CAN A PERSON LIVE IN ADULTERY AND OTHER SINS AND GO TO HEAVEN? (2024)

The Bible answers this question with an emphatic “No” in many passages (1 John 3:8; 5:18; Col 3:5-6; Galatians 5:21; Hebrews 12:14; Matthew 5:30: Matthew 25:30; 1 Cor. 6:9-10; Matthew 5:29-30, etc.

John Piper, a respected theologian, pastor and author, answers the above question the best of any person I know: He especially addresses the very common sin of sexual lust:

A man living in adultery came to Piper and asked in so many words, “Can I go to heaven living in adultery?” And Piper gave the following answer:

“ ‘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 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. Not that saints always succeed. The issue is that we resolve to fight, not that we succeed flawlessly.

The stakes are much higher than whether the would is blown up by a thousand long-range missiles, or terrorists bomb your city, or global warming melts the icecaps, or AIDS sweeps the nations. All these calamities can kill only the body. But if we don’t fight lust we lose our soul. The apostle Peter said, “Abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul (1 Peter 2:11). The stakes in this war are infinitely higher than in any threat of war or terrorism. The apostle Paul listed “sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness,” then said, “On account of these the wrath of God is coming” (Colossians 3:5-6). And the wrath of God is immeasurably more fearful than the wrath of all the nations put together. In Galatians 5:19, Paul mentions immorality, impurity, and sensuality and says, “Those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:21).

JUSTIFYING FAITH ISLUST-FIGHTING FAITH

What then is the answer to this student and this man living in adultery? We are justified by grace alone through faith alone (Romans 3:28; 4:5; 5:1; Ephesians 2:8-9); and all those who are thus justified will be glorified (Romans 8:30) – that is, no justified person will ever be lost. Nevertheless, those who give themselves up to impurity will be lost (Galatians 5:21), and those who forsake the fight against lust will perish (Matthew 5:3)), and those who do not pursue holiness will not see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14), and those who surrender their lives to evil desires will succumb to the wrath of God (Colossians 3:6).

The reason these two groups of texts are not contradictory is that the faith that justifies is a faith that also sanctifies. Justifying faith embraces Christ as our crucified sin-bearer and our risen righteousness before God, along with all that God promises to be for us in Him. In the same way, that faith keeps on embracing Christ this way and thus becomes the means of sanctification as well as justification. The test of whether our faith is the kind of faith that justifies is whether it is the kind of faith that sanctifies. These are not two different kinds of faith. Both embrace Christ who bore our punishment, provided our righteousness, and promises to meet every need to the end of the age.

Robert Dabney, the nineteenth-century southern Presbyterian theologian, expressed it like this: ‘Is it by the instrumentality of faith we receive Christ as our justification, without the merit of our works? Well. But this same faith, if vital enough to embrace Christ, is also vital enough to ‘work by love,’ ‘to purify our hearts.’ This then is the virtue of the free gospel, as a ministry of sanctification, that the very faith which embraces the gift becomes an inevitable and a divinely powerful principle of obedience.’

Faith delivers from hell, and the faith that delivers from hell delivers from lust. Again I do not mean that 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.”[1]

The question, now, is this: HOW DO YOU PUT LUST TO DEATH? Piper answers as follows:

“One of the ways that Paul talks about this battle is to say, ‘If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live’ (Romans 8:13). This is close to Jesus’ teaching that if we are willing to gouge out our eye rather than lust we will enter into life (Matthew 18:9). Paul agrees that eternal life is at stake in the battle against sin: ‘If you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live’ (Romans 8:13). The fight against lust is a fight to the death.

How then do we obey Romans 8:13 – to put to death the deeds of the body, to kill lust? We have answered, ‘By faith in future grace.’ But practically, what does that involve?

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. The power of all temptation is the prospect that it will make me happier. No one sins out of a sense of duty. We embrace sin because it promises that, at least in the short run, things will be more pleasant.

[1] John Piper, Battling Unbelief, Colorado Springs, Colorado: Mulnomah Publishers, 2007, pp. 137-138