Mathew 5:28
But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
In these words of Jesus, we commit the sin of adultery, not when we look at a woman, but when we engage our imagination, and allow our lust to be activated.
This is why secular TV and movies are so dangerous for a Christian. We are engaging our imagination, not just with lust, but with perversion, murders, blasphemy, lies, manipulation, extreme violence and the list goes on and on. Our entertainment looks alot like the list from Galations 5:19…
The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
And the works of a reprobate mind described in Romans 1:28-32
Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.
They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.
Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
Things that violate the admonition of Psalms 1.1,
Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
Or the command of “touch not the unclean thing“, and again, “abstain from the very appearance of evil“. And the admonition of Phillipians 2, of letting Christ’s Mind abide in us.
The restrictions for Christians thoughts to be like those described in Plillipians 4;
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
Lastly, what are we forcing the Holy Spirit of God to engage with? We are not our own, and we grieve the Spirit of God with our appetites for the things of the world, and worse, things that are not from the mind of Christ, but from the mind of the evil one.
Epheisian 4:17-19
So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.
They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.
Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.
Phillipians 4: 20-24, 30
That, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus.
You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
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And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, by whom you are sealed unto the day of redemption.
And we wonder why God seems so far away at times.
