help because some people may mistakenly think that because they don’t have any feelings for a person, it is okay to have sex with them! (I recently read about people having sex with people whose names they don’t even know and who have no intentions of ever seeing again! Like having sex with a prostitute!) Just because our emotions are not involved doesn’t mean the act is not heinous sin in God’s eyes. All immoral sins of the body are evil in God’s sight.
Others may think that pornography is not wrong because “they are not hurting anyone” and have no intentions of acting out anything physically that they are absorbing mentally. But lusting after women or men and delighting in their evil deeds may in God’s sight be as bad or nearly as bad as actually doing the act. And the way that it pollutes the mind and sets the mind on the flesh and against the Spirit is a great sin against God. Viewing pornography, having sexual fantasies, and making any kinds of plans to do evil or put ourselves in a position to do evil, whether or not we actually carry it out, is sin in my opinion. All immoral sins of the mind are evil in God’s sight.
And finally, regarding sins of the heart, we may think that our quiet lusts that we harbor in our hearts and our secret desires for others, or the way we long to be married to someone other than who we are married to is not hurting anyone because we would never say or do anything to act on those longings. Or we may have developed habits of looking or staring or secretly desiring people we see or know in the workplace, as we go about our daily lives, or even at church, a habit so to speak of “checking them out” that is almost subconscious, and we may not think that these sins of lust are that big of a deal and that everyone does those kinds of things. But these lusts and other immoral longings of the heart are adultery, as Jesus informs us, and we need to confront these sins in our hearts as well. All immoral sins of the heart are evil in God’s sight.
So in the next few days we will discuss each of these categories of sins in turn. Immorality of the body, mind, and heart all need to be dealt with if we are to gain and maintain the victory over these degrading and devastating sins of lust.