Quagmire

Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,
Sir, life upon Thy cause.
—GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

Warm-up: 1 Thessalonians 4:1–8
“Lust is a quagmire,” a friend of mine said recently. Quagmire is exactly the right word. Lust bogs us down and keeps us from making any progress toward God.

I always think in this connection of one of my favorite trout streams here in Idaho. It’s a beautiful little spring creek, braided with bright green moss and water weed, flowing down a narrow valley through willows and wild Russian olives. The trout in that stream are big and strong.

However, the river has a dark side. The bottom is soft silt and decaying vegetable matter—soft, sticky stuff that mires you down and holds you fast. Several times I’ve become so stuck in the mud that I couldn’t move and had to call to one of my fishing-friends to pull me out. At times I’ve had to do the same for them. I don’t fish that creek much by myself. It’s not at all safe.

The danger beneath the beauty and enjoyment of that little stream has become for me a parable of the things that impede our progress and prevent our enjoyment of God. Sexual impurity is one of those things that can leave us “stuck.”

Here in this text Paul puts the matter squarely before us, “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality” (1 Thessalonians 4:3). The two ideas—sanctification and sexual immorality—are juxtaposed as polar opposites. We can make no progress toward godliness as long as we’re mired in immorality. The one necessarily precludes the other.

The word Paul uses in this text, translated “sexual immorality” is the Greek word porneia from which we get our word fornication. Fornication is a perfectly good word, but unfortunately it’s a used-up word, associated as it is with thoughts of quaint and hoary prudery. We need to recapture its meaning.

Our English word “fornication” comes from a Latin term fornix that originally referred to a cellar and then by extension to buying sex, since brothels in Rome were located in cellars and other low-down places.

The Greek word that lies behind the English word had the same connotation. It meant “to buy” or “to sell” and then came to be used of prostitution. A harlot was called a pornei—one who was bought and sold.

George Bernard Shaw tells about an encounter with a young woman whom he approached on a drunken whim, “Would you sleep with me for a thousand pounds?” he whispered.

“I would,” she replied.

“Would you sleep with me for five pounds?” Shaw teased.

“Sir,” she replied angrily, “what do you think I am?”

“Well,” Shaw chuckled, “we’ve already established that. Now we’re just haggling over the price.”

That’s exactly the point: fornication is a sell-out, and though few will admit it, we all have our price. If we don’t think so we’re fools and headed for a terrible fall. Every one of us is only thirty minutes or less away from ruin.

The best illustration of the word fornication is supplied in a context that has nothing to do with sexual matters. The writer to the Hebrews encourages us to pursue God and the holiness that flows from that pursuit (12:15–16):

See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root [of rebellion against God] grows up to cause trouble and defile many. See that no one is sexually immoral, or is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son.

Esau came in from a hard day of hunting, exhausted and craving a meal. His appetite was so strong that he traded away his birthright—his part in God’s plan to bring salvation to the world—for the immediate gratification of a physical craving. He prostituted his priceless inheritance for a quick meal (Genesis 25:29–34).

Sexual immorality is exactly that. We give away something eternally valuable and completely satisfying for immediate physical gratification. God wants to fill and flood our bodies and use them as his instruments to touch the world in profound and lasting ways, but immorality frustrates that purpose. We “bid farewell to our greatness,” Shakespeare said.

Paul continues his argument: “Each one of us should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God” (1 Thessalonians 4:4–5).

Here’s a straightforward plea for self-control, based on the knowledge of God. Ordinary men are driven by lust because they do not know God; God’s men and women know God and therefore have another passion: to present their bodies to him for his purposes.

Real Christians are different from others, not merely in degree but in kind. They have God and others do not. Because they have God they have a bent toward righteousness—a proclivity toward purity and holiness—and when they fail in that pursuit, they feel it and know it.

But here’s the rub: though they know what it is to be holy, they cannot be holy by direct effort. That’s a job for God. If we are to master our lustful passions, it will be done through his efforts alone. There is no other way.

C. S. Lewis explains the process this way:

Put right out of your head the idea that . . . Christians are to read what Christ said and try to carry it out—as a man may read what Plato or Marx said and try to carry it out. They mean something much more than that. They mean that a real Person, Christ, here and now, in that very room where you are saying your prayers, is doing things to you. It is not a question of a good man who died two thousand years ago. It is a living Man, still as much a man as you, and still as much God as He was when He created the world, really coming and interfering with your very self; killing the old natural self in you and replacing it with the kind of self He has. At first, only for moments. Then for longer periods. Finally, if all goes well, turning you permanently into a different sort of thing; into a new little Christ, a being which, in its own small way, has the same kind of life as God; which shares in His power, joy, knowledge and eternity.

Turning us into “a different sort of thing” takes time—actually a lifetime. What God wants is for us to give him our bodies so he can begin the process right now. It’s not what we make of ourselves that matters, but what God is making of us. We’re a work in progress and will remain so until we go to God or until he comes for us. Then and only then will his work be done.

We see life piece-meal—like a bug working its way along a clothesline. God sees what we will be when we get to the end of the line. Until that day comes we must keep inching along, making a little progress every day, upheld by his faithfulness, assured by his forgiveness and encouraged by his promise that we will someday be what he has called us to be.

“The one who calls you is faithful,” Paul assures us, “and he will do it” (1 Thessalonians 5:24).

Taken from In Quietness and Confidence, ©1999 by David Roper. Used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Box 3566 Grand Rapids, MI 49501. All rights reserved.