How Serious is Lust?

What was Jesus talking about? Did He mean it? Or could we accept the usual Family interpretation that ‘as it’s impossible to refrain from looking, Jesus indicated that this was no longer a sin’? How does this verse fit with the law of love, with salvation by grace not works?

Well, firstly, salvation is a work of God that does not depend on our own deeds. He chooses us, and bestows on us the free gift of salvation. We all know Eph 2:8,9 and there are numerous other related verses which are beyond the scope of this study. This Scripture is not referring to our eternal salvation.

So, why mention lust at all? Not only does Jesus grant us eternal life, He also begins in us a work that He will continue until He returns. He wants us to grow, mature.

Phil 1:6 being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;

The passage in Matthew 5 is to be taken in the same way as the warnings, admonitions and instructions on honesty, generosity, anger, forgiveness, hypocrisy etc that were given in the same setting, that of the Sermon on the Mount, which extends through three chapters, Matthew 5-7. This is a ‘growth’ teaching to help us become more like Jesus.

Jesus was not joking. There is nothing here to indicate He had His tongue in His cheek when He said these things any more than when He said, ‘Be reconciled to your brother’, ‘Blessed are the meek’ or ‘Love your enemies’, all in the same chapter. Did He say it was going to be easy? What is easy about taking our cross and following Him? Did He say it was possible?

Matt 19:26 But Jesus looked at them and said to them, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

No matter how we examine these verses (Matt. 5:27-28), there is no way that we can interpret them to imply that lusting after a woman is permissible. Jesus quoted the seventh commandment, ‘You shall not commit adultery’ and then expanded it to include looking in lust. ‘Heart adultery’. He followed this stunning statement with another which seems even more incomprehensible.

Matt 5:29-30

29 “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.

30 “And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.

Surely He didn’t really mean for us to gouge out our eyeballs to prevent looking in lust?! To mutilate ourselves in some self-works trip to avoid sin? And, more to the point, if He didn’t mean us to do that, then maybe He didn’t mean what He said about looking. The crucial fact to remember when asking these kind of questions is that Jesus is the Truth. There was nothing He said that was in any way not 100% truth. Don’t forget that.

Adultery is sin

Let’s put it plainly. Matthew 5:27-30 says that adultery is sin, cultivating adultery in our heart is sin, looking lustfully so as to cultivate ‘heart-adultery’ is sin, and we should do whatever it takes to keep ourselves from these sins. It is helpful to look at a related passage from James:

James 1:12-15

12 Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.

13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone.

14 But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed.

15 Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.

A note about ‘desire’: (KJV: lust, NIV: evil desire, TLB: evil thoughts). Desire here is far more than normal sexual arousal. Our sexual urges are an inborn part of life and are not evil in themselves. However there is plenty of evil we can do with those sexual urges if we yield to our lusts.

As an example, remember when you were a child looking at the toys in the shop windows? You wanted them all! (OK, only about ½ of them!) Was that sin? It’s pretty normal for a child to wish for new toys. That’s not sin. Sin came when you allowed your ‘toy-desire’ to take control. Maybe you threw a tantrum in the shop in front of your embarrassed parents, or maybe you decided to steal one of the smaller toys that you could safely fit into your pocket. Your parents (hopefully) taught you that stealing and tantrum-throwing was wrong. The point is that sin occurred when the child refused to keep his normal childish wishes under control.

Teenagers experience many ‘urges’ and similarly must learn to keep their desires under control. Every young person must learn to control him or herself when it comes to driving, alcohol, taking drugs etc. Driving in itself is neither good nor bad, but a driver who does not control himself is a very very bad thing indeed! Sexual feelings are also a normal part of life, and in themselves are neither good nor bad. Yield, however, to every sexual thought that pops into our head, and we have the potential to cause great harm. We are indeed in control of our body, and it is sin to follow our stray thoughts (as in the example of the child in the toy shop) by throwing a carefully orchestrated tantrum to get our wish granted, or to ‘steal’ it or worse. With sex, the harmful consequences are far more serious and long-lasting, and can even permanently damage someone’s heart, faith, life etc.

Temptation comes, but when it does, we cannot say, ‘Oh, that’s just the way I am made’. That’s the same as saying ‘I am tempted by God’ because we are creatures of God’s making. God has given us the power to resist temptation, or we can choose to yield to it. We have ultimate and complete responsibility over what we do when tempted. If we yield to temptation (whether it be for illicit sex or for some other sin) it is because we have chosen to walk this road of desiring, thinking on it, sinning, and eventually dying.

Temptation and self-control

If our eyes cause us to sin, if it’s hard to resist temptation because of what our eyes see, then before we rip them out perhaps we should recall that we control our own eyelids! We control our own neck muscles which may serve to direct the eyes in another direction. We control our feet which may prove very useful in walking away! We are in control. Jesus said to exercise that control, use it, do not abdicate it to some erroneous idea that ‘we can’t help it’.

Job knew of this principle, he knew he had eyeball control.

Job 31:1 “I have made a covenant with my eyes; why then should I look upon a young woman?

He also knew seriousness of the sin, and its consequences, both here on earth and in heaven after he died.

Job 31:9-12

9 If mine heart have been deceived by a woman, or if I have laid wait at my neighbour’s door;

10 Then let my wife grind unto another, and let others bow down upon her. (NIV: sleep with her)

11 For this is an heinous crime; yea, it is an iniquity to be punished by the judges.

12 For it is a fire that consumeth to destruction, and would root out all mine increase.

(KJV)

Hanging around at his neighbour’s door, ‘lurking with intent’ is a ‘heinous crime’, ‘wickedness’, ‘iniquity’. How did Job keep himself? Eyeball control (vs.1). Losing control is dangerous.

