As we come to the last chapter of the Purity Principle, Alcorn fittingly wraps things up with a call to confess and receive God’s forgiveness if we have failed, repent, and take the appropriate steps to actually put these principles into practice. All of our best intentions and agreement with the book to this point are worthless if we do not put them into practice!
Alcorn starts by discussing confession and repentance. “We dare not postpone confession.” How true! If we wait to respond and repent, then we are allowing sin to maintain a foothold. Prov 28:13 says, “Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.” Confession and repentance is more than just saying “sorry” though and going back to the sin. True repentance is turning from the sin and from anything leading to the sin! Alcorn challenges us to make decisions that don’t even expose us to the sin. This whole section is so true and so neglected by men. We all rationalize far to easily, don’t we men? Let me quote the entire section.
“But I can’t help the first look.” Sometimes that’s true. But choosing to go to a beach full of women in bikinis, then saying “I can’t help the first look” is rationalizing. Going to a movie and having to look at the floor is better than watching. But it’s smarter to leave . . . and smarter yet not to go in the first place. Repentance means not just turning from impurity, but keeping ourselves from where we’ll have to turn.
Men, let’s really stop rationalizing and start killing off temptation, not just the sin.
The next few paragraphs give a helpful reminder that God really forgives sin and cleanses us. 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Men, if you’ve blown it, God will forgive. He will give renewed purity and secondary virginity if you are single. He is a God of grace and forgiveness if we repent and seek Him. Praise God!
In his section on seeking accountability, Alcorn renews his call for men to be in accountability with other men – real accountability that asks tough questions. Sins of impurity will grab us and twist our thinking if we don’t have others holding us to our commitments. He makes an excellent point that even the type of friends we are around affect us. “Surround yourself with friends who raise the moral bar, not lower it.” Even those friends who are not in an accountability relationship with us are affecting our moral strength. His question, “Who are your 911 friends?” is an important one. Do you have someone that you can call day or night when in temptation? That takes sacrifice on both sides, but it’s worth it.
Finally, in the section on counting the cost, we see that thinking through the consequences of impurity is a powerful deterrent. Alcorn shares a list of consequences that are worth reading regularly to help us see the real consequences of porn or unfaithfulness. I’ve personalized it to use as an example.
What would adultery do?
- Drag in the mud the reputation of my Lord.
- Make me have to look into His face one day and tell Him why I did it.
- Cause untold hurt to Susie, my loyal, wonderful wife and best friend.
- Forfeit Susie’s respect and trust.
- Permanently injure my credibility with my beloved daughter Alicia and two sons Mark and Jeffery. It would destroy my example and teaching encouraging my sons to become godly men.
- Bring great shame to my family.
- Inflict hurt on my church and friends, especially all those I’ve ministered to.
- Bring an irretrievable loss of years of witnessing to relatives and friends.
- Bring pleasure to Satan, God’s enemy.
- Possibly give me a sexually transmitted disease, posing a risk to Susie.
- Lose my self-respect, discredit my name, and invoke lifelong embarrassment upon myself.
- Put a barrier in my walk with God and dependence on Him opening myself up to falling in a number of other areas.
It’s not worth it. It is devastating. Resist the temptation men. Turn off the computer if you have to. Cut avenues of porn if you have them. Turn the eyes away. Don’t be in close friendships with women other than your wife. Stop enjoying watching immorality and treating it as entertainment. May our hearts be pained by what pains Christ. Let’s commit to purity and enjoying the wonderful fruit of a life of integrity and following Christ.
Purity IS worth it!
1 Cor 16:13 “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.”
That’s a great list Ron. I wrote up my own such list awhile back. Very sobering.
I realized that we can have blinders on about what it means to get out of marriage. When times are tough, we may think we can just hit “undo” and rewind back to our “fun and easy” single days. But after weaving my life together with Heidi, if I was ever foolish enough to want out, my divorced life would be unpleasantly different from my pre-marriage days.