Worldliness Leads to Sexual Sin (Part 1)
The Bible teaches us that our hearts are naturally drawn toward wicked things. And these evil desires are adamantly opposed to God. But they are not opposed to the world system. In fact, the things that surround us every day, even things that seem good to us, can feed some of our worst habits. That’s certainly true of sexual sin. But we often don’t want to hear that something in our lives which we think is good may actually be hurting us. We want to be free from sexual sin, but we also want to hold on to our lives in this world. However, the truth is that hope for freedom over sexual sin is only possible if we are willing to confess and repent of the real issues in our lives. In this interview, Luke Imperato discusses how worldliness is one of those issues.
Nate: So Luke, what we want to do here is help people see that there's a really clear connection between worldliness and sexual sin. Because what we teach her at Pure Life Ministries, what we tell our counselees and preach from the pulpit, is that one of the main factors in overcoming sexual sin is learning to cut ourselves off from the spirit of the world. This is because when your whole life is centered around just going after what the world offers, then you're creating a spiritual environment inside of yourself that's going to make you really vulnerable to sexual sin. But I think that connection is not super clear, especially if you're in sexual sin yourself. You just don't see it. It's kind of like somebody who's continually having intestinal problems and they don't even realize that they have a food allergy. They're like, why is this happening to me? So, I think I want to dive into that a little bit more right up front. From your perspective, what is it about worldliness that is making our inside world a perfect place for sin to thrive.
Luke: When I was thinking about this question, what came to mind was the fact that the root behind sexual sin or what really makes a sexual sin lifestyle thrive is selfishness. We don't have to conjure that up. It comes naturally. We don't have to work to become selfish. So when I look at a mentality of worldliness, I connect it with a natural tendency to love oneself and the natural tendency to just protect self and to do whatever self wants. With that in mind, worldliness could be almost defined as just the pursuit of any earthly pleasure, or passion, or desire for anything that self wants. When we think about the fact that that's the message of the world, and it’s the natural tendency of our hearts which we know produces sexual sin, it should be no surprise to us that if we keep feeding selfishness and worldliness in our lives, we are going to produce a life of sexual sin.
Nate: That's helpful. What you're basically saying is that we are already selfish by nature and part of that selfishness is wanting to indulge in sexual passions, which all of us have. Then this world’s spirit adds to that saying, “Yeah, do that. Whatever you want, whatever you crave, just go for it.” That perspective really helps to understand how that selfishness can be fostered by the worldly spirit. Why is God is so adamant about being separate from the world.
Luke: It's a chain reaction. If I look back at the chain of events in my own life, I see a lot of sexual sin in my life and I see how that was because I was selfish. The world fostered that selfishness, but the Lord is going to be adamantly opposed to anything in my life that's going to produce sinful behavior. So, if worldliness thrives in a selfish mindset, or even if selfishness thrives in a worldly environment, then the Lord's going to say that He doesn't want a worldly influence to be reigning in my life. Sometimes I find it helpful to just look at it through the lens of Scripture and just let the Word of God tell me what's right or wrong. If the Word of God is saying that something is evil, there are times where we just have to believe that.
<pull-quote>If the Word of God is saying that something is evil, there are times where we just have to believe that.<pull-quote><tweet-link>TweetThis<tweet-link>
Nate: Yeah. Without needing some kind of complex explanation.
Luke: Yeah, exactly. So, when I look at a verse like 1 John 2:15 (ESV) where John says, “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in Him.” Just that verse is a compelling argument that if you're in love with the world, you don't have the love of the Father in you. That should be a huge warning. John goes on in Verse 16 saying, “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life is not from the Father.” It’s like God is saying that when you're holding onto the things of the world, those things are not of me.
The Living Bible says in 1 John 2:16 (TLB), “For all these worldly things, these evil desires—the craze for sex, the ambition to buy everything that appeals to you, and the pride that comes from wealth and importance—these are not from God.” We just have to stop and realize that the Lord is adamantly opposed to things that are not of Him. He's trying to make a connection here that the things of this world, these passions, and desires, are not of me. So if we love them, then how can we claim to have a relationship with Him?
We know the world is perishing. We know that this world is coming to an end and the Lord is going to judge His enemies, but we read several times in Scripture that God takes no pleasure in destroying the wicked. He's patient and He's kind, hoping that all would come to repentance. He doesn't want to destroy, and He doesn't want to judge in that way. He wishes that we would all come to repentance. So when the Lord is telling us to separate from the things of this world, He's saying, “I do not want to judge you. I do not want to harm you.” I think that oftentimes we don’t connect worldliness with the judgment of God, but that's the reality.
Most of us know the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, where God rained down fire from heaven and destroyed these cities because they were full of all this immorality and sin. In our mind, we think that they were just a nonstop party city full of obvious evil. We think that it must have just been a terrible place. But if we look in Ezekiel, God gives us a little behind the scenes as to what was actually going on in Sodom and Gomorrah and what their actual heart issues were. The Lord speaks in Ezekiel 16:49-50 (NKJV) saying, “Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: She and her daughter had pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty and committed abomination before Me; therefore I took them away as I saw fit.” When I read that, I'm like, wait a minute, that’s what was really going on in Sodom and Gomorrah. In that verse you can almost get the sense that it was just worldliness that they were living in. They were just living for the here and now, living for their pleasures and their desires. They pursued whatever they wanted and the Lord said that was that was the iniquity of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Nate: I think that's good to see, because if we could be transported back in time and actually just live there for a day, maybe it would just kind of look like a nice beach town in Florida where everybody's just enjoying life.
Luke: Yea. And we don't see that as dangerous, but the Lord does. He's crying out and trying to warn us in His Word not to be caught up in that mindset because it's going to lead to destruction.
Nate: Okay, so let me get your take on something because I know that objections start coming up in people's minds when we start talking about worldliness, especially if we start connecting it with specific aspects of our American lifestyle. How do you respond to somebody who easily gets defensive about this?
Luke: It's hard, because I don't know if you can make a blanket statement that applies to everyone. It would be nice if there were just clear-cut rules like you're allowed 45 minutes on the internet a day and you will be a Christian. That may be simple and nice if it worked that way, but it doesn't. Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” I think we need to examine our lives and ask ourselves questions like, “What do I treasure? What do I value? And what do I put a lot of time into?” Our answers to those questions will tell us where our hearts are at.
You just have to do an inventory of your life and realize, okay, while it may not be evil in itself, if you’re spending a substantial amount of time on entertainment or following politics, on hobby’s or at your job, you might have a problem. The Lord says in Scripture that if you want to know where your heart is, just look at what you treasure; look at what you value. So if you run an inventory of your time spent over a period of seven days, you could look and see that maybe 5% of that time was spent with the Lord in that period of time, you should consider how much you really treasure the Lord and if it matches how much you think you treasure Him.
Nate: That's good, because I think when I really studied that portion of Scripture that you read in 1 John 2, what I realized was that what was being represented as the love of the world was not just a blatantly immoral and flagrantly sinful lifestyle, but also a life that just shuts God out. If I look into my past when I was living in unrepentant sin, what my life was saying was that I didn’t have time for God. I pursued what my flesh wanted. I pursued what I saw with my eyes and what I wanted. I was just full of pride.
I think even maybe some pretty decent people could be living in that spirit just because they decided that they don't have time for God. The bottom line is that they have shut God out by the things they have given their life to.
