Latest / Pastor John Piper's answers / Killing Lust with the Cross of Christ

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Killing Lust with the Cross of Christ · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  Welcome back. As you know, on this podcast we cover the topic of
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  a lust from a variety of angles. We did so again on Monday.
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  It's probably the category of question we get asked about more than any other.
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  And you'll see all those many ways that this topic has come up on the
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  podcast in that digest to put together on pages three nine to three twenty nine
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  in the new Ask Pastor John book On Monday Pastor John and APJ twenty forty
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  seven, you encourage a wife to confront her husband about erotica lid that she
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  found on his phone, and from confrontation comes conviction and repentance, we hope,
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  which is part of the lifelong discipline of killing lust within ourselves. We
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  must root the sin of lust from our lives, and to do that,
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  we'd be helpless on our own. We couldn't do it on our own,
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  and so we're not called to battle alone. Most notably, we have the
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  Gospel, and we need the Gospel here because the only sin that we can
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  or purge from our lives is canceled sin. Step one, the sin is
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  canceled by the blood of Christ. We're justified before God. And then step
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  two we purge that sin from our lives. Can't ever get that backwards.
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  Sin canceled, then sin purged another super important theme on the podcast over the
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  years, as you can see in the APJA book on page two seventy four.
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  So using the Gospel to purge sin is our topic today. It's fitting
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  because today in our navigator's Bible reading plan, we are reading about the murder
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  of Christ in Mark fifteen, verses thirty three to forty one. Pastro John,
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  you have talked about the role of visualizing Christ's crucifixion in our battle against
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  lustful thoughts. Lust is so often a visible battle, so it makes sense
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  that this battle is fought visually or at least in the visuals of the imagination.
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  For this purpose, you use an acronym. You created an acronym for
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  this called anthem. That's important here to fight lust, and particularly the ah
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  in anthem, which you define as quote, hold a beautiful vision of Jesus
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  in your mind until it triumphs over the other sensual vision quote. So in
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  the fight against lust, how important is it to have this beautiful vision of
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  Jesus And how does this work for you in the moment of temptation? What's
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  happening as you hold this image in your imagination. Well, Tony, I've
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  had history with really bad ways of using visualization in prayer. So even though
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  the question isn't exactly that, let me start there. Pictures can begin to
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  displace the word of scripture as the center of God's saving communication, and that's
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  really dangerous. We can edge right up to and transgress the intention of the
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  second commandment. Don't make any graven images for worship. There's an approach that
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  I've run into. It's pretty widespread, at least, it was to healing
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  prayer, where people are instructed to go back into their painful past and visualize
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  a scene of say abuse, sexual abuse, and for example, imagine Jesus.
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  Picture Jesus walking into the room and picking you up and hugging you and
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  caring for you. And there are problems with that kind of counseling, it
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  seems to me, because it's foreign to scripture. You don't find any pattern
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  quite like that in scripture, and it's usually slanted away from some of the
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  aspects of the role that Jesus plays, namely in Providence, portraying him only
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  as a comforter and not as a sovereign, and not as a judge,
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  and not as one who's going to handle that perpetrator with violence someday. It
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  tends to be just soft and gentle and warm and therefore slanted. It tends
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  to overseemy and over psychologize, which really needed. The healing of the soul
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  involves a profound spiritual perception not only of a tender affectionate Jesus, but of
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  the full meaning of the Cross, and the reality of the Holy Spirit and
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  God's ways in justice and judgments. So there are real dangers that I've encountered
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  in this whole area of visualization in prayer. But let me get back to
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  the positive side. Jesus is the eternal word, and he became flesh John
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  one fourteen, so we know he had a body. People looked at him.
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  They could see him with their physical eyes, unlike God the Father,
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  who can't be visualized in that way. I don't think we should picture God
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  the Father as a grandfather with a white beard. I think that's a big
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  mistake. But Jesus had flesh and bones. And here's another point. Some
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  words do not invoke visual realities like love, hate, right, wrong kind.
