Archives For purity

How do I make permanent change?

samuel kee —  October 3, 2012 — 1 Comment

Here’s a question that someone wrote to me, followed by my response:

“How do I restore my purity?  I know that you’re supposed to pray for God to restore it, but that doesn’t seem to be a permanent solution.  It’ll keep me pure for a couple of weeks, but I slip back into impurity.  I don’t want to keep hurting people.  How do I make a permanent change?”  

I love, feel, and understand your question.  It seems that you’re really struggling to move forward, but you keep getting knocked backward.  And, sometimes, it feels like we’re taking one step forward and two steps backward, as the saying goes.  You want your purity to be restored and you know that you can’t restore it yourself.  You’re on the right track, as that’s essential for us to understand.  There is nothing that we can do to restore our own purity.  You also say that you’re praying to God and depending on God to restore your purity.  Again, bravo.  Nonetheless, this doesn’t seem to be working, nor does it seem to be a permanent solution.  You’ll be pure for a little while, but then you’ll slip back into impurity.  Do you know why?  It’s not a permanent solution!  You’re exactly right!

God never meant us to set our hopes on being pure as a way to achieve purity.  Purity is not our goal—you need to hear that.  Let me ask you this, If you only climb to the third rung on a ladder, how far up will you go?  That’s right, to the third rung!  If you only set your hopes on the third rung, you’ll only get that high.  You’ll never make it to the top of the ladder, past the third rung.  You’ve got a misguided goal, which is keeping you down.

You need to learn what true repentance is; you also need to repent of your false repentance.  To repent is to turn away from the direction you were headed, toward God.  To repent is to pursue God, turning away from all other pursuits.  It doesn’t mean that you have no other goals in life, but that God is your ultimate pursuit, the main objective in your life, the hill you’re willing to die on.  You want God so badly, that, when push comes to shove, you’ll drop other good goals in order to have him.  You won’t settle until you have him.

When it comes to regaining our purity, regaining our purity must not be our goal.  Purity is like the third rung on the ladder.  “But,” you say, “I want to repent of my sin and regain my purity!  What’s wrong with that?”  Just listen to what you’re saying: you’re saying that purity is your goal.  You’re repenting of sin and turning toward purity.  You’ve set your eyes on only the third rung.  True repentance is not turning from sin and turning toward purity; true repentance is turning from sin and turning toward God.  God is the goal, not purity.  God is the top rung of the ladder, where our eyes should be focused.

This is a lesson that we all must learn.  So much of the time, I want a clear conscience more than I want God.  I want to be pure more than I want God.  I act like the bratty kid who only wants his father’s gifts, but he doesn’t really want his father.  So what happens after a couple of weeks?  He wants more gifts!  Because the kid’s heart is set only on the gifts, he is never satisfied.  If only he set his heart on his father, then he would be free from this lethal cycle.

Setting your eyes only on the gift of purity is not a permanent solution.  If you or I are doing that, we need to repent of our dysfunctional repentance.  Listen to what Thomas Boston wrote in the early 1700’s:

Men may have a repentance for their sin, gnawing their consciences, and tormenting their hearts, which they will carry on in hell through eternity: being only the first movings of the worm in the soul that never dies: as Judas’s repentance seems to have been, Simon Magnus’s and Pharaoh’s.  They may bitterly rue their sin, as Esau (Gen. 27:34), who never truly repent of it (Heb. 12:17); and the stony heart may be broken in a thousand pieces, while yet every piece remains a stone.  They may have superficial sorrow for sin, and a light joy succeeding it, whose hearts were never pierced to the quick; and therefore the joy goes, as the effects of a send of rain on the parched ground (Matt. 13:20-21).  But true repentance is a repentance never repented of, kindly working in the soul (italics mine).

Do you see what he is saying?  When we fall into sin, we’ll no doubt experience great emotional pain.  We will feel awful about ourselves and what we did.  We’ll feel dirty.  In an effort to get rid of the guilt that is “gnawing our consciences,” we’ll repent.  But, we’ll only repent to the third rung of the ladder, just enough to get rid of our sorrow.  Just enough to get us out of the mud beneath the ladder.  So our hearts will be broken for our sins, even “broken in a thousand pieces” as Boston says.  But “every piece remains a stone.”  We still have hard hearts because we never climbed high enough on the ladder to be close to God so that he could melt them.

In other words, we only wanted the gift of joy, the gift of purity, the gift of the removal of guilt.  We never actually wanted God, we never actually turned to God, we never actually made God the goal of our repentance.  After reaching the third rung, gathering all of the goodies in our hands like a greedy boy, we jumped off the ladder, back into the mud.  There we stand at the bottom of the ladder, getting dirty, knowing we only have to climb so high to feel good again.  This is no permanent solution.

