John Piper
What is clear from Jesus’ teaching is that keeping and growing the gift of purity and the righteousness that surpasses that of the Pharisees is a life-and-death battle. We are not passive. Jesus gives the decisive power, as John 15:5 says, “Apart from me you can do nothing.” But we experience that power in the willingness to engage in radical and persistent attacks on our own sinfulness. Jesus pronounced a blessing on “those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” They are the ones who “shall be satisfied” (Matthew 5:6). Hunger and thirst are relentless. They never stop. They are signs of life. We will do almost anything in our power to satisfy hunger and thirst. That is how Jesus teaches us to pursue purity.
For example, when dealing with the impurity of inward sexual lust, Jesus demands whatever it takes to defeat it because our souls are at stake.
If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.
Matthew 5:29-30
This may be what Jesus is referring to when He says, “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force” (Matthew 11:12)1. Taking the kingdom by force might be a way of repeating what Jesus says about the fight against lust: Tear out your eye or cut off your hand — do whatever it takes — to inherit the kingdom and not go to hell. Take the kingdom by force — force against your sin, not force against God. The battle for righteousness in our hearts is fierce.
Notice three things about this battle. One is that the eye is the first organ to be attacked. “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out.” Even though the issue is sexual sin, He does not say, “Cut off your sexual organ to avoid the deed.” He says, “Tear out your eye to avoid the desire.” The battle is for purity of heart before the purity of the bed. Without the purity of heart, everything in the bed is impure.
Second, notice that He says to tear out our right eye. The significance of this is that it leaves the left one intact to awaken just as much lust as before. Therefore, Jesus’ point is not that literally tearing out the right eye is going to solve anything. The point is not that inward desires can be controlled by external maiming. The point is how enormous the stakes are. They are so great, we must do what we have to do to defeat the bondage of sinful desire. It is astonishing how many people deal with their sin casually. Jesus demands otherwise. Fight for a pure heart with the same urgency as tearing out an eye and cutting off a hand.
Third, notice what is at stake: hell. “It is better that you lose one of your members that that your whole body be thrown into hell.” Many Christians who love the truth of justification by grace alone through faith alone — which I love, and which I believe Jesus teaches — find it difficult to take these threats of Jesus at face value. But there is no way to avoid them. They are strewn throughout the Gospels, and they clearly imply that if we forsake the battle for purity, we will perish.
1 See George Ladd, The Presence of the Future (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1974), 163-164.
Source: Piper, John. What Jesus Demands From the World (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2006), 207-208.
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Tags: Battle, John Piper, Lust, Purity, Sin
4 Comments
“Indwelling sin is compared to a person, a living person, called “the old man,” with his faculties, and properties, his wisdom, craft, subtlety, strength; this, says the apostle, must be killed, put to death, mortified, — that is, have its power, life, vigour, and strength, to produce its effects, taken away by the Spirit.
“The choicest believers, who are assuredly freed from the condemning power of sin, ought yet to make it their business all their days to mortify the indwelling power of sin.
“Make it your daily work; be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you. Your being dead with Christ virtually, your being quickened with him, will not excuse you from this work.
“The apostle tells you what was his practice, 1 Cor 9:27, “I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection.” I do it daily; it is the work of my life: I omit it not; this is my business. And if this were the work and business of Paul, who was so incomparably exalted in grace, revelations, enjoyments, privileges, consolations, above the ordinary measure of believers, where may we possibly bottom an exemption from this work and duty whilst we are in this world?”
Taken from John Owen’s “Of The Mortification Of Sin In Believers”:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/owen/mort.i.v.html
Highly recommended!
@ahbeng -
Thanks for that, AhBeng!
Oh dear, so many good books, so little time!
Amen!!!! Excellent post!!!!
Wonderful post and so true too
Godbless