Silas
Beloved Servant
You have cried out from the depth of a real battle, and your plea is heard. There is a kind of agony when you truly hate the sin that still clings to you, when your mind and heart genuinely want to serve God but your flesh pulls another way. You have experienced improvement and for that we give all glory to Jesus Christ. But you also feel the ache of not yet being fully free, the longing to have these sins removed forever. Do not believe the lie that this deep struggle means you are not sincere or that you are secretly a slave again. The very fact that you are fighting, that you are crying and praying, proves that sin is no longer your master. It proves the Spirit is alive in you, warring against the old desires.
The law of God is good because it shows us what sin really is. Many people only think the outward act is wrong. They do not realize that the strong desire itself, the lust, the coveting, is the sin that the law forbids. The flesh will always try to pull you toward what is forbidden, and you have felt that pull. But the awakening of that struggle is actually a sign of life, not death. With your mind, your true inner self, you are serving the law of God. You are not defined by the pull of your body. The cry of “wretched man that I am” is followed immediately by the shout of deliverance through Jesus Christ. So stand firmly on this truth: there is therefore now no condemnation for you. Not some condemnation, not a little bit of shame to work off, but no condemnation at all.
Do not let the mindset of the flesh, which always leads to death and bondage, occupy your mind any longer. The carnal mind cannot submit to God, but you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God dwells in you. Your history with pornography and sexual sin has a progressive and addictive nature, trapping many in a cycle that demands more and more to get the same feeling. It promises freedom but delivers a profound slavery, destroying the soul and bringing defeat. But the promise stands unchanged: sin shall not have dominion over you. This does not mean you will never fail or never feel the pull, but it does mean the tyrant has been toppled. You are not ruled by it anymore. You have been given a glorious liberty to walk away from the tyranny of your old desires.
The key is found in reckoning yourself truly dead to it. The old man was crucified with Christ for this very purpose: that the body of sin might be destroyed, put out of business, so that you should no longer serve sin. It is hard to tempt a dead man. When those lustful thoughts or urges stir, they are speaking to someone who has already been crucified with Christ. They are pulling at a corpse. Your life is now hidden with Christ in God. Your mind is the neutral ground, the battleground. If your mind is controlled by your flesh, it leads to death and a renewed slavery. If your mind is controlled by the Spirit, it leads to life and peace. So you must continually, actively, let not sin reign in your mortal body by yielding to its desires. Instead, yield your body as an instrument of righteousness to God. Run from the pornography not as a frightened victim, but as a free person who has seen where that door leads. You have seen the pattern, the empty promises, the sacrifice of your own peace on those fires. God has restored to others what the locusts ate, and He will do the same for you. Walk in the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Your hope is not in trying harder to reform a nature that cannot be reformed. Your hope is Christ in you, your Passover sacrificed for you, by whose death the bondage is broken forever. Let deliverance flow from that rock-solid reality.
The law of God is good because it shows us what sin really is. Many people only think the outward act is wrong. They do not realize that the strong desire itself, the lust, the coveting, is the sin that the law forbids. The flesh will always try to pull you toward what is forbidden, and you have felt that pull. But the awakening of that struggle is actually a sign of life, not death. With your mind, your true inner self, you are serving the law of God. You are not defined by the pull of your body. The cry of “wretched man that I am” is followed immediately by the shout of deliverance through Jesus Christ. So stand firmly on this truth: there is therefore now no condemnation for you. Not some condemnation, not a little bit of shame to work off, but no condemnation at all.
Do not let the mindset of the flesh, which always leads to death and bondage, occupy your mind any longer. The carnal mind cannot submit to God, but you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God dwells in you. Your history with pornography and sexual sin has a progressive and addictive nature, trapping many in a cycle that demands more and more to get the same feeling. It promises freedom but delivers a profound slavery, destroying the soul and bringing defeat. But the promise stands unchanged: sin shall not have dominion over you. This does not mean you will never fail or never feel the pull, but it does mean the tyrant has been toppled. You are not ruled by it anymore. You have been given a glorious liberty to walk away from the tyranny of your old desires.
The key is found in reckoning yourself truly dead to it. The old man was crucified with Christ for this very purpose: that the body of sin might be destroyed, put out of business, so that you should no longer serve sin. It is hard to tempt a dead man. When those lustful thoughts or urges stir, they are speaking to someone who has already been crucified with Christ. They are pulling at a corpse. Your life is now hidden with Christ in God. Your mind is the neutral ground, the battleground. If your mind is controlled by your flesh, it leads to death and a renewed slavery. If your mind is controlled by the Spirit, it leads to life and peace. So you must continually, actively, let not sin reign in your mortal body by yielding to its desires. Instead, yield your body as an instrument of righteousness to God. Run from the pornography not as a frightened victim, but as a free person who has seen where that door leads. You have seen the pattern, the empty promises, the sacrifice of your own peace on those fires. God has restored to others what the locusts ate, and He will do the same for you. Walk in the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Your hope is not in trying harder to reform a nature that cannot be reformed. Your hope is Christ in you, your Passover sacrificed for you, by whose death the bondage is broken forever. Let deliverance flow from that rock-solid reality.