Does this mean that for a man to look at a woman is sin? Remember what Jesus said, looking at a woman to lust after her is heart-adultery. Regarding a woman as a sex-object, or as the object of sexual fantasies etc. Obviously we remain aware of what our brain is doing with the things that pass in front of our eyes, and if necessary, control our eyeballs so they don’t lead our brainwaves down the wrong path.

Prov 25:28 A man without self-control is as defenseless as a city with broken-down walls. (TLB)

We have control. Self control is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit.

Gal 5:22-23

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

23 gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.

So, if we are having a hard time controlling those urges, we can pray for more Holy Spirit. There’s nothing of self-works here. Our whole Christian life can only be lived as Jesus lives through us. As we yield to Him, we become more Christ-like, ‘partakers of the divine nature’.

The divine nature

2 Pet 1:4-11

4 by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

5 But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge,

6 to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness,

7 to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.

8 For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

9 For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.

10 Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble;

11 for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

There’s a good ‘to-do’ list: faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, kindness, love. And what a great promise that follows! The more we abound in these qualities, the more fruitful we will be, and the more we’ll understand the Lord. As we exercise our self-control over our sexual urges we will bear fruit. Failure to control ourself by choosing to indulge in something God forbad means we’re just not seeing things right, as verse 9 above says. We won’t be able to understand the Lord or His ways, we might stumble, and we might find ourself sorely lacking when we arrive in heaven.

It’s not a matter of fighting off our fleshly lusts, although there may be a time for that. It has everything to do with yielding to the Lord, and keeping our eyes on Him, as the following verses say:

Col 3:1-6

1 If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God.

2 Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.

3 For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

4 When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.

5 Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

6 Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience,

As we keep our minds on the Lord, as we follow Jesus as He walks in us, we will desire the things which are above, heavenly things, and the things which cut us off from the life of God will die. First on the ‘put to death list’ is fornication. Just let it die. If we set our heart on the Lord this fornication will just drop dead.

Set your affection on things above

Here’s another couple of passages that say the same thing, that if we set our affection on Jesus, then the lusts of the flesh, those lusts that drag us towards sexual sins will just die.

I Jn 2:15-17

15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

16 For all that is in the world-- the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life-- is not of the Father but is of the world.

17 And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.

‘Worldliness’ is usually equated with ‘materialism’ in the Family. This is certainly part of it, but verse 16 above shows that worldliness can be anything we desire with our body, with our eyes, or anything we do to satisfy our craving for self-exaltation. Worldliness is far more than envying someone who has the latest electronic gadget or listening to ‘system music’ or indiscriminate TV watching. All these may be part of it, but confining ourself to such a narrow definition conveniently excludes ourself from many of the other sins of the heart. And there is certainly no possibility of excluding sexual lust from the ‘lust of the eyes’ (as Jesus Himself pointed out in Matthew 5:28) or of omitting the actual sex that occurs as a result of the eye-lust from ‘the lust of the flesh’.

The lust of the flesh is one of the religions of the world. The world glories in its sexual freedoms and exalts human sexuality to such a high position that any and all restraint is cast to the wind. TV shows, movies, music and advertising all glorify sexual promiscuity and hence we are urged in 1 John 2:15 in no uncertain terms not to love the ways of the world, and certainly not to bring them into our own lives, must less into our church. The lust of the flesh is not of God and the Family should walk very carefully before attempting to redefine their doctrine of sexual promiscuity as being based on anything other than the lust of the flesh. All those doctrines will pass away, together with those who are entangled therein. Note that verse 17 above says that there is a very clear distinction in eternity between those who obey God and those who live according to the world’s lusts.

Walk in the Spirit

Gal 5:16-17

16 I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

17 For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.

Walk in the Spirit and we won’t sin sexually. The Holy Spirit does not lead us towards gratifying our human desires. Don’t ever say, ‘The Lord showed me to do it’ because as we walk in the Spirit (that’s the Holy Spirit, by the way, not any other spirit) we will not be thinking about how to pander to our sexual appetite. We’ll be compelled to give our life for each other; the Lord will take control and pour out the fruits of the Holy Spirit in such abundance that we won’t have time for self-centred contemplation.

Does the Bible say that people have a need for sexual expression, that sex is a need, similar to the need for food, clothing and shelter? No, sex is not a need in that regard. Paul acknowledges that some people have a strong urge for sex, which is why he encourages marriage in 1 Cor 7. However the Bible does not say anywhere that we should treat sex as a human need. Jesus alleviated human needs as He came across them. He fed the hungry, healed the sick, raised the dead, comforted the downtrodden. Nowhere did He give the slightest hint that He was interested in alleviating any human sexual ‘need’. On the contrary, He condemned all extra-marital and premarital sex as sin.

In conclusion, lust is a serious sin against the Lord. Jesus was in earnest when He gave the severe warnings in Matthew 5, He wants us to stay away from even considering sexual relations outside of marriage. There is verse after verse after verse all through the Bible that loudly and clearly proclaims that all such sex is sin, and there is not a single verse anywhere that so much as hints that God might condone a sexually free attitude between believers, or indeed between anyone who is not married. Lust is the forerunner to such sin, but God has given us the power of the Holy Spirit to counter our own physical desires. As we yield to Him, the desire to sin drops dead (note that this does not say, ‘the desire for sex drops dead’, but ‘the desire to sin’) and we become partakers of the divine nature. God also provided a wonderful way for us to satisfy those sexual desires that just won’t go away, and this is called marriage.

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