We live in a culture where quite nearly everything is sexualized and over-sexualized. Sex is normal where we live. And not good sex as God created it to be in marriage – but every perverted form of that outside of marriage. All of that is normal. But to be normal is to join the masses comfortably tumbling through the wide gates of hell. Scripture is clear that the sexually immoral will not inherit the Kingdom of God. It’s not normal to inherit the Kingdom of God. God’s standard of sexuality to only be a thing in a marriage relationship is entirely for our good, our heightened enjoyment of sex, and His glory. That does not change.
While in some senses sexual sin is more serious than other sins, sexual sinners are not out of the reach of cross. They are not un-redeemable. In fact, Jesus generally chooses to save the worst of sinners, more so than the self-righteous sinners. For those locked away in the deep depths of sexual sin, Jesus took the deepest depths of God’s wrath for your sin. He rose in victory, and He alone has the key to unlock the chains that have you captive.
So many of us have been scarred and hurt by sexual sin. Many who have been saved from a sinful past choose to drown themselves in the murky waters of guilt. Many choose to crucify themselves over what Christ was already crucified for. In Christ you are free. Christ was suffocated by your guilt and drowned in the justice of God on your behalf. And He beat what we cannot.
There is healing from sexual sin in Christ. There are three primary ways in which Christ heals the sexually immoral who run to him in repentance and faith.
First, Jesus purifies the impure. He makes pure the dirty, cleans the grotesque, and washes the filthy in His grace. In Hebrews 1:3 we see that Jesus himself was the purification for sins. He victoriously made the purification complete as He rose again to sit on the throne. “After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” – Hebrews 1:3. On the cross, the crimson blood shed by Jesus was the purifying agent to make white our black hearts. Jesus did what we cannot. He lived pure and died for the impure.
Secondly, Christ sets free the captives of sin, guilt, and condemnation. John 8:1-11 contains the story where the Pharisees bring to Jesus a woman who they caught in adultery wanting to stone her. Jesus sends the accusers home by showing them the sin in their own hearts. Jesus rid the woman of her accusers and he himself, being the only one who could justly condemn her, tells her he does not condemn her and admonishes her to go on and sin no more. Jesus is only able to set the condemned free because He himself was condemned in our place. Jesus frees us from the captivity of sexual sin by freeing us from the guilt and condemnation of sin.
Thirdly, and lastly, Jesus satisfies the desperate heart. In John 4, Jesus has an encounter with a woman who was a known adulterer. She jumped from man to man, relationship to relationship, marriage to marriage. Jesus revealed to her that that moving from sin to more sin was evidence of her heart longing to be satisfied. The woman wanted simply to be happy. She had soul longing for satisfaction and her sinful heart channeled that longing to sin. This is us. Jesus showed the woman He was the only who could rightly satisfy her soul longings for happiness and satisfaction, and that her sexual sin would not do the trick but only intensify the problem. Jesus satisfies our unsatisfied hearts like no sin or relationship can do. Because Jesus satisfied the wrath of God we can be satisfied in Jesus. Because God is satisfied with Jesus, He is satisfied with us. Because Jesus drank the cup of wrath we are free to drink deeply of soul satisfaction in Christ. Through the cross Jesus provided himself as satisfaction to those who have found the dissatisfaction in sexual sin.
To the sexually impure: Jesus purifies, sets free, and satisfies where sexual sin only does the damning opposite.
Jesus is better. There is real healing in Jesus.
“Go and sin no more.”
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