As for other matters, brothers and sisters, we instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus. It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable. 1Thes. 4:1-4
And God spoke all these words: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery Ex. 20:1-2
Before God goes on to give Moses the 10 Commandments He says, "I am the Lord your God". They are already His before they obey anything. Why? Because they applied the blood on the doorposts in an act of faith trusting the blood of the lamb to save them. In 1Thessalonians 4 Paul calls them his brothers and sisters while they are practicing sexual immorality. Why? Because it says in Chapter 1 that they received the gospel. It's like now that you are saved, here is how you should live.
Quite often we see repentance as turn from sin and follow Christ. That is more sanctification than repentance. Repentance is turning from following self to following Christ. To admit that you are wrong and He is right. Once you have done that, the rest of life is a process of becoming like Christ and one area is our sexuality. People don't have to quit living together, quit pornography, leave homosexuality to get saved. However, once they become His, then God will start convicting them of sinful areas in their life that need to change.
I illustrated it like this to the grandkids. I have a 5 inch bendable Jesus figure that I covered with Play Doh so it looked like a big oval lump of clay. I said, "This is you and you just got saved. You asked Jesus into your life. As God starts revealing sins to you, with His help and sometimes others keeping you accountable, you start removing sins from your life. For example your desire to have your own way, be first, always win even if it means cheating... as you master those a piece or 2 of clay gets removed." I then peel off 2 or 3 pieces of play doh and they start to see bendable Jesus underneath. You get the point. This is sanctification. This is God's will for us - to start looking like His Son.
Let's not try to clean people up before they get saved. Just present the simple gospel and let God do the cleaning up later.
