We live today in a very hypersexualized culture. Sexual temptation is everywhere. On our TVs, computers, even in the palm of our hand. It all is just a click or press away. It can be found in the popular romance novels your friends may be reading and wanting to share with you or the blockbuster hit movie everyone is seeing that you might be curious about yourself. You can be watching a clean show or YouTube video only to have it interrupted by a sensual scene in a commercial or ad popping up. The billboard you casually notice while driving down the road or the how someone is dressed at the mall or grocery store. Sexual temptation is something we all have to deal with in some form or fashion. There is no way around it unless we cut off all types of communication with the outside world, but even then, it will still be able to find us. What is needed is knowing how to avoid falling into such whenever it presents itself to us. Thankfully, God’s Word gives us at least 8 different ways we can go about avoiding succumbing to the sexual temptation all around us. There are probably many more we could list as well but we will limit ourselves just to the following eight for now. We’ll look at four of them this month and pick up on the rest of them in next month’s article. To help us better keep them in mind in the moment when the temptation strikes, I have found a word for each of them which begins with the letter “R”.
The first way for us to avoid falling into sexual temptation is to BE READY. Paul writes to the Corinthians, “let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12). It is the very moment when we think that this is something that can or never will happen to us that we are the most susceptible to fall into such temptation. When we let our guard down, we are no longer watching or ready for the temptation to strike and we in turn can easily be blindsided by it. Then, the next thing we know, we are knee deep in it. There is a good chance that the disaster of the Titanic may have been avoided if the ship’s crew would have taken the warnings about icebergs in the area more seriously and had been better prepared for the worst to happen. But they all were so convinced that the ship was unsinkable that they were not as careful and watchful concerning those warnings and wound up facing the dire consequences that now have gone down in history. Don’t foolishly believe that you may be “unsinkable” by sexual temptation or that it won’t have any affect on you. Always be mindful that any of us could easily slip when faced with it causing us to fall headfirst into it. As it has been said, “Unless you are wiser than the wisest man in the Bible, stronger than the strongest man in the Bible, or have a better heart than the man after God’s own heart, don’t think for a moment that you are above falling into sexual sin.” Solomon, Samson, and David weren’t and we certainly are not smarter, stronger, or more after God’s own heart than any of them. This is why every time I hear of another big name high profile pastor being discovered to have been involved in some sort of sexual scandal or affair, I don’t say to myself, “How could this have happened to them?” but “How easy that could be me if I am not careful or let my guard down?” We all can only be one step or two away from falling. And that step begins right when we think we could not fall prey to it. When we are not ready for the sexual temptation to occur and what might happen should we give in to it.
Another thing we are told to do when faced with sexual temptation is to RUN. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:18 that we are to “flee sexual immorality.” Not stay around it. Not flirt or play with it. Not see how far we can get before crossing the line into sin. Not even to entertain the possibility of it. But to get as far away from it as possible. Just like Joseph did when Potiphar’s wife made advances towards him. He didn’t stick around for a minute to even consider giving into that temptation. He literally dropped everything and got out of there! (Genesis 39:12). Whenever sexual temptation presents itself to us, we must turn quickly and go the other way, not looking back as did Lot’s wife (Genesis 19:26; Luke 17:32). And I should point out that the command in this verse to “flee” is in the present tense. We must continue to run the other direction away from sexual temptation.
The third way to avoid falling into sexual temptation is REMAIN where you are supposed to be and not go where you shouldn’t. There is an interesting often overlooked detail in the account of David’s fall into sexual sin that we would do well not to miss. At the very start of the chapter, before David ever laid eyes on Bathsheba, we are told, “Now it happened in the spring, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel, and they destroyed the sons of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. But David stayed at Jerusalem” (2 Samuel 11:1). Pay attention to that last sentence. David should have went out to war with his soldiers that Spring as normal but instead chose not to. Had he been where he was supposed to be, in this case, he never would have done what he was not supposed to do with Bathsheba. If we do not visit those websites we are not supposed to be looking at or go those places the Lord would not have us to go, we would not find ourselves involved in sexual sin in the first place. If we would remain where the Lord would have us to be according to His Word and not go where temptation knowingly lies.
