(upbeat music) - Happy Friday, everyone. Today we have a question from a listener named Mary. Actually, I should say we have several questions wrapped up into one from Mary. Here it is, Pastor John, hello. I have a hard question and I'll articulate it as best as I can. The Apostle Paul commands Christians to put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

We are to put these sins to death because, as Paul says, on account of these, the wrath of God is coming. That's Colossians 3, verses five to six. We are commanded to die to sin, impulses that remain in us. So something earthly remains in us, and yet these same sin impulses, things like evil desires, warrant God's eternal wrath.

So is the ground of judgment the acting out of sins beyond merely harboring the impulse within, or is this very tendency in us a diminished but still present earthly desire towards sins allure, also ground for eternal judgment? Or is putting to death sin the complete eradication of evil desires from in us?

Or is it, by grace, tamping down those desires that will always be there, but not acting out consistently on those impulses? If so, how would that apply to not just the acted out sins, but specifically here to the evil desires Paul talks about? Wow, I mean, what would you say to Mary?

- My goodness. (laughing) Those are five good questions. I mean, I counted them with you. Oh my goodness, she's really overflowing with, and they really are really quite good questions. She asks, is putting to death sin the complete eradication of the desires? And I think I would start with that one, because that one's easy.

The answer's no. (laughing) No, it's not. If that were the case, in other words, if by the first prayer, by the first act of holiness, or act of obedience, we totally eradicated all evil desire in our lives, this passage would read very differently than it does. Paul would not be writing to Christians to get on with their warfare against sin, if that were the case.

Colossians 3 is not written as if during your first week as a Christian, you put a sinful desire to death, and then for the rest of your life, you never deal with it. That's not the way the New Testament reads at all. But to see that, we better read these verses.

Let me read Colossians 3, 5 to 10. It says, "Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you." Now, literally, it says, "Put to death your members that are on the earth," which is very odd. What it means is, to the degree that your tongue, or arm, or sexual organ, is about to be taken over by a sinful impulse, treat it as dead and unresponsive.

So let me start over. "Put to death your members on the earth, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is idolatry, on account of these, the wrath of God is coming." "In these, you too once walked when you were living in them, but now you must," here's the imperative, "must put them all away." "Anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk from your mouth.

Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed." Not a done deal, it's being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. That's Colossians 3, 5 through 10. There is a new self.

That's what it means to be born again, to become a new creation in Christ, to be united to Christ so that his life is our life. This is a done reality for all true Christians. And the rest of the Christian life is to become what we are, to become in desire and in practice what you are in union with Christ, or as Paul says here in Colossians 3, "To put off the old self, put on the new self, or put to death the old and to walk in the newness of life." But there's no thought here that the absoluteness of the new self implies an absoluteness of emotional or behavioral perfection in this life.

So that question we can just put aside. There is a complete eradication of sinful desire, but that will happen when we die and go to be with Christ, or if he comes back during our lifetime. It's not going to happen while we're living in this fallen age. Now, the next question that I think is also relatively easy to answer that she asks is, is the wrath of God a response to the behavioral outworkings of inner evil desire, or do the desires themselves bring down the wrath of God?

And I assume the reason this question feels urgent to Mary is that my answer to the first question, which I think she already knows and agrees with, implies that we still have those old desires that have to be battled with, which raises the question whether the wrath of God is going to come down upon us because of the desires that God hates rising up in us.

Now, the answer to the first part of that question is yes, the wrath of God comes upon both behavioral sin and upon sinful desires that lie beneath those behaviors. And I say that simply because that's exactly what the text says in Colossians 3, 5, and 6. It says, "Put to death," and then it names five things, "sexual immorality," now that is acts, that's various acts of the body contrary to the will of God, sinful, sexual, bodily actions.

And then it says, "impurity," and then three internal desire-type words, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. And then it says, "on account of these," these, these five realities, both the actions and the desires, on account of these, the wrath of God is coming. These refers back to all five of those things, the behavior of sexual immorality and impurity, and then three references to desires, passion, evil desire, covetousness, all three of those last desires precede and are beneath behaviors.

And Paul says, "on account of these," both the behaviors and the desires, "the wrath of God is coming," which brings us then to the most urgent question, which I think is implied in what Mary's asking, namely, well, if evil desires continue to rise up in the hearts of born-again people, how will we escape the wrath of God, which is coming against such desires?

And the answer has two parts. First, becoming a Christian means that God unites us to Christ by faith so that His death, Christ's death on the cross becomes the payment for all of our sins and the ground of all our total forgiveness for all the sins we will ever do, whether desires or actions.

You know, there's just a few verses earlier, Colossians 2, 13 and 14, Paul said this, "God made you alive with Christ, "having forgiven all our trespasses "by canceling the record of debt "that stood against us with its legal demands. "This He set aside, nailing it to the cross." So the entire record of debt for all the sins that we will ever commit, that's behavior sins and desire sins, was nailed to the cross.

That's just breathtakingly wonderful. - That is. - So the first answer to the question, why the wrath of God will not fall upon us for the sins of our remaining evil desires is that Jesus paid the penalty for them and secured complete forgiveness. Wrath comes upon unforgiven evil desire.

Christ bore the wrath for forgiven evil desire. Therefore, it won't come upon us because we are forgiven. Now, the second part of the answer for why the wrath of God will not fall upon Christians, even though we have remaining sin in us, is just as essential, though not as foundational.

The wrath of God will not fall upon true believers because we confirm our union with Christ and our state of acceptance with God and our forgiveness by the war we make on our sinful desires. Many people do not understand this. They think that if they are secure in Christ, then the battle against sinful desires is not essential.

Now, that's wrong. It is essential. It's necessary. Because if the battle is forsaken and we make peace with sin in our lives, then we fail to confirm that we are united to Christ. We fail to confirm that we are a new creation because the new creation in Christ was created for good works, for holiness.

Therefore, the failure to pursue good works, the failure to fight sin in ourselves, to fight for holiness, shows that a person is not a new creation. Here's the way Paul says it in Romans 8:13. If you live according to the flesh, you'll die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

In other words, if the Holy Spirit dwells in you, you will make war on sin in your life. And the result will be the escape from wrath and the enjoyment of everlasting life. Not because the warfare against sin provides forgiveness, doesn't work like that, but because it shows that we are forgiven.

We are in Christ. We are a new creation. So in summary, no, there is no eradication of sin. There is no eradication of all evil desire in this life. Second, yes, wrath is coming upon both sinful behavior and sinful desire. Third, but that wrath will only come upon unforgiven sinful behavior and desire.

And we confirm that we live in the safety by hating and making war on our sinful desires by the Holy Spirit. - Yeah, thank you for answering those five questions, Pastor John and Mary. Thank you for laboring to put those questions to us so clearly and with such great articulation.

Speaking of evil desires in the Christian experience, we need to address the big debate over Romans 7 and whether Paul is there talking about the struggles of a believer or the struggles of a pre-believer. And that's coming up in a week next Friday, I think. Yeah, episode 1767 next Friday.

Don't miss it and you won't miss it if you subscribe to DG's YouTube channel and enable alerts. Go to DesiringGod's YouTube channel, subscribe and enable those alerts. Or if you subscribe to the podcast, the stream in your favorite podcast app. I personally use Overcast is my app I use.

You can subscribe at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. Well, speaking of hot questions, it will probably come as no surprise to anyone that over the past year or so, we have received a dozen or so emails on whether or not it's a good idea to dramatize the life of Christ on television. And that is the question of next time.

I'm your host, Tony Rehnke. We'll see you back here on Monday. Don't miss this one. We'll see you then. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)