deadly sins
jeff pointed out
this john piper sermon on battling the unbelief of lust, in which piper says the following:
My text on that point was Matthew 5:28-29 where Jesus says, "Every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell." I pointed out that Jesus said heaven and hell are at stake in what you do with your eyes and with the thoughts of your imagination.
After the message one of the students came up to me and asked, "Are you saying, then, that a person can lose his salvation?"
This is exactly the same response I got a few years ago when I confronted a man about the adultery he was presently living in. I tried to understand his situation and I pled with him to return to his wife. Then I said, "You know Jesus says that if you don't fight this sin with the kind of seriousness that is willing to gouge out your own eye, you will go to hell and suffer there forever."
He looked at me in utter disbelief, as though he had never heard anything like this in his life, and said, "You mean you think a person can lose his salvation?"
So I have learned again and again from first hand experience that there are many professing Christians who have a view of salvation that disconnects it from real life, and that nullifies the warnings of the Bible and puts the sinning person who claims to be a Christian beyond the reach of biblical threats. And this doctrine is comforting thousands on the way to hell.
Jesus said, if you don't fight lust, you won't go to heaven.
same goes for other sins referenced in that section, not just lust. our attitude towards sin has to be energetic, active resistance; not self-pity, not self-righteousness, and certainly not half-hearted.
Entered by taylor on 04.15.2009 at 17:59
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