On July 20, 1993, Donald Wyman was clearing land near Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, as part of his work for a mining company. In the process, a tree rolled onto his shin causing a severe break and pinning Wyman to the ground. He cried for help for an hour, but no one came. He concluded that the only way to save his life would be to cut off his leg. So he made a tourniquet out of his shoe string and tightened it with a wrench. Then he took his pocket knife and cut through the skin, muscle, and bone just below the knee and freed himself from the tree.

He crawled thirty yards to a bulldozer, drove a quarter-mile to his truck, then maneuvered the standard transmission with his good leg and a hand until he reached a farmer's house one-and-a-half miles away, with his leg bleeding profusely. Farmer John Huber Jr. helped him get to a hospital where his life was spared.

Jesus knew that humans love to live. So He appealed to this passion in order to show the importance of purity. Just as Donald Wyman cut off his leg to save his life, Jesus commanded that we gouge out our eye to escape the fatal effect of lust: "Everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out, and throw it from you; for it is better for you that one of the parts of your body perish, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell" (Matt. 5:28-29).

Of course, if you gouge out your "right eye," as Jesus says, you can still see the magazine with your left eye. So Jesus must have something even more radical in mind than literal mutilation.

What Jesus is saying is that the consequences of lust are going to be worse than the most severe consequences that can occur to our physical bodies, including death. That is why Jesus said, "Do not be afraid of those who can kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear the One who after He has killed has authority to cast into hell; yes, I tell you, fear Him (Luke 12:4-5). In other words, God's final judgment is much more fearful than earthly annihilation.

Justifying Faith is Lust-Fighting Faith

A number of years ago, I confronted a man about the adultery in which he was living. I tried to understand his situation, and I pled 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 and said, "You mean, you think a person can lose his salvation?"

What then is the answer to this man living in adultery? The answer is that we are justified by grace alone through faith alone (Rom. 3:28, 4:5; 5:1; Eph. 2:8f), 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).

The reason these two groups of texts are not contradictory is that the faith that justifies is a faith that also sanctifies. And the test of whether our faith is the kind of faith that justifies is whether it is the kind of faith that sanctifies. 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.

This is the gospel of God's victory over sin, not just His tolerance of sin. It is the gospel of Romans 6:14: "Sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace." Almighty grace! Sovereign grace! This is the grace we live under—the sin-conquering, not just sin-canceling, grace of God.

Triumph over the sin of lust is all of grace: past grace canceling lust's guilt through the cross and future grace conquering lust's power through the Spirit. That's why the only fight we fight is the fight of faith. We fight to be so satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus that temptation to sin loses its power over us.

How Do You Put Lust to Death?

One of the ways that Paul talks about this battle is to say, "If you live according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live" (Rom. 8:13). Thus, the fight against lust is mortal combat. How then do we obey Romans 8:13—to put to death lust in our bodies?

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.

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 live I live by faith" (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.

Fighting Lust by Faith in Future Grace

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 God gives us to fight Satan, only one piece is 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 by the Word of Christ" (Rom. 10:17). The Word of God 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 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 said, "He who 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 looked to the reward" (Heb. 11:24-26, rsv). Faith is not content with "fleeting pleasures." It is ravenous for joy. And the Word of God says, "In Thy presence is fullness of joy, in Thy right hand there are pleasures forever" (Ps. 16:11). So faith will not be sidetracked into sin. It will not give up so easily in its quest for maximum joy.

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. 4:8f). I read that setting the 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 (Lk. 8:14). But best of all, I read that God withholds no good thing from those who walk up-rightly (Ps. 84:11), and that the pure in heart will see God (Matt. 5:8).

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 just a backward-looking belief in the death of Jesus, but a forward-looking belief in the promises of Jesus. It's not just being sure of what He did do, but also being satisfied with what He will do.

It is this superior satisfaction 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 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.
Peter described this powerful liberating process in 2 Peter 1:3-4. He said,

[God's] divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, in order that by them you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.

How do we escape from the corruption that comes from lust? The answer is that God has given us a revelation of His "glory and excellence" expressed in "precious and magnificent promises." These have been given to us for this very purpose: that "by 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 the lusts, which are, in fact, not precious and not magnificent.

Paul calls these enslaving lusts, "lusts of deceit" (Eph. 4:22). These lusts get their power by lying to us in order to deceive us. 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 expose the lie of lust in the light of God's all-surpassing glory.

The challenge before us in our fight against lust is not merely to do what God says because He is God, but to desire what God says because He is glorious. The challenge is not merely to pursue righteousness, but to prefer righteousness.
As faith satisfies us with the joy set before us, the biblical demand for purity of heart will not be burdensome (1 John 5:3), and the power of lust will be broken. Its deceitful compensation will appear too brief and too shallow to lure us in.

Adapted from Future Grace ©1995 by John Piper. Used by permission of Multnomah Publishers, Inc.