And the place God has for us to find our pleasure and sexual satisfaction in this life is with our husband or wife. Solomon puts it this way in his proverbs, “Drink water from your own cistern and fresh water from your own well. Should your springs be dispersed abroad, streams of water in the streets? Let them be for you alone, and not for strangers with you. Let your fountain be blessed, and be glad in the wife of your youth. As a loving hind and a graceful doe, let her breasts satisfy you at all times; be intoxicated with her love. So why should you, my son, be intoxicated with a strange woman and embrace the bosom of a foreign woman?” (Proverbs 5:15-20). Remain drinking from the well God has graciously given you and you won’t be as easily tempted to look to another one instead. And if you do not have a husband or wife to drink from we could say, or circumstances may be hindering it, seek the Lord while you wait for one or things to change. Don’t start looking for other wells or even consider the thought of possibly tasting any of them!
A fourth way to avoid giving into sexual temptation is to RESOLVE not to look lustfully at someone other than your spouse. Job made a commitment not to do this. He said, “I have cut a covenant with my eyes; how then could I gaze at a virgin?” (Job 31:1). Resolve that the moment you see an image you have no business looking at, that you will turn your head and refuse to entertain it in your mind. Say to yourself in that very instant, “I will not give this another glance or a thought.” Martin Luther put it well when he said, “Temptations, of course, cannot be avoided, but because we cannot prevent the birds from flying over our heads, there is no need that we should let them nest in our hair.” Prevent sexual temptation from even beginning to build a nest in your hair by vowing not to give it any more attention once it flies over your head so to speak.
Something else we must do to avoid falling prey to sexual sin is to strive to be RID of it and its underlying desire. In Romans 8:12-13 we are told, “So then, brothers, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh-for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die, but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the practices of the body, you will live.” Part of living the Christian life is to be actively putting to death those sins presently a part of our lives and the desires which lead to them. It is declaring war on them and doing everything you can, with the strength and power the Holy Spirit gives you, to work to eradicate them from your life. While our posture towards sexual temptation should be one of flight the moment we find such a temptation dangling in front of us like a carrot before a horse, there is also a sense where we need to be fighting against it as well. The old word used to describe this is “mortify” which has a forceful feel to it of really wiping it out to be done with. I like what Derek W. H. Thomas said about this practice of mortifying or putting our sin to death. He wrote, “There is to be no ‘peace’ with sin. We dare not baptize our sins with benedictions. It is imperative that sin be destroyed. It’s life is not to be spared. There must be a radical destruction of sin. Kill it; strangle it; starve it of oxygen until it cannot breathe again. There is no other way.” Imagine lustful desire to be like a dragon. If you continue to feed it, it will get hungrier and hungrier, seeking to devour you while wanting to indulge in its passion all the more. You need to starve it to put a halt to its craving and be careful not to feed it even a crumb or small morsel so as not to whetten its appetite. And you will find when you keep your eyes and thoughts away from things that your desire for them are not as strong. But the moment you give in just a little bit, the harder it is to say “no” the next time the temptation presents itself.
And since we will never fully be rid of these sinful desires within us until we receive our new resurrected bodies, this work of mortification or putting sin to death will not be finished until we reach glory. This means that we can never stop, give up, or let up working to slay the sinfulness within us but must keep at it knowing that our ultimate victory is inevitably certain in the future because of Christ and His wonderful work for us and His Spirit’s continual work in us. Octavious Winslow helpfully reminds us, “Death by the cross is certain, yet lingering. Our blessed Lord was suspended upon the tree from nine in the morning until three in the afternoon. It was a slow, lingering torture, yet terminating in his giving up the ghost. Similar to this is the death of sin in the believer. It is progressive and protracted, yet certain in the issue. Nail after nail must pierce our corruptions, until the entire body of sin, each member thus transfixed, is crucified and slain.”
