Do Christians Still Have Evil Desires?

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - Happy Friday, everyone.

00:00:05.800 | Today we have a question from a listener named Mary.

00:00:09.520 | Actually, I should say we have several questions

00:00:12.080 | wrapped up into one from Mary.

00:00:14.080 | Here it is, Pastor John, hello.

00:00:15.200 | I have a hard question and I'll articulate it

00:00:17.420 | as best as I can.

00:00:19.040 | The Apostle Paul commands Christians to put to death,

00:00:21.440 | therefore, what is earthly in you,

00:00:23.360 | sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire,

00:00:27.680 | and covetousness, which is idolatry.

00:00:30.680 | We are to put these sins to death because, as Paul says,

00:00:33.560 | on account of these, the wrath of God is coming.

00:00:37.220 | That's Colossians 3, verses five to six.

00:00:40.480 | We are commanded to die to sin,

00:00:42.360 | impulses that remain in us.

00:00:44.120 | So something earthly remains in us,

00:00:46.780 | and yet these same sin impulses,

00:00:48.880 | things like evil desires, warrant God's eternal wrath.

00:00:54.920 | So is the ground of judgment the acting out of sins

00:00:58.040 | beyond merely harboring the impulse within,

00:01:01.400 | or is this very tendency in us a diminished

00:01:04.480 | but still present earthly desire towards sins allure,

00:01:08.940 | also ground for eternal judgment?

00:01:11.640 | Or is putting to death sin the complete eradication

00:01:14.800 | of evil desires from in us?

00:01:17.700 | Or is it, by grace, tamping down those desires

00:01:20.900 | that will always be there,

00:01:22.520 | but not acting out consistently on those impulses?

00:01:25.960 | If so, how would that apply to not just the acted out sins,

00:01:30.160 | but specifically here to the evil desires Paul talks about?

00:01:34.520 | Wow, I mean, what would you say to Mary?

00:01:37.260 | - My goodness.

00:01:38.100 | (laughing)

00:01:39.400 | Those are five good questions.

00:01:43.760 | I mean, I counted them with you.

00:01:45.880 | Oh my goodness, she's really overflowing with,

00:01:48.340 | and they really are really quite good questions.

00:01:51.700 | She asks, is putting to death sin

00:01:56.080 | the complete eradication of the desires?

00:01:59.920 | And I think I would start with that one,

00:02:01.120 | because that one's easy.

00:02:02.400 | The answer's no.

00:02:03.300 | (laughing)

00:02:05.240 | No, it's not.

00:02:06.320 | If that were the case, in other words,

00:02:08.000 | if by the first prayer, by the first act of holiness,

00:02:12.240 | or act of obedience, we totally eradicated

00:02:14.800 | all evil desire in our lives,

00:02:17.080 | this passage would read very differently than it does.

00:02:21.960 | Paul would not be writing to Christians

00:02:24.780 | to get on with their warfare against sin,

00:02:28.560 | if that were the case.

00:02:29.480 | Colossians 3 is not written

00:02:34.300 | as if during your first week as a Christian,

00:02:38.260 | you put a sinful desire to death,

00:02:40.340 | and then for the rest of your life, you never deal with it.

00:02:43.720 | That's not the way the New Testament reads at all.

00:02:47.900 | But to see that, we better read these verses.

00:02:52.320 | Let me read Colossians 3, 5 to 10.

00:02:57.160 | It says, "Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you."

00:03:02.120 | Now, literally, it says,

00:03:05.400 | "Put to death your members that are on the earth,"

00:03:09.080 | which is very odd.

00:03:11.160 | What it means is, to the degree that your tongue,

00:03:15.480 | or arm, or sexual organ,

00:03:19.400 | is about to be taken over by a sinful impulse,

00:03:23.800 | treat it as dead and unresponsive.

00:03:27.000 | So let me start over.

00:03:29.480 | "Put to death your members on the earth,

00:03:32.620 | sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire,

00:03:37.620 | covetousness, which is idolatry,

00:03:40.240 | on account of these, the wrath of God is coming."

00:03:46.240 | "In these, you too once walked when you were living in them,

00:03:50.680 | but now you must,"

00:03:53.480 | here's the imperative, "must put them all away."

00:03:57.360 | "Anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk from your mouth.

00:04:01.560 | Do not lie to one another,

00:04:03.360 | seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices

00:04:08.260 | and have put on the new self, which is being renewed."

00:04:14.380 | Not a done deal, it's being renewed in knowledge

00:04:17.800 | after the image of its creator.

00:04:20.320 | That's Colossians 3, 5 through 10.

00:04:23.540 | There is a new self.

00:04:27.440 | That's what it means to be born again,

00:04:29.760 | to become a new creation in Christ,

00:04:32.000 | to be united to Christ so that his life is our life.

