“For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that you abstain from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well.”
Acts 15:28-29
One key to conquering sexual sin is specificity. Once you start describing your sins specifically, rather than seeing them in the abstract, you gain the insight you need to confess them, ask forgiveness for them, and forsake them. A valuable exercise is to take every generic mention of sexual sin and to make it apply to you specifically.
Consider the early church, for example. Jewish converts were troubling Gentile converts by telling them they had to be circumcised and keep the law. So, the church gathered and settled the matter. They proclaimed that Gentile believers in Christ had to obey only four things:
- abstain from things offered to idols
- abstain from blood
- abstain from things strangled
- abstain from sexual immorality
Abstaining from blood is clear enough, right? And so is abstaining from any animal that’s been strangled. But what about sexual immorality? Sexual immorality, after all, is a class of sin, and not a particular sin. Sexual immorality is any act that defies God’s commands about sexual relations. There are dozens of them. Sexual immorality includes sex outside of marriage, sex with animals, sex with children, sex with close family members, voyeurism, viewing pornography, and masturbating.
Which means you may be tempted to gloss over this command because it doesn’t name your sexual sin in particular. After all, this command says nothing about pornography in particular, or masturbation specifically. And this is your challenge. If you want victory, take every occurrence of the phrase “sexual immorality” in the New Testament, and understand it to mean your sexual sin in particular. You understand this prohibition more clearly if you insert your sexual sin in place of the phrase “sexual immorality,” like this:
- “For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that you abstain from watching X-rated movies.”
- “For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that you abstain from having sex outside of marriage.”
- “For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that you abstain from masturbating to pornography.”
See the difference? Once you translate your generic sin of sexual immorality into your specific sexual sin, you have a goal to aim at. You are no longer in the world of abstraction. You are in the world of specifics. You are in the place you need to be in to get serious with God. You are ready to repent, confess your sin, guard against temptation, and forsake your sin. Sexual purity comes through specificity.
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