The seriousness of this matter is conveyed so powerfully by the Puritan John Owen with his words, “be killing sin or it will be killing you.” View sexual sin like a fire. You play around with it, you are sure to get burnt. If it is not put out, it will burn down your marriage, your family, and a man’s ministry, leaving nothing but destruction in its wake. You may think or try to convince yourself that what you are looking at, fantasizing about, or acting on only affects you but that is never the case. We are too interconnected with others for it to be so. A fire that is not put out will grow and spread. Take notice that it is often only a small spark that winds up starting a wild fire. And, if left burning, how much of an area gets affected by it. So serious is this ridding ourselves of sexual sin through putting it to death in our lives that Jesus tells us we need to take radical measures to cut off from our lives anything which would cause us to give in to such sin. He compares this to plucking out our eye or chopping off a hand (Matthew 5:29-30). It would certainly be hard to part with our physical eye or a hand. However, purity before the Lord in regard to our marriages is worth more. And it would be better for us to go without something we deem to be so essential for us than to give into sexual temptation and reap the damning consequences of it if it would lead us down that road.
A sixth way for us to avoid sexual sin according to God’s Word is to REMEMBER. To remember in particular something about our sin and something about our Savior. In his recounting of the faith of Moses, the author of Hebrews says, “By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, regarding the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he was looking to the reward” (11:24-26). One thing that sticks out to me from this passage is him speaking of the “passing pleasures of sin.” Whenever we are tempted sexually, we need to remember that while that sin certainly promises pleasure, there would be no enticement for us to do it otherwise, it is only a temporary pleasure. It will not last but is only short-lived. That is the thing to remind ourselves about the sin itself. In contrast, there is far greater and more lasting pleasure to be found in Christ instead. Every time we sin, we are choosing the much lesser and temporal pleasure of sin over the far greater and never-ending pleasure that is ours in Christ. Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well that she would continue to be thirsting as long as she kept drinking of that water. But the one who drinks the water He offers will never thirst again. They will be eternally fully and finally satisfied. He is speaking of a complete and lasting quenching of one’s spiritual thirst of course. Something the woman beforehand clearly did not know as evidenced by her sinful relationships with men. Perhaps reminding ourselves of this truth of real lasting pleasure being found in our Savior and not in the sin we are being tempted to give way to can help us choose Christ over the sin with its pleasure which does not last. This is true not just of sexual temptation but really any temptation we may be faced with.
Yet another way for us to avoid falling into sexual sin is to RETREAT to the Exit. We are promised in 1 Corinthians 10:13 that “God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.” Now, this is not saying that God will not give us more than we can handle as is commonly interpreted from this verse. That’s certainly not the case as I am convinced that pretty much everything we have been given is too much for us to handle on our own in our own power and strength but is never too much for God to handle. And the purpose for that is to continually direct and drive us back to One who can handle it and give us the strength to as well. Here, the idea is that God will make sure that we never have a moment where we are so overwhelmed by the temptations before us that it is impossible for us to resist and say “no” to them. He will always ensure that there is some kind of way out of it. An escape from it. You may have had those moments like I have where you are on a long trip driving down the interstate and find yourself needing to get off to go get gas, take a bathroom break, get something to eat, or do all three (if you are like me and try to save time by making it all one stop when possible). But try as you may, mile after mile with less and less gas in the tank and a fuller bladder, you just can’t seem to find any exit in sight where you can stop. This verse reminds us that such will never happen to us on our spiritual journey whenever we come to some temptation. We will not find ourselves without an exit out of it. This means that what we need to do in the midst of such is to look for that exit and be sure to take it! Not to stay on the road but quickly get off it.
The final way I can think of that Scripture gives us for avoiding giving into sexual temptation is the most important of them all. In fact, we are not able to follow any of the others without it. And that is to RELY on the Lord. We will fail miserably at being victorious over sexual sin in our lives if we are seeking to fight against it in our strength and power. Because, frankly, we cannot do it on our own. It’s just not possible. You will notice in Romans 8:13 we looked at earlier speaking of us seeking to put to death the sinfulness within us that beforehand Paul states, “BY THE SPIRIT you are putting to death the practices of the body.” We are not doing this by the flesh or by our might. Only by the power of His Spirit which God has graciously given us to dwell inside us. The good news is that God’s grace is sufficient for defeating all the sinful lusts and practices in our lives. As Jesus reminded Paul with his dealing of that painful thorn in the flesh, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). There is hope for all of us to overcome such temptation in Christ alone. We ultimately just keep needing to turn to Him and throw ourselves upon Him pleading with Him for His mercy in taking care of the matter. Then, and only then, can we BE READY, RUN, REMAIN, RESOLVE, GET RID OF, REMEMBER, and RETREAT.