00:04:37.000 | This is a done reality for all true Christians.

00:04:42.200 | And the rest of the Christian life is to become what we are,

00:04:47.200 | to become in desire and in practice

00:04:52.280 | what you are in union with Christ,

00:04:54.720 | or as Paul says here in Colossians 3,

00:04:57.040 | "To put off the old self, put on the new self,

00:05:02.040 | or put to death the old and to walk in the newness of life."

00:05:09.360 | But there's no thought here that the absoluteness

00:05:13.520 | of the new self implies an absoluteness of emotional

00:05:18.400 | or behavioral perfection in this life.

00:05:22.600 | So that question we can just put aside.

00:05:25.560 | There is a complete eradication of sinful desire,

00:05:30.560 | but that will happen when we die and go to be with Christ,

00:05:36.040 | or if he comes back during our lifetime.

00:05:39.600 | It's not going to happen while we're living

00:05:41.800 | in this fallen age.

00:05:44.560 | Now, the next question that I think is also relatively easy

00:05:48.160 | to answer that she asks is,

00:05:51.560 | is the wrath of God a response to the behavioral

00:05:57.840 | outworkings of inner evil desire,

00:06:01.240 | or do the desires themselves bring down the wrath of God?

00:06:06.240 | And I assume the reason this question feels urgent to Mary

00:06:13.560 | is that my answer to the first question,

00:06:17.560 | which I think she already knows and agrees with,

00:06:21.200 | implies that we still have those old desires

00:06:26.200 | that have to be battled with,

00:06:28.680 | which raises the question whether the wrath of God

00:06:31.360 | is going to come down upon us because of the desires

00:06:34.420 | that God hates rising up in us.

00:06:37.580 | Now, the answer to the first part of that question is yes,

00:06:43.700 | the wrath of God comes upon both behavioral sin

00:06:49.120 | and upon sinful desires that lie beneath those behaviors.

00:06:54.160 | And I say that simply because that's exactly

00:06:56.840 | what the text says in Colossians 3, 5, and 6.

00:06:59.920 | It says, "Put to death," and then it names five things,

00:07:04.320 | "sexual immorality," now that is acts,

00:07:08.900 | that's various acts of the body

00:07:12.520 | contrary to the will of God,

00:07:14.520 | sinful, sexual, bodily actions.

00:07:19.080 | And then it says, "impurity,"

00:07:21.560 | and then three internal desire-type words,

00:07:26.800 | passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

00:07:31.800 | And then it says, "on account of these," these,

00:07:36.720 | these five realities, both the actions and the desires,

00:07:40.120 | on account of these, the wrath of God is coming.

00:07:43.400 | These refers back to all five of those things,

00:07:46.760 | the behavior of sexual immorality and impurity,

00:07:49.900 | and then three references to desires,

00:07:52.840 | passion, evil desire, covetousness,

00:07:55.720 | all three of those last desires

00:08:00.480 | precede and are beneath behaviors.

00:08:04.560 | And Paul says, "on account of these,"

00:08:07.360 | both the behaviors and the desires,

00:08:08.840 | "the wrath of God is coming,"

00:08:09.900 | which brings us then to the most urgent question,

00:08:13.480 | which I think is implied in what Mary's asking,

00:08:16.840 | namely, well, if evil desires

00:08:20.800 | continue to rise up in the hearts of born-again people,

00:08:25.800 | how will we escape the wrath of God,

00:08:29.880 | which is coming against such desires?

00:08:32.120 | And the answer has two parts.

00:08:35.400 | First, becoming a Christian means

00:08:40.400 | that God unites us to Christ by faith

00:08:48.480 | so that His death, Christ's death on the cross

00:08:53.480 | becomes the payment for all of our sins

00:08:58.480 | and the ground of all our total forgiveness

00:09:03.960 | for all the sins we will ever do,

00:09:08.600 | whether desires or actions.

00:09:12.080 | You know, there's just a few verses earlier,

00:09:15.640 | Colossians 2, 13 and 14, Paul said this,

00:09:18.460 | "God made you alive with Christ,

00:09:21.160 | "having forgiven all our trespasses

00:09:26.160 | "by canceling the record of debt

00:09:30.040 | "that stood against us with its legal demands.

00:09:33.720 | "This He set aside, nailing it to the cross."

00:09:36.720 | So the entire record of debt

00:09:41.640 | for all the sins that we will ever commit,

00:09:45.280 | that's behavior sins and desire sins,

00:09:49.600 | was nailed to the cross.

00:09:52.520 | That's just breathtakingly wonderful.

00:09:54.200 | - That is.

00:09:55.040 | - So the first answer to the question,

00:09:57.160 | why the wrath of God will not fall upon us

00:10:00.320 | for the sins of our remaining evil desires

00:10:03.960 | is that Jesus paid the penalty for them

00:10:08.000 | and secured complete forgiveness.