Or as Boston said, “true repentance is a repentance never repented of.”  The process of repentance is not our goal, neither is purity.  Our goal is not to go part way up and down the ladder, over and over, but to fight for the top.  We set our shoulder to the gale and march into the storm of sin, until we make it home to God.  God is our goal, our aim, our pursuit, our destiny.  We need to stop setting our sites on just joy or just the feeling of forgiveness.  As C. S. Lewis wrote in The Joyful Christian, “Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth ‘thrown in’: aim at Earth and you will get neither.”  We could say, “Aim at God and you will get purity ‘thrown in’: aim at purity and you will get neither.”

How do we make a permanent change?  Beg God for him to give you more of him; ask God to help you pursue him.  Soak yourself in God’s word and prayer, growing in your knowledge of the gospel, until you can feel it in every part of your being.  Understand that God is pursuing you, chasing you, cherishing you.  Allow his grace to melt your heart.  Our goal must neither be perfection nor purity, but God.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deut. 6:4).

© Samuel Kee, 2012

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Rethink Our Culture’s View of Sex

samuel kee —  August 24, 2012 — Leave a comment
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How can God forgive me for the sexual sins I have done when I clearly knew that they were wrong?

samuel kee —  June 5, 2012 — Leave a comment

ImageThis is post is to answer a question that someone asked me recently.  Let’s look at an important Bible text to start our conversation about something called “deliberate sins.”

“For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.  Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.  How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?  For we know him who said, ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay.’ And again, ‘The Lord will judge his people.’  It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Hebrews 10:26-30).

To begin, let me encourage you first to read my last post about how to get pure from sexual sins.  You have to start with that one before moving on to this one.  With that said, I want the fear of the Hebrews 10:26-30 passage to grab you by the collar, not in order to condemn you, but in order to wake you up.  Grace is a force to be reckoned with.

If you don’t want to fall into the hands of grace, then you’ll fall into the hands of judgment.  The question behind this terrifying passage is, “Which set of hands will you rebel against?”  Will you rebel against the hands of grace or against the hands of judgment?

First, we have to see that Scripture distinguishes between deliberate sins and sins done in ignorance.  Deliberate sins are called “sins with a high hand.”  Listen to this passage from Number 15:

“If one person sins unintentionally, he shall offer a female goat a year old for a sin offering.  And the priest shall make atonement before the Lord for the person who makes a mistake, when he sins unintentionally, to make atonement for him, and he shall be forgiven.  You shall have one law for him who does anything unintentionally…But the person who does anything with a high hand, whether he is native or a sojourner, reviles the Lord, and that person shall be cut off from among his people.  Because he has despised the word of the Lord and has broken his commandment, that person shall be utterly cut off; his iniquity shall be on him.”  (Numbers 15:27-31).

Sins done with a high hand are deliberate.  They are done with a clear mind and solid step.  The person is blatantly choosing a lifestyle that goes against God.  It’s a conscious choice and a deliberate pathway.  The person learns what God wants and then purposefully goes the other direction, saying all along, “I’m going to do this my way.”  They raise their fist at God and shake it in his face; they want no part of the grace he offers.  As the Numbers 15 passage concludes, “his iniquity shall be on him.”  This means that he is not willing to give a sacrifice for his sins.  He does not want his iniquity to go on the head of another life; therefore, God “rewards” him with what he wants.

Deliberate sins are a radical rebellion against God.  When God comes to you and says, “I have provided a way for you to escape the punishment due to you for your sins through Jesus Christ” you have a choice to make.  Either you take him up on his offer or reject him.  If you reject him, then there’s no other way to pay for your sins.  Either your punishment lands on Christ or it lands on you.  The one who sins deliberately rejects Christ’s offer of unconditional forgiveness.

This is much different than those who sin unintentionally.  Unintentional sin is still sin, but it’s not an all-out rejection of Christ’s offer.  The one who sins unintentionally has not “spurned the Son of God” or “profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified” or “outraged the Spirit of grace” (Hebrews 10:29).  Rather, these are all still very precious to him.  He still loves the Son of God, knows that he still needs the blood of Christ, and still depends on God’s grace.

Does that describe you?  Do you still love the Son of God, know that you need his blood to cover you, and depend on his grace?  Do you admit that you’re lost without him?  Do you confess your dependence on him?  Precisely because you cannot live without sinning, is the reason you need him.

You don’t intend to sin, but you just can’t help it.  As our church fathers said, “it’s not possible for us not to sin.”  Or, as 1 John 1:10 says, “If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”  God expects us to sin; but he also expects us to accept his solution for our sins.

The one who sins with a high hand rejects his offer.  The one who sins unintentionally still depends on his offer.

