How to Put Lust to Death

Ponder the Eternal Danger

A few years ago, I spoke to a high school student body on how to fight lust. One of my points was called, “Ponder the eternal danger of lust.” I quoted the words of Jesus that it’s better to go to heaven with one eye than to hell with two and said to the students that their eternal destiny was at stake in what they did with their eyes and with the thoughts of their imagination.

After my message in the high school auditorium, one of the students came up to me and asked, “Are you saying then that a person can lose his salvation?” In other words, if Jesus used the threat of hell to warn about the seriousness of lust, does that mean that a Christian can perish?

This is exactly the same response I got a few years ago when I confronted a man about the adultery he was living in. I tried to understand his situation, and I pleaded with him to return to his wife. Then I said, “You know, Jesus says that if you don’t fight this sin with the kind of seriousness that is willing to gouge out your own eye, you will go to hell and suffer there forever.” As a professing Christian, he looked at me in utter disbelief, as though he had never heard anything like this in his life, and said, “You mean you think a person can lose his salvation?”

So I have learned again and again from firsthand experience that there are many professing Christians who have a view of salvation that disconnects it from real life, nullifies the threats of the Bible, and puts the sinning person who claims to be a Christian beyond the reach of biblical warnings. I believe this view of the Christian life is comforting thousands who are on the broad way that leads to destruction (Matt. 7:13). Jesus says that if you don’t fight lust, you won’t go to heaven, not that saints always succeed. The issue is that we resolve to fight, not that we succeed flawlessly.

The apostle Paul lists “sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness,” then says, “On account of these the wrath of God is coming” (Col. 3:5–6). And the wrath of God is immeasurably more fearful than the wrath of all the nations put together. In Galatians 5:19, Paul mentions “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality” and then says, “Those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5:21).

Battling Unbelief

John Piper

John Piper demonstrates that God’s gracious promises are the power by which we overcome everyday sins and honor God more fully.

Justifying Faith Is Lust-Fighting Faith

What then is the answer to this student and this man who was living in adultery? We are justified by grace alone through faith alone (Rom. 3:28; 4:5; 5:1; Eph. 2:8–9), and all those who are thus justified will be glorified (Rom. 8:30)—that is, no justified person will ever be lost. Nevertheless, those who give themselves up to impurity will be lost (Gal. 5:21), and those who forsake the fight against lust will perish (Matt. 5:30), and those who do not pursue holiness will not see the Lord (Heb. 12:14), and those who surrender their lives to evil desires will succumb to the wrath of God (Col. 3:6).

The reason why these two groups of texts are not contradictory is that the faith that justifies is also a faith that sanctifies. Justifying faith embraces Christ as our crucified sin-bearer and our risen righteousness before God, along with all that God promises to be for us in him. In the same way, that faith keeps on embracing Christ this way and thus becomes the means of sanctification as well as justification. The test of whether our faith is the kind of faith that justifies is whether it is the kind of faith that sanctifies. These are not two different kinds of faith. Both embrace Christ, who bore our punishment, provided our righteousness, and promised to meet every need to the end of the age. Robert Dabney, the nineteenth-century southern Presbyterian theologian, expressed it like this:

Is it by the instrumentality of faith we receive Christ as our justification, without the merit of any of our works? Well. But this same faith, if vital enough to embrace Christ, is also vital enough to “work by love,” “to purify our hearts.” This then is the virtue of the free gospel, as a ministry of sanctification, that the very faith which embraces the gift becomes an inevitable and a divinely powerful principle of obedience.¹

Faith delivers from hell, and the faith that delivers from hell delivers from lust. Again, I do not mean that our faith produces a perfect flawlessness in this life. I mean that it produces a persevering fight. The evidence of justifying faith is that it fights lust. Jesus didn’t say that lust would entirely vanish. He said that the evidence of being heaven bound is that we gouge out our eye rather than settle for a pattern of lust.

The fight for purity is a fight for faith in future grace. The great error that I am trying to explode is the error that says, “Faith in God is one thing, and the fight for holiness is another thing. You get your justification by faith, and you get your sanctification by works. You start the Christian life in the power of the Spirit, then you press on in the efforts of the flesh. The battle for obedience is optional because only faith is necessary for final salvation.” Faith alone is the instrument that unites us to Christ who is our righteousness and the ground of our justification. But the purity of life that confirms faith’s reality is also essential for final salvation not as the ground of our right standing but as the fruit and evidence that we are vitally united by faith to Christ, who alone is the ground of our acceptance with God.²

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How Do You Put Lust to Death?

One of the ways that Paul talks about this battle is to say, “If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Rom. 8:13). This is close to Jesus’s teaching that if we are willing to gouge out our eye rather than lust, we will enter into life (Matt. 18:9). Paul agrees that eternal life is at stake in the battle against sin: “If you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Rom. 8:13). The fight against lust is a fight to the death.

How then do we obey Romans 8:13, to “put to death the deeds of the body,” to kill lust? By faith in future grace. But practically, what does that involve? Suppose I am tempted to lust. Some sexual image comes into my mind and beckons me to pursue it. The way this temptation gets its power is by persuading me to believe that I will be happier if I follow it. The power of all temptation lies in the prospect that it will make me happier. No one sins out of a sense of duty. We embrace sin because it promises that, at least in the short run, things will be more pleasant.

So what should I do? Some people would say, “Remember God’s command to be holy (1 Pet. 1:16), and exercise your will to obey because he is God!” But something crucial is missing from this advice—namely, faith in future grace. A lot of people strive for moral improvement who cannot say, “The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). They strive for the purity of love but don’t realize that such love is the fruit of faith in future grace: “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love” (Gal. 5:6).