00:10:11.160 | Wrath comes upon unforgiven evil desire.

00:10:16.160 | Christ bore the wrath for forgiven evil desire.

00:10:21.840 | Therefore, it won't come upon us because we are forgiven.

00:10:28.280 | Now, the second part of the answer

00:10:31.600 | for why the wrath of God will not fall upon Christians,

00:10:35.640 | even though we have remaining sin in us,

00:10:39.720 | is just as essential, though not as foundational.

00:10:44.720 | The wrath of God will not fall upon true believers

00:10:50.880 | because we confirm our union with Christ

00:10:55.880 | and our state of acceptance with God and our forgiveness

00:11:03.480 | by the war we make on our sinful desires.

00:11:08.960 | Many people do not understand this.

00:11:11.200 | They think that if they are secure in Christ,

00:11:16.200 | then the battle against sinful desires is not essential.

00:11:21.640 | Now, that's wrong.

00:11:25.080 | It is essential.

00:11:26.680 | It's necessary.

00:11:27.920 | Because if the battle is forsaken

00:11:30.800 | and we make peace with sin in our lives,

00:11:37.160 | then we fail to confirm that we are united to Christ.

00:11:42.160 | We fail to confirm that we are a new creation

00:11:48.840 | because the new creation in Christ

00:11:51.480 | was created for good works, for holiness.

00:11:55.360 | Therefore, the failure to pursue good works,

00:11:58.960 | the failure to fight sin in ourselves,

00:12:03.600 | to fight for holiness,

00:12:05.800 | shows that a person is not a new creation.

00:12:09.980 | Here's the way Paul says it in Romans 8:13.

00:12:12.840 | If you live according to the flesh, you'll die.

00:12:17.680 | But if by the Spirit you put to death

00:12:19.920 | the deeds of the body, you will live.

00:12:22.380 | In other words, if the Holy Spirit dwells in you,

00:12:26.040 | you will make war on sin in your life.

00:12:29.780 | And the result will be the escape from wrath

00:12:34.140 | and the enjoyment of everlasting life.

00:12:36.800 | Not because the warfare against sin provides forgiveness,

00:12:42.920 | doesn't work like that,

00:12:45.360 | but because it shows that we are forgiven.

00:12:49.680 | We are in Christ.

00:12:51.000 | We are a new creation.

00:12:53.920 | So in summary, no, there is no eradication of sin.

00:12:58.920 | There is no eradication of all evil desire in this life.

00:13:03.920 | Second, yes, wrath is coming upon both

00:13:09.660 | sinful behavior and sinful desire.

00:13:14.700 | Third, but that wrath will only come upon

00:13:19.700 | unforgiven sinful behavior and desire.

00:13:23.780 | And we confirm that we live in the safety

00:13:28.620 | by hating and making war on our sinful desires

00:13:33.620 | by the Holy Spirit.

00:13:36.220 | - Yeah, thank you for answering those five questions,

00:13:38.100 | Pastor John and Mary.

00:13:38.940 | Thank you for laboring to put those questions to us

00:13:41.000 | so clearly and with such great articulation.

00:13:44.640 | Speaking of evil desires in the Christian experience,

00:13:46.840 | we need to address the big debate over Romans 7

00:13:49.360 | and whether Paul is there talking about

00:13:51.580 | the struggles of a believer

00:13:53.480 | or the struggles of a pre-believer.

00:13:56.160 | And that's coming up in a week next Friday, I think.

00:13:59.640 | Yeah, episode 1767 next Friday.

00:14:02.440 | Don't miss it and you won't miss it

00:14:04.280 | if you subscribe to DG's YouTube channel and enable alerts.

00:14:08.400 | Go to DesiringGod's YouTube channel,

00:14:10.720 | subscribe and enable those alerts.

00:14:12.620 | Or if you subscribe to the podcast,

00:14:14.520 | the stream in your favorite podcast app.

00:14:17.080 | I personally use Overcast is my app I use.

00:14:20.880 | You can subscribe at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

00:14:26.880 | Well, speaking of hot questions,

00:14:28.680 | it will probably come as no surprise to anyone

00:14:30.600 | that over the past year or so,

00:14:32.320 | we have received a dozen or so emails

00:14:34.200 | on whether or not it's a good idea

00:14:35.640 | to dramatize the life of Christ on television.

00:14:39.420 | And that is the question of next time.

00:14:41.600 | I'm your host, Tony Rehnke.

00:14:42.480 | We'll see you back here on Monday.

00:14:44.260 | Don't miss this one.

00:14:45.640 | We'll see you then.

00:14:46.560 | (upbeat music)

00:14:49.140 | (upbeat music)

00:14:51.720 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Do Christians Still Have Evil Desires?

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