"Have ye not read, that He which made them at the beginning made them male and female


 And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." Matthew 19:4-6

 

"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth...

And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." Genesis 1:27-28,31


All the various worldly notions regarding human sexuality, e.g., "polygamy" "adultery" "transgenderism" "homosexuality" "bisexuality" etc., etc., are completely contrary to God and how He made us. 

"And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him ... And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed." Genesis 2:18, 21-25

 

"a man...is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman: but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man." 1 Corinthians 11:7-9

God did not make men and women to have multiple sexual partners. And He did not make a man to sexually lust after his neighbors wife or a women to sexually lust after her neighbors husband. And He did not make men to be sexually attracted to men or women to be sexually attracted to women anymore than He made men and women to be sexually attracted to children or animals; all such sexual desires and the like are sinful lusts of the flesh. 

Read some of the Holy Scriptures on the matter: Leviticus 18; Proverbs 6:32; Matthew 5:27-32; Mark 7:20-23; Romans 1:18-32; Romans 3:10-31; Romans 6; Romans 8:2-14; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, 18-20; 1 Corinthians 10:13; 1 Thessalonians 4:3-7; Ephesians 5:1-16; Galatians 5:19-26; Colossians 3; James 1:13-15; Hebrews 13:4; etc

Furthermore, anyone or any group of people telling you that you should not expect or seek any healing or change regarding sin is teaching completely contrary to God and His gospel. 

"Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them." Romans 16:17 


"Many of us, who know ourselves forgiven of God, are often cast down by the knowledge of sin dwelling in us. At first, after our conversion, there was great joy; but soon after, perhaps, the joy faded away, and inbred sin came up in such a way as even to force doubt upon the soul; in such a way indeed as to raise the question "Have I ever been saved at all?" Therefore, I say, if we do not go on beyond the mere knowledge of the forgiveness of sins, we shall never know deliverance from sin.

Now sin has no claim whatever on one who has died with Christ. If a really dead man were lying here before me, I could not by any possibility tempt him to sin. And there is no other way of resisting temptation but by reckoning ourselves to have died with Christ. Otherwise I have no vantage-ground to stand on; whereas, by this means I become impervious to Satan's assaults. As I have said, how can you tempt a dead man? Is it not sadly true, that the experience of many of us has been that of successive defeats? I believe the reason of this is, that we have never known what it is to have died with Christ, and so Satan is able to entangle us with his wiles.

Beloved, let us enter into what God teaches us here as to our standing in Christ; that He counts us as having  "died with Christ;" that He has in Christ "condemned sin in the flesh," so that He has in His death condemned me as well as my sins."

From: Food for the Flock: Volume 8


"If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: For which things' sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience: In the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them. But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds" Colossians 3:1‑10

"We get here the blessed side of the Christian state—being risen with Christ, the great groundwork on which we are. It is not [here] that Christ has died for our sins, but that we have died and are risen; and this is the starting point of the exhortation. We have done altogether with the old man, having died as children of Adam; and we are also risen, having totally done with the world, and yet in it, but risen with Christ; therefore you get the practice of a person risen, and the affections and state and condition of the heart. The Christian is looked at as a person not alive on earth at all; he has died, and now, 
"If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above."
In chapter 2 you get, 
"Why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances?" 
You are not living in the world; you are dead. Now set your affection on things above. You belong there; you have not gone there yet, but the new man is not in you to put you into earthly things. The Spirit takes of "the things of Christ" and shows them to you, not to fix your heart on earthly things, but to deliver you from them; we are to be, in spirit, mind, and affections, up there. We are risen, and have nothing more to do with the world, as to our affections and object, than a man who has died out of it. It does not say, "You must die," but, 
"You are dead," 
for that is the Christian state. Christ having died, and He being my life, my life is hid up there in Him. There is complete association with Christ. He has died; I have died. He is hidden up there; my life is hidden. He will appear; I shall appear with Him in glory. Thorough, complete, blessed association with Christ is the place into which we are put; and it is the starting point of the character of this life displayed on the earth to which we do not belong. If an angel were here, he would do that which was God's will for him; but he would have nothing to do with the earth as to the object for which he lived.

The Apostle does not allow that we have any life here, but talks of our members: 
"Mortify" (put to death) "therefore your members which are upon the earth." 
All that proceeds from the flesh, the Christian is not to allow for a moment. Mark how different it is from dying to sin, as people speak. Mortify is just the opposite; it is putting to death. That is power. If I say, "I must die," that is being alive. We are dead to sin, the world, and the law. Christ having died, we have died. What is true of Him is true of us. Having now life and power, we are to put these things to death. There is no more lust, or self-will, or working of the flesh, if a man is dead. I am to reckon myself dead, not setting about to die to sin, for I should not be able; that is, the flesh, the old man, does not want to die. The Apostle says, 
"Reckon yourselves dead." 
You have died. Then put off the old man. 
"Our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed." Rom. 6:6. 
Sin has been "condemned in the flesh." Now I have the place of power to put to death every evil that the flesh would produce. Put to death your members, not your life in Adam. You are dead; therefore put to death your members. If you let them act, it is the flesh. The Christian has power in Christ—
"I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me" (Phil. 4:13)
—to put down everything inconsistent with the life in which this power is. The life is hid with Christ in God, but our members are on the earth; and he says, in effect, "Now keep them in order; you have the power of Christ."

John Nelson Darby
Excerpt from Risen With Christ





Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

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I'm a Christian saved by God, by His Sovereign grace. I want to encourage all to read, to hear, to believe, and to feed upon the only Words in all the world that are truly spirit and life, living and active; to know the One True God: God the Father, His Only Begotten Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit; Who has graciously given us the Holy Scriptures
“All Scripture is God-breathed..."
2 Timothy 3:16–17; cf., John 3:31-36; John 6:63; John 14:26; John 17:3, 17; Romans 1:1-6, 16-17; 1 Corinthians 2:1-16; 1 Thessalonians 2:13; 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14; 2 Peter 1:20–21; Hebrews 4:12-13. As for the commentaries I post and refer to; with much gratitude, as they have done for me, it is my hope and prayer that they serve to edify all who read them.

Shalom, beccaj
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