The struggle for sexual purity is real yet it is not impossible to attain. God has appointed different means (such as believing in the gospel, applying the Word and having the Word applied rightly by a healthy community, and marriage) that ought to be pursued and practiced in order to be holy. Yet, we must not forget that the goal is not purity for the sake of purity. Rather, the God-established end of godliness is to become more like Christ Jesus.

In the previous article, I wrote about two of the three principles that aid young men (and women) in pursuing and practicing sexual purity: Getting the gospel right, and applying the Word to your life by yourself and by others. In this second part, we will look at the third principle.
“Be a Man!”: Marriage as a Means to Christlikeness
The final principle that I want to suggest is probably the most overlooked and under-discussed solution on purity: get married. Now, I would readily grant and defend the fact that marriage will not solve or rectify your sexual struggles or loneliness. Without resting your identity and treasuring Christ as your end-all, your heart’s craving for intimacy and companionship will not be satisfied either with sex or with marriage.1
Yet, even with such a qualification, it cannot be denied that one of the means that the Lord uses to meet our need for intimacy and companionship is marriage (cf. 1 Cor 7:9b). After all, was it not God himself who, after making and declaring all things ‘good’, says “it is not good for a man to be alone” (Gen 2:18)? However, the question remains: how does this relate to sexual purity? May I gently suggest that one of the many, but important reasons for the radical increase in sexual struggles among young men and women is their inexplicable delaying of marriage.
The glamour of the extended ‘carefree single life’ is a cover for immaturity, self-centeredness, worldly ambition, and a lack of disregard for the biblical teaching on marriage. And, therefore, when young men and women seek to extend their “carefree, single life” they are actually modelling what homosexuals have popularized. So, what happens when young men and women disregard the God-given desire and drive for intimacy and companionship in pursuit of worldly goals? The desire and drive do not go away. Rather, they would seek ungodly avenues to fulfil God-given needs.R. R. Reno makes this startling but astute observation namely that, “Homosexuals, especially gay men, are…associated with scrupulous self-care and glamorous consumption. They pioneered the now upper-middle-class norm of extended adolescence, the carefree single life that extends for decades. Gay life also realizes the dreams of many feminists—professional success and self-realization without the burdens of fertility.”2 (emphasis mine)
Young Christian men and women, unless called by the Lord to a life of singleness in serving Him, whatever else they may pursue in life, they ought to get married, raise children and be godly parents. Marriage and parenting have the potential to enable men and women to sober down and mature. How much more so when done within the context of a church community! It truly enables one to grow in godliness.
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Written by Nicholas T. Batzig |
Tuesday, October 25, 2022
We need to remind ourselves of those precious truths of the gospel—namely, that through our union with Christ in His death and resurrection, the power of sin has been broken, the guilt of our sin has been forgiven and dealt with, and the assurance of God’s presence secured to us.

Today marks 21 years since the Lord brought me to saving faith and repentance. I always find it to be a good practice to meditate on the way in which the Lord draw me out of a pit of sin and misery and to Himself in Christ. Remembering what we once were when we were dead in sins and what God did to mercifully draw us to Himself through the saving work of Christ is vital if we are to make advancement in our spiritual growth in grace. The Christian life is often fueled most of all not by learning new things (although there are always more important truths for us to learn in God’s word) but by remembering those truths that God has already revealed to us.
There are at least three clear places in Scripture that encourage us to remember the truth of the gospel in order to make progress in growth in Christ-likeness. The first passage is Romans 6. There, the Apostle Paul explained that if we are united to Jesus we have died with Him, been buried with Him, and risen with Him. In light of this truth–and the accompanying truths about our having died to the power of sin since He died to it’s power–Paul charges believers with the following words: “Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 6:11). Paul was charging believers to preach a specific aspect of the Gospel–what theologians call definitive sanctification–to ourselves. This charge comes on the heal of the question, “Shall we continue in sin that grace might abound?” Through our union with Christ crucified and risen, we have a powerful tool to encourage holiness in the lives of believers. If we are struggling with a particular sin or on the brink of giving into some sin, Paul charges us to preach to ourselves that aspect of the gospel in which there has been a definitive breach with sin’s power.
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God did not treat the human writers as inert objects (non-organic) but as living beings (organic) with their own unique traits. Yet at the same time, every single word was what God wanted written down.

Who wrote the Bible? God did. To put a finer point on it, God is the divine author who used various human authors to write exactly what He wanted written. That is, God is the primary author and the humans are secondary authors. This type of dual authorship is assumed throughout the Bible. For example, “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord [primary author] had spoken by the prophet [Isaiah, secondary author]” (Matt. 1:22; see also Mark 12:36; Heb. 3:7 with 4:7; 2 Peter 1:21). Traditionally, God’s effecting the Scriptures to be written is termed inspiration, which means that God breathed out the Scriptures (2 Tim. 3:16).
Primary Authorship
In addition to straightforward passages that declare God as the author of Scripture (2 Tim. 3:16), there are other types of intriguing biblical passages confirming divine authorship. Let us look at three.
There are passages where the Scriptures are functionally equated to God. In Romans 9:17, Paul is quoting from Exodus 9:16, where Moses is told to declare God’s words to Pharaoh. But Paul does not write, “God says to Pharaoh,” but instead, “Scripture says to Pharaoh.” Obviously, Paul means that God spoke to Pharaoh, but God’s speaking and Scripture’s speaking are intimately related to each other in Paul’s mind. Similarly in Galatians 3:8, within an argument showing that the doctrine of justification by faith existed in the Old Testament, Paul notes the forward-looking aspect of Genesis 12:3 intended by God. But in referring to this, Paul does not write, “God foreseeing,” but “Scripture foreseeing.” Again, God and Scripture are intimately related.
There are also Old Testament passages where God does not appear to be the speaker, but He is denoted as the speaker by a New Testament writer. Hebrews 1:5–13 includes seven Old Testament quotes. These quotes include passages in which God is the direct speaker but others in which He is not. However, all the quotes in Hebrews are prefaced by some form of “God says” or “he says.” Thus, whether the Old Testament context includes God’s explicitly speaking or not, the author of Hebrews considers all of Scripture to be God’s speaking on some level.
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