How then do you fight lust by faith in future grace? When the temptation to lust comes, Romans 8:13 says, in effect, “If you kill it by the Spirit, you will live.” By the Spirit! What does that mean? Out of all the armor that God gives us to fight Satan, only one piece is used for killing—the sword. It is called the sword of the Spirit (Eph. 6:17). So when Paul says, “Kill sin by the Spirit,” I take that to mean, “Depend on the Spirit, especially his sword.”

What is the sword of the Spirit? It’s the word of God (Eph. 6:17). Here’s where faith comes in: “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17). This gospel word about Christ and his saving work secures for us all the riches of Christ and his promises. This word, therefore, cuts through the fog of Satan’s lies and shows me where true and lasting happiness is to be found. And so the word helps me to stop trusting in the potential of sin to make me happy. Instead, the word entices me to trust in God’s promises.

When faith has the upper hand in my heart, I am satisfied with Christ and his promises. This is what Jesus meant when he says, “Whoever believes in me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). When my thirst for joy and meaning and passion are satisfied by the presence and promises of Christ, the power of sin is broken. We do not yield to the offer of sandwich meat when we can smell the steak sizzling on the grill. The fight of faith against lust is the fight to stay satisfied with God: “By faith Moses . . . [forsook] the fleeting pleasures of sin. . . . he was looking to the reward” (Heb. 11:24–26). Faith is not content with “fleeting pleasures.” It is ravenous for joy. And the word of God says, “In your presence there is fullness of joy; / at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Ps. 16:11). So faith will not be sidetracked into sin. It will not give up so easily in its quest for maximum joy.

When faith has the upper hand in my heart, I am satisfied with Christ and his promises.

The role of God’s word is to feed faith’s appetite for God. And, in doing this, it weans my heart away from the deceptive taste of lust. At first, lust begins to trick me into feeling that I would really miss out on some great satisfaction if I followed the path of purity. But then I take up the sword of the Spirit and begin to fight. I read that it is better to gouge out my eye than to lust. I read that if I think about things that are pure and lovely and excellent, the peace of God will be with me (Phil. 4:8–9). I read that setting my mind on the flesh brings death but setting the mind on the Spirit brings life and peace (Rom. 8:6). I read that lust wages war against my soul (1 Pet. 2:11) and that the pleasures of this life choke out the life of the Spirit (Luke 8:14). But best of all, I read that God withholds no good thing from those who walk uprightly (Ps. 84:11) and that the pure in heart will see God (Matt. 5:8).

As I pray for my faith to be satisfied with God’s life and peace, the sword of the Spirit carves the sugar coating off the poison of lust. I see it for what it is. And by the grace of God, its alluring power is broken. I wield the sword of the Spirit against the sin of lust by believing the promise of God more than I believe in the promise of lust. My faith is not only a backward-looking belief in the death of Jesus but also a forward-looking belief in the promises of Jesus. It’s not only being sure of what he did do, but it’s also being satisfied with what he will do—indeed, it is being satisfied with what he will do precisely because of what he did do (Rom. 8:32).

It is this Spirit-given superior satisfaction in future grace that breaks the power of lust. With all eternity hanging in the balance, we fight the fight of faith. Our chief enemy is the lie that says sin will make our future happier. Our chief weapon is the truth that says God will make our future happier. And faith is the victory that overcomes the lie because faith is satisfied with God.

Fighting Fire with Fire

I have often told young people that they must fight fire with fire. The fire of lust’s pleasures must be fought with the fire of God’s pleasures. If we try to fight the fire of lust with prohibitions and threats alone—even the terrible warnings of Jesus—we will fail. We must fight it with a massive promise of superior happiness. We must swallow up the little flicker of lust’s pleasure in the conflagration of holy satisfaction. When we “make a covenant with [our] eyes” like Job did (Job 31:1), our aim is not merely to avoid something erotic but also to gain something excellent.

Peter describes this powerful liberating process in 2 Peter 1:3–4. He says,

[God’s] divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

How do we escape from the corruption that comes from the “sinful desire” of lust? The answer is that God has given us a revelation of “his own glory and excellence” expressed in “precious and very great promises.” These have been given to us for this very purpose: that “through them” we might share God’s character and be freed from the corruption of lust. The key is the power of promises. When we are entranced by the preciousness of them and the magnificence of them, the effect is liberation from lust, which is, in fact, neither precious nor magnificent. Paul calls these enslaving lusts, “deceitful desires” (Eph. 4:22), and he says that the “passion of lust” of the Gentiles stems from the fact that they “do not know God” (1 Thess. 4:5). Similarly, Peter calls these lusts, “the passions of your former ignorance”—that is, ignorance of God’s glory and his precious and magnificent promises (1 Pet. 1:14).

What Paul and Peter mean is that these lusts get their power by lying to us in order to deceive us. They prey on our ignorance of the promises of God. They claim to offer precious pleasures and magnificent experiences. What can free us from them? Compelling, inspiring, enthralling truth—the truth of God’s precious and magnificent promises that exposes the lie of lust in the light of God’s all-surpassing glory.

Notes:

This quote comes from Dabney’s compelling essay on the necessity of good works (including sexual purity) in the light of free justification by grace through faith. Robert L. Dabney, “The Moral Effects of a Free Justification,” in Discussions: Theological and Evangelical, vol. 1 (1890; repr. Banner of Truth, 1967), 96.
See John Piper, Future Grace: The Purifying Power of the Promises of God, rev. ed. (Crossway, 2026), chap. 18–20.

This article is adapted from Battling Unbelief: Defeating Sin with Superior Pleasure by John Piper.

John Piper is founder and lead teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. He served for thirty-three years as a pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is the author of more than fifty books, including Desiring God; Don’t Waste Your Life; and Providence.

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