Stop Sleeping With Your Step Mum Series

In 5:6-8 Paul explains sin is like yeast working through dough.

As you know I love making pizza and I generally put 2 teaspoons of yeast in 1.8kg of flour. Over the next two hours, the yeast works its way through the dough and makes the whole lot rise. Tolerating and being arrogant about one man’s gross sin will work its way through the whole church.

If sin is tolerated and even boasted of as part of freedom then it spreads like yeast in a dough or gangrene in a wound.

You can see it in how may 70’s celebrities have turned out to be perverts – it was tolerated and it spread.

In 6:12-20 Paul then explains how sex unites us in one flesh. In Genesis the Lord explains that marriage is two becoming one, one flesh. The sex act consummates that – sex is a beautiful expression of love within a marriage, of two becoming one – it’s a spiritual connection. The Corinthians were slipping into a Greek dualistic error. They were spiritual and so the flesh didn’t matter and what one does with the flesh doesn’t matter. Paul is reminding them that yes you are spiritual, but you are also physical and they are connected as one. When you sin sexually you sin against the body and your body is a Temple of the Holy Spirit.

Process of getting caught up in sexual sin

James reminds us how temptation works. We are lured, we are enticed by our own desires. Then when the desire gives birth, it’s sin and sin increased towards death. There’s a process - Temptation, sinning, increasing sin.

It offers fleeting pleasure. And momentary satisfaction, but never enough, it only leads to more desire and entrapment.

Sexual sin like that – caught in porno, never satisfies, need worse and worse to get aroused and then trapped.

Sexual sin is filled with shame- devil loves that because it stays hidden and even more trapped.

As a school governor I recently did a Safer recruitment course – part of that involved listening to a paedophile talk about the process of getting caught up in that.

Grace is so good. Jesus’ blood washes us clean. I know some of you believe we don’t need to confess our sin once we have become a Christian because we are declared righteous. And we are! You’d take a verse like 1 John 1:9 and say that is for non-Christians becoming Christians. I have sympathy for where you are coming from, because too many Christians live under condemnation and introspection which is wrong. But I’d have to disagree graciously – the wrath of God for our sin has been propitiated, taken away the moment we respond to the Gospel and are justified. I don’t need to endlessly worry or feel condemned – I am righteous because of Jesus. I even think using the word “convicted” of sin for Christians is unhelpful because it implies guilt and wrath. The Greek word has a range of meaning – convinced, rebuked, confronted.

There are times when the Spirit shows us sin and when our conscience tells us we are doing wrong. When we need to change our mind about what we are doing and stop – that’s the essence of repentance. My experience of trying to help people caught up in sexual sin is that very much know they need 1 John 1:9 – they need to know they are cleansed.