Sexual sins are complicated.  They feed off of complex factors in our lives that drive us to them.  There’s the obvious physical component to them.  We all have sexual urges and desires that our sin nature capitalizes on.  Our sin nature pushes us to act in ways that are damaging to us.  Also, there’s an emotional component to sexual sins.  Sometimes we fall into sexual sins out of a need to feel loved or accepted by another.  A girl may allow her emotional need to be loved, to be guided by a boy’s physical need to be stimulated.  Both guys and girls push each other into doing things that they really don’t want to do, in order to meet needs that only God can fulfill.  They don’t do it intentionally, with a high hand.  Rather, they do it out of weakness, allowing other forces to take control.

There’s a difference between sins done out of weakness and sins done out of rebellion.  I would wager that most sexual sins are sins done out of weakness.  We do them in order to get the “quick fix.”  We let passions overtake us.  We desire love and connection, so we go for it.  We are impatient, unbelieving, and misguided.  We stumble and fall.  We feel guilty, afraid, and worthless.  Friends, these are all the marks of unintentional sins, not sins done with a high hand.

Beloved, use your guilt to drive you to God’s grace.  Doing something that you know is wrong is not the same as sinning deliberately, especially when guilt and repentance follow.  Sins done with a high hand are void of either feelings of guilt or a desire to repent.  High handed sins have “profaned the blood of the covenant,” calling Jesus’ sacrifice worthless.  Unintentional sins, on the other hand, still cling to Christ’s sacrifice as the only precious thing left for salvation.  Christ is still your only raft in the raging sea of sins.

“How can God forgive me for the sexual sins that I’ve done when I clearly knew that they were wrong?”  There are three parts to this question that you have to work through to see if you’re sinning deliberately (as defined above) or unintentionally.  1) Your problem, 2) God’s solution, and 3) Your response.

Here’s how the person who sins with a high hand would respond: 1) I have sinned, 2) I reject God’s solution, 3) I am going to continue to do what I want.

Now, here’s how a person who sins unintentionally would respond: 1) I have sinned, 2) I accept God’s solution of Christ’s sacrifice, 3) With gratitude, I will continue to cling to Christ, knowing that it will often be a struggle.

I hope you see the difference between the two.  Remember, you’re not perfect and this ain’t Paradise.  Cling to Christ, don’t reject Christ.  God has forgiven those who trust in Jesus.  His heart is wide open to you, now open wide your heart to him (2 Corinthians 6:13).  The more you can open up your heart to Christ in order to receive his love, the less you’ll need to open it up to others to receive their love.

© Samuel Kee, 2012

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How Can I Get Pure Again? (Especially after Sexual Sin)

samuel kee —  May 31, 2012 — Leave a comment

There’s a big A-word behind this question and all questions like it.  Do you know what that A-word is?  ASSUMPTION!  It’s an outstanding question; we all are searching for forgiveness, especially when we blatantly blow it.  However, the big assumption behind this question is this: I was once pure, but now I’m not, so how can I get pure again?  Did you catch the assumption?  The person assumed that he/she was once pure.  This just isn’t an assumption, it’s a false assumption, which we will need to clear up first in order to answer the question.

Here, let me clear up the false assumption: you were never once pure.  Scripture teaches us that we were all born impure.  From the moment you were conceived in your mamma’s belly, you were tainted.  You were born a cute, cuddly sinner—a rebel against God.  Here’s how King David, the “man after God’s heart,” clears up our assumption, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” (Psalm 51:5).  Or let’s let Jeremiah take a crack at it, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).  Or, let’s hear from Saint Paul, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23).  Or, again, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.  All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” (Romans 3:10-12).  I remember taking a private, Greek reading course with Dr. Don Carson in his office.  The first passage he had me learn was Romans 3.  Not only did I better understand my moral depravity after this, but also my intellectual depravity!

After reading all of these Scriptures, I hope you begin to realize that you never started off pure.  Your soul was sinful, deceitful, sick, fallen, unrighteous, and worthless, to name a few.  I know what you’re thinking, I should write Hallmark cards.  Nevertheless, I’d bet you a six-pack (of Cream Soda) and a pizza that the way these verses describe humanity is exactly how you feel.

Worthless, fallen, deceitful, sick, sinful, etc.  Is this how you feel?  Welcome to earth, for that’s how it feels to be a sinner.  Sinners, because of their sin, feel worthless.  Sinners, because of their sin, feel sick.  You get the idea?

Why do I belabor this point?  Unless we clear up this false assumption, then you’ll be under the delusion that there’s something that you can do to cleanse your own conscience.  But there’s not anything that you can do to cleanse your own conscience and make the guilt go away.  If you try, you’ll wind up being like Lady MacBeth, constantly scrubbing your hands to get rid of all the guilty spots, but never being able to do so.  “Out damn spot!”  The book of Hebrews makes it clear that human acts, even if they are religious ones, like offering a bull or goat on the altar, can never cleanse the conscience (see Hebrews 9:13-14 and 10:1-22).

