July 27. If you don't fight lust, abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul,

1 Peter 2 11. When I confronted a man about the adultery he was living in, 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 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 and that nullifies the threats of the Bible

and that 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. Matthew 7, 13. Jesus said, if you don't fight lust, you won't go to heaven.

If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away for it is better that you lose

one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. Matthew 5, 29.

The point is not that true Christians always succeed in every battle. The issue is that we resolve

to fight, not that we succeed flawlessly. We don't make peace with sin, we make war, the stakes

are much higher than whether the world is blown up by a thousand long-range missiles or terrorists

bomb your city or global warming melts the ice caps or aids sweeps the nations.

All these calamities can kill only the body but if we don't fight lust we lose our souls forever.

Peter says, the passions of the flesh wage war against our souls first Peter 211.

The stakes in this war are infinitely higher than in any threat of world war or terrorism.

The Apostle Paul listed immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and covetousness

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