How Much Sinning Proves That I’m Not a Christian?
“I don’t think we can provide a list of sins or a number for the frequency with which you can sin and get away with it,” Piper said. He added that it is more dangerous for a Christian’s soul to get into a habit of premeditated sin because confession is cloaked with fatalism and hopelessness, and one develops a peace with sin. “Both are dangerous; don’t get me wrong,” Piper said, and cited the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans where he said, “I do what I do not want, and I do not do the good I want,” calling himself a “wretched man” and fleeing to Christ for cleansing.
In further response to his listener’s question, Piper said, “To the degree that your confessing of sin has made a kind of fatalistic peace with sin’s inevitability, and to the degree that your sin falls into the category of premeditated unrighteousness, to that degree, you should be frightened that you are on a path that may well lead to destruction.”
We will never be sinless until we are made holy in the presence of Christ and it is obliterated for all eternity, therefore with the power of the Holy Spirit’s help we must wage war on that sin until that day, Piper said.
Sexual Sin Is a Threat to Our Entire Lives
In a sermon Piper delivered at the Desiring God National Conference in 2004 titled ‘Sex and the Supremacy of Christ’ he gave a powerful description of how savoring the supremacy of Christ helps us wage the war on sexual sin in our lives.
John Piper Explains The Key to Killing Lust
Placing anything above the supremacy of Christ, especially sex, will misalign how we were created by God, Piper asserted. He said, “We were made to see and savor, with everlasting satisfaction, the supremacy of Christ.” Because our sexuality points to this we “must know this in order to be pure and have our sexuality be sacred and sweet and Christ-exalting and secondary — quietly, powerfully secondary.”
Piper told the audience, “I know without the shadow of a doubt, on biblical authority, that the little spaceships of our moral regimes — our little tactics to fight lust, our little spaceships to nudge the planet of our sexuality back into orbit — are absolutely futile if the supremacy of Christ is not the sun at the center of the solar system of our life,” he said. “I know that. I don’t know many things. But I know that beyond the shadow of a doubt.”
