Living In The Light: Money, Sex And PowerSample

Sex

Disordered sexuality stems from a disordered relationship with God—specifically, a relationship in which the glories of creation are preferred to the glory of God. This exchange—perhaps most vividly portrayed in same-sex relations—applies to all our sexual sins: adultery—exchanging a spouse for an illicit partner; fornication—exchanging God’s call to chastity in singleness for unmarried sex; lust—exchanging purity for pornography.

All of them—all of our sexual sinning—is rooted in this: we don’t treasure the glory of God as supremely desirable over all things. We let the darkness of the lie persuade us that one illicit pleasure or another is more to be desired than God. In the darkness, we fondle the smooth ebony brooch hanging around our neck—not knowing that in the light we would see it is a cockroach. That’s what it means to live in the dark, where God is less to be desired than sexual pleasure.

Sexual sin grows in the soil of blindness, darkness, and ignorance about the all-satisfying greatness and beauty of God. That’s why Peter said to the churches, “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance” (1 Peter 1 v 14).

He is saying, Once you were ignorant of God’s worth and beauty and greatness and sweetness. But now you have been “born again” (v 3, 23), “if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good” (2 v 3). Yes, and once you “taste” of God, the “former ignorance” of the taste of sin no longer controls your passions. The lie of sinful sexual desires is exposed.

In summary, then, the danger of sex is that because our hearts are naturally disordered vertically and God is not our supreme desire, therefore our sexual desires are disordered horizontally and we prefer illicit pleasures to godly ones. We even prefer them over God himself. But the apex of the glory of the God of glory is his grace. He has made a way for sexual sins to be forgiven and for defiled lives to be made pure.

• Think about the ways in which you are tempted toward sexual sin. How is this actually rooted in an exchange of the glory of God for a created thing?
• What would it look like to enjoy your sexuality as a good gift, while holding God as your supreme treasure?