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  Those are general principial kinds of words. But other words do evoke necessarily
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  images in our minds. Cross, blood, nails, spear, side of
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  body, hands, feet, thorns, beard, spit rod, sun,
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  darkened hill. You can't say those words without seeing something because those words are
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  names of sights. They're names of sights. You see a hand, you
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  put a word on a hand, you expect people to process that word and
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  have a kind of hand visualized in their mind. No specific hand, but
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  the idea of hand is being visualized in their mind. So when you read
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  about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice. Now you've
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  got sounds as well. There are words that designate sounds, like loud voice.
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  That word is supposed to conjure something in your mind concerning each and it
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  was loud. The word loud is used to make you feel and think loud.
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  And then Jesus calls out with a loud voice, Father, into your
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  hands, I commit my spirit. The point of those very words is to
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  get our minds hearing something. And the words like beard and spit are supposed
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  to get our minds seeing something. And then here's here's one pointer from the
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  Apostle that that inclines me to go ahead and form this image in my mind
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  Galatians three to one, Oh, foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?
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  It was before your very eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.
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  Now what does that mean. I don't think it means Paul got out a
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  piece of talk and drew Jesus. But it means evidently that he portrayed with
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  words through the Gospel the Cross so vividly he says, it was like I
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  was doing it before your very eyes. He used the words eyes here.
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  It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed. So maybe he
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  means I'm embodying this with my sufferings. I'm speaking it in such a way
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  that you can see it. And so one of my strategies, toning back
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  to Anthem and the whole battle with lust, one of my strategies in trying
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  to obey Jesus tearing out my eyes and putting sin to death and counting myself
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  dead, is to fight nudity. Let's just take that as a concrete example.
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  Fight nudity in my mind with Christ's misery on the cross. So nudity
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  is a picture in my mind. Now I've argued that Christ's misery on the
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  cross is a picture in my mind. Christ died to make me pure.
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  This lustful thought is not pure. Or therefore, if I willingly hold this
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  image in my mind, I'm taking a spear and thrusting it into the side
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  of Jesus. I picture myself about to do that. I picture him saying
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  I love you, I love you. I am dying to free you from
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  that bondage to lust. And I picture a battered body. And maybe I
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  should qualify it's not a photographic. I don't have a particular face in view.
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  I don't know what Jesus looked like. I don't pick a movie star
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  from the passion of the Christ or whatever. I don't have a particular face
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  before me. He doesn't look like any actor. I don't get that specific.
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  It's a it's a word created picture, not a photo created picture.
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  So it's what I think Paul did when he said in Galatians two twenty the
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  life I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the Son
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  of God who loved me. Now he could have stopped right there, couldn't
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  he who loved me, and he added and gave himself for me. In
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  Paul's mind, the faith to kill sin every day in his life was strengthened
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  by remembering the love of Christ for him. And the love of Christ is
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  emblazoned in Paul's mind as he thought of him as crucified. He gave himself
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  for me. And Paul saw crucified people. They were on the hills.
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  It was horrible. And when he said Christ gave himself for me, I
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  can't believe that he didn't have some picture, if not photographic, in his
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  mind of Christ suffering profoundly for his purity. And thus his faith was empowered
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  to defeat lust. Yeah, thank you best for John, and thanks for
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  joining us today on the podcast. For other strategies to fight lust, see
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  the digest that I wrote in the new APGA book on pages three nine to
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  three twenty nine. The acronym them comes up there too. You can see
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  the whole acronym there. N see page two seventy four on why our sin
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  must be canceled first before it gets purged. Absolutely vital And speaking of the
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  graphic nature of Christ's death on the cross, how joyful was Jesus In that
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  moment on the Cross, popular actor shi Le Buff says, very joyful Jesus
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  was in bliss. On the Cross. John Piper says, hold up,
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  what actor shi Le Buff gets wrong about joy That's Monday, on Memorial Day.
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  I'm Tony Ranky. We'll see you then,