With the assumption cleared up, we’re able to see that there’s nothing that you can do to make the guilt and shame go away.

Your help must come from outside of yourself.  The church Reformer, Martin Luther, called this “alien righteousness.”  We need a righteousness that comes from outside of us, that is alien to us.  We are totally depraved, as discussed above, and unless we have someone else’s righteousness land on our lives, then we’ll forever remain how we are.  You’ll never get rid of your faults, sin, shame, sickness, and wickedness, on your own.

Before I move on, I also have to say that just because we’re totally sinful, does not mean that we’re as bad as we possibly could be.  To say so, would be untrue.  I am not as bad as I could be.  I could be a lot worse, and so could you.  Though we are born into sin, we do not do every sin possible.  We all eat from the sin-buffet, but we do not eat all of the food at the sin-buffet, all at once.

So how do I become pure again?  There are two steps.  First, repent and turn to Jesus.  And second, repent and turn to Jesus.

I’ll take the first one first.  The first step in becoming pure is to turn to an irrevocable source of purity.  God gave his Son Jesus Christ to us in order to forgive us our sins and make us pure.  “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.” (Romans 3:21-22).  God gives the most precious gift to those who trust in Jesus: righteousness.  Think of righteousness as “right-ness with a smile.”  Along with righteousness come a clear conscience and purity.  When God looks at those who are hiding beneath the blood of Jesus, he sees nothing but pure souls.  Jesus is our source of alien righteousness.

Jesus justifies us, in other words.  Justify basically means to “righteousify” or “purify.”  We are instantaneously cleansed and called “not guilty.”  Jesus absorbed all of your sin on the cross.  Your notice of charges, which Roman soldiers nailed above the heads of all crucified criminals, was placed above Jesus’ head.  Jesus died beneath your notice of charges.  Every sexual sin you’ve ever committed was charged to Jesus.  He died for them all, absorbing all the punishment that they deserved.

Jesus was punished for all of your sins and there remains no punishment for your sins.  Want to know how I know?  The resurrection is the proof!  After Jesus got done absorbing all of the punishment for your sins and bearing the complete wrath of God toward unrighteousness, he was free to go.  Jesus only remained in death so long as there were sins to keep him there.  But after he consumed all of the sins that the world had to offer, he didn’t need to remain in death anymore; he was free to rise.  Thus, the resurrection is standing proof that there’s nothing more to pay for the sins of the world.  They are “paid in full.”  As Paul says in Romans 4:25, Jesus “was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.”

If he were not raised, then we would have no proof that all the penalties had been paid; since he has been raised, we have confidence that there is nothing more to pay for our sins, either by Jesus or by us.  Do you comprehend the sweetness of that?  Jesus has been fully punished for your sins and there is nothing left for you to pay.  The wrath of God struck down and landed on Jesus, not you.  You are free to go.  You, who were once dead, have been made alive.

“And you, who were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt [notice of charges] that stood against us with its legal demands.  This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.” (Colossians 2:13-14).

The second step is like the first, repent and turn to Jesus.  You need to repent every day of your life.  Every day of your life, you need to turn from self and turn to Savior.  You need to turn away from sin and turn toward God.  You must live beneath the banner of the blood, trusting in Jesus for your joy.

Just like God will justify you through Jesus, so will he sanctify you through Jesus.  To sanctify means to “make holy.”  While justification is instantaneous, sanctification is a lifelong process.  God continues to work on us for the rest of our lives, making us holier and holier.  Here’s God’s wish for us, as we struggle with sin: “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.” (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24).

Did you notice who will sanctify us and make us blameless?  That’s right, God will!  God will continue to make you pure in spirit, in soul, and in body, as the verse says.  God will keep you blameless, in other words.  When you are face to face with God after you die, you will still be blameless.  God will look at you, despite all of your sins, and he will say, “You are blameless!”  Why?  Because God first looked at his Son and said, “I blame you, Jesus, for all of their sin!”

Keep turning to God, relying on the gift of Jesus.  When you sin, turn to God.  He will keep you blameless, trust him.  Remember, you have no righteousness of your own to enter into the equation.  It all comes from Jesus.

Don’t sit and sulk, but stand and seek.  “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9).  Confess your sins to God, and he WILL forgive you.  There is no forgiveness outside of his.  Keep turning to God.  The measure of your righteousness is not determined by the good works you are able to do, but the bad works you are able to repent of.

Don’t forget about verse ten, “If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” (1 John 1:10).  Don’t assume you once were pure, you were not.  Instead, turn to God through Jesus Christ and he will make you pure.

© Samuel Kee, 2012

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