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2007-04-17 issue:

Lust: illusion of love

Grace and Truth column

by Clarence E. Rempel

Print Article

Lust is the bottomless craving for excitement. Lust is the drive for pleasure, particularly sexual pleasure, out of proportion to its worth. Lust is using the gift of imagination for illicit purposes. Lust is one of the seven deadly sins named in early Christian tradition.

Lust as illusion: Lust often pretends to be love. Lust has to do with me and what I’m getting. Love has to do with serving you and what you need. Too often people try so hard to love and be loved. Then they realize that what they thought was love was really about another trying to satisfy his or her lust. In the pursuit of love, they are betrayed, used and dishonored. Lust seems so close to love, yet even in its closeness it is painfully far away.

God created us sexual beings, male and female. God created us with sexual desires, first of all, to continue the human race. Second, God gave sex as a way of bonding and rebonding a husband and wife to create lifelong companionship and a stable family unit. This sexual union is joyous and pleasurable, but when we make pleasure the goal of sexual behavior, it becomes self-serving. 

Lust as the denial of death: As wrinkles set in and tummies sag, we face our mortality. Some men go out and buy motorcycles or climb 14,000-foot peaks in a vain attempt to recapture youth. We easily get caught by the lust for sexual energy and conquest. “Are we still attractive?” 

How can we combat and overcome lust?

Stop and consider the consequences. Lust is never satisfied. After the initial rush, it leaves emptiness. The next fantasy has to be more intense or bizarre to get the same rush.
The most significant consequence is grieving the Lord who redeems us. David’s adulterous affair with Bathsheba “displeased the Lord” (2 Samuel 11:27).

Too many Christians think they can indulge in pornography or Internet chat rooms, and nobody is hurt. That’s the lie of lust. It always affects somebody, and the first one it affects is God.

There are other consequences: inflicting untold hurt on our spouses, ruining our example and credibility with our children, bringing shame on the body of Christ, heaping endless difficulty on the one who was the object of our lust, creating a guilt hard to shake.

Commit to becoming free in Christ. In a letter to the editor in The Mennonite, Forrest L. Moyer described himself “as a young Mennonite man recovering from gender confusion and same-sex attraction.” He wrote, “I want to state clearly that what young men and women in our position need is … consistent, caring love and guidance as we die to ourselves and rise to new life and wholeness in Christ” (June 21, 2005).

Lust thrives on secrecy. Rarely are lustful behaviors halted without openness and accountability with at least one other person. King David needed the prophet Nathan. After Nathan’s confrontation, David spoke the honest truth, “I have sinned against the Lord” (2 Samuel 12:13).

Until we confess that we are powerless to overcome lust, we will struggle with failure. We are powerless, but Christ is greater. 

Commit to countercultural biblical values. Chastity is God’s will for singleness; fidelity is God’s will for marriage. If you make that commitment, you will be odd in your beliefs and behaviors. Get used to the idea of being odd or, as the Bible says, “not conformed to worldly values.”

C. S. Lewis says it this way, “Virtue—even attempted virtue—brings light; indulgence brings fog” (Mere Christianity). Don’t give in. Don’t give up. Christ is greater.

Clarence E. Rempel is a pastor at First Mennonite Church, Newton, Kan.

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