Porn’s Dark Shame Shamed by Christ’s Brilliant Victory on the Cross

Although the Gospel’s light shines into our deepest darknesses, giving God’s people freedom from sin’s slavery, the dread blackness of shame, especially shame from sexual addictions, constantly deceives Christians into shutting their eyes. Sexual sin leaves one awash in an ocean of guilt, feeling as if the True Light is not already shining. Is the Gospel of Christ powerful enough to give true and certain freedom from the power and debilitation of shame’s blinding darkness?

In his penetrating and practical article, Gutsy Guilt, Pastor John Piper points Christians to Christ’s brilliant victory. Turning to Colossians 2, Piper explains the foundation upon which Christians can boldly open their eyes to the objective light of Christ and the benefits of His victory over sin and death. Surprisingly, the way Christians conquer the shame of sin is through Christ’s shaming of sin on the cross. Only with such a powerful weapon as Christ’s shaming victory can Christians overcome the false shame of sexual sin, or any other sin.

Here’s the opening to Pipers powerful article:

The closest I have ever come in 26 years to being fired from my position as a pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church was in the mid-1980s, when I wrote an article for our church newsletter titled “Missions and Masturbation.” I wrote the article after returning from a missions conference in Washington, D.C., with George Verwer, the head of Operation Mobilization.

Verwer’s burden at that conference was the tragic number of young people who at one point in their lives dreamed of radical obedience to Jesus, but then faded away into useless American prosperity. A gnawing sense of guilt and unworthiness over sexual failure gradually gave way to spiritual powerlessness and the dead-end dream of middle-class security and comfort. (Read the full article…)

Related Resources

Free Sins for Christians (What!?) Prescribed by a Dentist of Grace

Let’s face it, American Christianity is so strongly addicted to various form of Pelagianism that to speak of grace the way the Bible does is to put one at odds with most Christians. Long gone are the days, or so it seems, when sola gratia had teeth in a large part of the church. A grace-soaked letter such as the apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (see below) has become repugnant to the Pelagian-soaked people to whom Paul wrote: Christ’s body. For this reason, the church needs more “dentists of grace” like The Old White Guy, Steve Brown, who are willing to perform root canal jobs on Pelagian rot.

Three Free Sins!

Steve understands the thick Pelagian veneer covering much of the church, and he skillfully uses tongue-in-cheek, shocking metaphors and double-take-inducing rhetoric to make Christians angry enough to stop and think like Christians (i.e. according to Scripture). For example, listen to him cut through the Pelagian crust in the area of sanctification as he tells Christians they get three free sins:

Every Christian I know wants to be better than he or she is. There may be an exception to that, but I haven’t found one. In other words, most Christians aren’t getting any better and sometimes are getting worse…but they really want to be better.

Do you know why most Christians don’t get any better or why you don’t get any better? It’s because you’re doing it wrong, dummy! You are obsessed with sin and your faith has become another “system of laws” whereby you feel guilty and try and try and try to do better. It doesn’t work, never has worked, and never will work. Only really shallow people keep doing the same thing over and over again with the same result, thinking that the next time the result will be different.

So stop it.

Why such shocking rhetoric? Many Christians think God saves them from hell, but they themselves have to work up to heaven, so to speak, effectively heaping a covenant of works upon themselves (i.e. living as if they can earn salvation merit with God by trying hard to keep His commandments even though Jesus has already kept God’s law perfectly in their stead).

But how could we ever earn (heaven and sanctification) what Christ has already won for us? Aren’t we who are united to Chrsit already “seated … with [Christ] in the heavenly places”? Only when we first understand our new identity in Christ are we then able to understand how to please God with our works, as a covenant of grace (i.e. living as if I am already a perfect law-keeper because I am one in Christ, and thus obeying God’s law not because I have to earn salvation, but because I have been freed by Christ to obey God’s law out of love!). In Paul’s words from Ephesians 2:

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience– 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ–by grace you have been saved– 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them (Ephesians 2:1-10 ESV; emhpasis and line breaks mine).

Christian, quit trying so hard to impress God with your obedience. Jesus has already pleased the Father; put your faith in Him. Who are you to think you could one up Jesus!?

From a Pastor to Pastors on the Perils of Pornography

William Shishko, pastor of Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Franklin Square, NY, writes a word to pastors regarding pornography that many ministry leaders need to hear, “Get your head out of the sand!“:

My plea to pastors in this article is that you get your heads out of the sand! The ostrich knows that an adversary is present, but avoids the problem by looking away instead of bravely facing it. My fear is that too many pastors have their heads in the sand because they: (a) are not aware that the problem is really as bad as it is; (b) do not think that we should be so alarmed by it; (c) think that their only responsibility is to go about their ministerial duties of generally preaching and teaching in the hope that the problem will take care of itself in the people to whom we minister.

Brothers, I have news for you: (a) the problem is worse than you can imagine; (b) unless you want to deal with a lot of spiritual wreckage in yourself and others, you better be alarmed by it; (c) if you don’t get beyond “preaching the word” and “preaching Christ” in broad generalities, you will not be addressing the problem, and it will not take care of itself.

In short, the idol of lust is a deceptive bile. It tricks you into thinking that your “OK” as long as you bury your guilty conscience deep down and satisfy yourself with facades of spirituality. But while your lips speak, “Jesus is Lord!” your heart screams, “Lust! Lust! And more lust!” while your conscience condemns you.

Only the Gospel has the power to break sin’s chains. And, as Shishko points out, an important key to starting the Gospel’s powerful diesel engine is to get your head out of the sand–stop ignoring it, rationalizing it, avoiding it, hoping it will go away and start honestly repenting, believing the Gospel, and taking necessary steps to exhort oneanother every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin (Hebrews 3:13 ESV).

Sin’s Fool Price

A penny of pleasure buys a dollar of pain.
Yet, rarely one sees it as an unfair trade.

For in the hot moment of vivacious passion,
man quickly loses all reasonable fashion.

But, iniquity’s ecstasy melts to thin air,
And sin’s penny pincher becomes guilt’s millionaire.

For my iniquities have gone over my head; like a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me. My wounds stink and fester because of my foolishness. . . (Psalms 38:4-5, 18 ESV).

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