Tripp: "...people instinctively pointing outside of themselves..."

Listen to the hard-to-hear words of Mark 7:20–23

20 And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. 21 For from within, out of people’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immoralities, thefts, murders, 22 adulteries, greed, evil actions, deceit, self-indulgence, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within and defile a person.”

Notice that Jesus doesn’t say, “Hey guys, it’s very simple. The problem is, you live in this broken and evil world that isn’t functioning as I intended. It’s populated with sinful people who will seduce you into doing what’s wrong. So if you want to live a godly life, you have to determine to separate yourself from both.” But that’s how we tend to think. I’ve heard adulterous husbands say to me, “Paul, if you lived with my wife, you would understand why I did what I did.” I’ve heard adulterous women blame the seductive power of the man. I’ve heard parents of a pregnant teenager blame TV, YouTube, and Facebook. I’ve heard pastors who’ve committed sexual sin point to the lonely burdens of stressful ministry.

What I hear again and again is people instinctively pointing outside of themselves to answer the question “Why did I do what I did?” But listen to the words of Jesus and let them sink in. “What comes out of a person is what defiles him.”

Here’s where the words of Christ drive us: our struggle with sexual sin is not first a struggle with the environment in which we live or with the people that we live near. Our struggle with sexual sin reveals the dark and needy condition of our hearts. We are our biggest problem. When it comes to sexual sin, the greatest sexual danger to any human being anywhere lives inside of him and not outside of him. Isolation, changes of location and relationship, and the management of behavior never work because they don’t target the place where the problem exists—the heart. Sexual struggles have a much deeper beginning point than your eyes and your sexual organs.

So if sexual problems are problems of the heart, it’s important to make some biblical observations about the heart. I’m persuaded that you can’t have a conversation about the sexual insanity that’s around and in us and will lead to real person change without these heart principles from Scripture.

Paul David Tripp, Sex and Money: Pleasures That Leave You Empty and Grace That Satisfies (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013).

Comments

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