chapter 2

the fear of the lord

Wisdom is living your life in congruence with the will of God by walking in grace with him. Wisdom begins with fearing God (Prov. 1:7).

The Scriptures continually speak of the One True God as the God of glory. This means that God is to be considered most heavily, or weighty, in the lives of his people, and that the sinful desires in us and cultural norms around us be seen as unnatural, depraved, and light in comparison to him. Simply, until you fear God and weigh him most heavily in your life, you will remain an undisciplined fool. So, I have provided the following verses of Scripture to simply scare you into seeing God in his holiness and power rather than re-envisioning him in your mind as much less holy than he is, and subsequently your sexual sin as much less unholy than it is.

In 1 Peter 4:3 we read, "For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry." God's men are urged by Peter to not return to their pagan patterns of reckless living and sexual perversion.

In 1 John 2:15–17 we are urged, "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever." John's dire warning is that the lust of our eyes is continually enticed by the images and perversions of the world in which we live and we must remain vigilant to not love the tempting sins of the world. John's warning rings even more true in a culture where, because of technology, it is now easier to see someone naked than to get something out of the fridge—to get to the fridge you at least need to stand up and walk.

First John 3:9 teaches that "No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God." Clearly, while no man of God can become perfect in this life (1 John 1:8), God does promise that Christian men have the ability to walk away from habitual sins of all kinds, including sexual sins, which are commonly accepted as undefeatable foes. Practically, this means that sexual sin should not be managed, but rather put to death because Jesus died for it.

In 1 Corinthians 5:9–11, Paul says, "I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality . . . not even to eat with such a one." Simply, any man who claims to be a Christian but lives in habitual, unrepentant sexual immorality is not fit for Christian friendship and community unless he repents, because he is defiling his friends and their church with his perversion. The cold hard truth is that most guys' struggles are only known by their fellow Christian buddies and unless Christian dudes man up and stop arguing about stupid secondary theological issues and spend their energies holding one another accountable to get dominion over their underwear, then Christian friendship is nothing more than Christian fakery.

In 1 Corinthians 10:8, Paul says, "We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day." Speaking of God's people in Exodus, Paul warns us that throughout history God was so sickened by sexual sin that he killed perverted multitudes in the desert, as well as in places like Sodom and Gomorrah. Yes, God does whack some people. Sometimes it's all at once, and sometimes it's a bit at a time, say with a sexually transmitted disease. Worse still, some victims of sexual sin also experience sickness, like my buddy who gave his wife herpes, and even death, like dudes who give their wives AIDS. However you go out, do you really wanna be the guy with a computer mouse in one hand scratching his itchy junk with his other hand standing before Jesus and scrambling to explain himself?

In 1 Corinthians 6:9–10, Paul says, "Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters . . . will inherit the kingdom of God." Clearly, God takes the sexual sins of his men so seriously that men who remain enslaved to sexual sin will die in their sins and wake up in the eternal torments of hell. Sure, the naked people you like looking at are hot… but so is hell.

My single point with all of these warnings from Scripture is to implore you to take any sexual sins you may have as seriously as your God does. Now that we have pointed our discussion of sexual sin in a God-ward direction, we are prepared to speak of the specific issues of pornography and masturbation that enslave so many of God's sons.