At the cross, you, as a believer, died to sin and you rose with Jesus on the third day, and are now alive to God. He forgave your sin, and made you right with Him. He clothed you in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, made you alive in Christ and restored you to wonderful fellowship with Himself. Your life is now hidden in Jesus; you are wrapped up in Him, clothed in Him and are complete in Him. You’ve been given grace upon grace out of the abundant love of God toward you.
“Therefore” or because of this beautiful gospel, you are to respond by putting to death whatever is earthly in you. You are to judge it, condemn it and crucify it.
So as we consider how radical we are to be against sin, we must examine where we have been falling. For example, when I would go to a hotel on a layover, I would view pornography for hours, either on my computer or the hotel TV. During this time I would gratify my flesh as those images from the computer or TV would lodge in my mind. Additionally, I used social media (Facebook specifically) to commit sexual immorality.
Question 5. Please consider the different places and different ways that you have fallen to impurity and list them here:
Log in / create an account to enroll or continue where you left off.
The Scriptures teach us that the only way to be free is to die to sin (which happened at the cross) and to put to death whatever is earthly in us (which happens daily), not merely to filter our computer or cut off Internet access. Filters may be a good start, but we must go further if we want to win the war against sin. This is because real change does not happen from the outside in but rather from the inside out, from the heart.
Matthew 23:25-26 NIV "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. (26) Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean."
The religious leaders in Jesus’ day taught obedience to God’s law. This was cleaning the "outside" (the actions) while leaving the heart untouched and unchanged. Jesus came to clean the inside, to change our hearts and desires, then the outside (the actions) would be clean too. Notice the order, "first clean the inside...then the outside also will be clean."
The way that we “clean the inside” is to Wash at the cross. We come to the cleansing fountain daily, and we look! We see Jesus dying to give us fresh grace, ongoing forgiveness of sin. We see Him removing our sins so that we are now holy and righteous by faith in His finished work.
We are also cleansed as we “Walk by the Spirit,” following Him as He leads us away from a fleshly life. His purpose is to point us to Jesus, encourage us to fix our eyes on Jesus, and empower us to walk away from the lifestyle of gratifying our flesh.
Finally, we learn to “War against the flesh.” We seek God for a personal battle plan (as discussed in Purity Bootcamp), as we learn to put to death whatever belongs to our earthly nature.
Question 6. What are the three foundational principles of freedom from impurity?