“Lust”

Matthew 5:27-28

Matthew 5:28 (Barclay): … if anyone looks at a woman in such a way as to deliberately awaken within himself the forbidden desire for her, he has already committed adultery with her in intention.

Matthew 5:28 (The Message): But don’t think you’ve preserved your virtue simply by staying out of bed. Your heart can be corrupted by lust even quicker than your body. Those leering looks you think nobody notices – they also corrupt.

Frederick Buechner’s Definition of Lust: The craving for salt of a man dying of thirst.

[prayer]

“I did not know there were seven deadly sins. Please tell me the names of the other six?” That is the statement that a young man made to Dorothy Sayers years ago. Because of it, when she wrote an essay on the seven deadly sins, Ms. Sayers entitled it “The Other Six Deadly Sins.”

There are seven deadly sins. I know that. You know that. Dorothy Sayers knew that. But in the words of Stephen Shoemaker, “Too often the church has acted as if lust were the only deadly sin. You can be prideful, slothful, envious, angry, greedy, and gluttonous and still be a respectable Christian, but woe unto you if you commit sexual sins.”

I’m not sharing this in an effort to downplay the seriousness of lust. Lust is a deadly sin, but it’s not the only deadly sin. Lust is destructive to individuals and societies, but so too are the other six.

The woman caught in adultery in the eighth chapter of John’s Gospel was guilty of blatant sin. She was no more sinful, however, than those who proudly, arrogantly, self-righteously, and to an extent deceitfully condemned her. Just as she had used another person to satisfy her own selfish needs, they were using her to get to Jesus. She was little more to them than a pawn in their deadly game of ecclesiastical politics.

One of the basic lessons of life is that we are to use things but not people. People are not objects we can use, abuse, and manipulate in order to get what we want. People are not property that we can buy and sell. People are not toys with which we can amuse ourselves. People are not props in the stories of our lives.

Lust is a deadly sin precisely because it leads us to use, abuse, and manipulate people to satisfy a sexual need. Lust objectifies people, turning them into sexual playthings. Lust can lead us to treat people as a commodity that we can buy and sell. Lust leads us to demean people, strip them of their humanity, and in some cases treat them as our personal sexual slaves.

Lust can also work the other way around. Lust drives people to let themselves be used, abused, and manipulated. Lust leads people to use their own bodies as playthings or bartering tools. Lust causes people to let themselves be demeaned. Lust has a way of enslaving people in dark prisons of addiction.

Lust, like all things in creation, is a corruption of something good. People need people. People need intimacy. People need to be in relationships with one another and their God. People need to be touched and held. People need to know that they are important to someone else, that they are appreciated, cared for, and loved. People are born with an innate hunger for these things.

None of them are overtly sexual. Two people can experience friendship and intimacy without having to have sex with one another. Children need their parents and other caring adults to hold and touch them in ways that are loving, caring, and protective. We are created to be in all kinds of healthy, loving relationships. The vast majority of them are not sexual in nature.

Sex does have its place in our lives. We are created as sexual beings. Without sex, at least for most of human history, there could be no procreation. But there’s more to it than that. We are created male and female in the image of God. Within the context of a sexual union in which a man and a woman truly become one flesh the image of God becomes more apparent. The sexual passion ignited between a man and wife in a healthy, loving relationship is the only thing on earth that can come close to the passion with which our God pursues us.

Lust is a corruption of all that. Love, especially the love of God revealed in Christ Jesus, is unselfish, always putting the needs of the other first. Love is mutual in nature. We give love, and we get love. Love is undemanding. We do not force or manipulate others to love us.

Lust is entirely selfish and self-centered. There is no real mutuality in lust. One gives because the other one takes. Lust demands its rights. Lust gets what it wants no matter what it must do to get it. Lust forces itself on the other. Lust is manipulative.

Lust is a selfish, twisted, corrupted desire for love. It’s just what Frederick Buechner says it is, a craving for salt when we’re dying of thirst. Years ago there was song about looking for love in all the wrong places. That’s what lust leads us to do. We go from one relationship to another trying to satisfy our hunger for love with sex. We treat our partners like cars, to be traded in for a new model on a regular basis. We consider other people to be sexual trophies to be one. We treat our sexual encounters as conquests. In the case of adultery we even steal what isn’t ours just so we can say that we’ve had it.

And that, I’m sad to say, is the healthier side of lust. Hungry for love, desperate for intimacy, and dying for lack of a relationship with God, we often let lust lead us into some pretty sick places. Prostitution has been called the world’s oldest profession. If for whatever reason we can’t satisfy our lust in other ways, we can buy a partner, or at least rent one for a while. That’s not love. That’s not intimacy. That’s not a relationship. It’s just another financial transaction in which someone who wants something buys it from someone who’s selling it.

And then there’s pornography. With pornography we don’t even need a partner. All we need is a magazine, or VCR, or DVD player, or personal computer. Until the money runs out, we can buy all the lust we want and consume it at our leisure. That’s as about as far from love as we can get. There’s definitely no intimate relationship involved. The other people involved aren’t even real to us. They’re just images we use to satisfy our own desires.

Back to prostitution. Several years ago a movie called “Pretty Woman” painted a glamorous picture of a hooker being loved and rescued by a rich man. The harsh truth is that there are no such stories. Prostitutes are often runaway teenagers who’ve been essentially enslaved. Or people who, for whatever reason, think they have to engage in it to survive. Or in all too many cases young men, women, and even children who have been literally sold into sexual slavery. They are owned body and soul by cruel people who use them up and throw them away.

Engaging the services of a prostitute is often much, much more than a simple financial transaction. It is a degrading form of abuse often inflicted upon someone who is helpless. It is a way by which one participates in the perpetuation of a sordidly profitable business. Most street prostitutes don’t live to be thirty. They are destroyed body and soul by greed on the one hand and lust on the other.

Pornography is in many ways nothing more than second-hand prostitution. When we buy it we are contributing to an evil and twisted economic system. Men, women, and children are hired, manipulated, or forced to engage in sexual acts that others pay to watch. Men, women, and children are hired, manipulated, or forced to satisfy secret lusts. They become nothing more than objects of entertainment. They are demeaned and degraded for the profit and pleasure of strangers.

Yes, lust is a deadly sin, one that can destroy us body and soul. It can also become a means by which we destroy others. It can break up marriages and make a nightmare childhood. It can bankrupt us spiritually as well as financially. It’s been known to bring kings to their knees and send great ministries crashing to the ground.

Lust is only one of seven deadly sins. It is no more destructive than the other six. It is also no less. And like the other six it originates in the sinful heart of fallen humanity. Is there an earthly cure for it? No. Just as it is with pride and all the other deadly sins, we cannot be completely rid of it this side of eternity.

But that doesn’t mean that we have to surrender to it. In Christ all sins can be confessed, repented of, and forgiven. In Christ we can find healing for the wounds inflicted upon us by lust. Within the fellowship of Christ’s body the church we can find nurture and guidance in the ways of Christ that will enable us to resist lust’s siren call. Above all, in Christ we can find the love for which we’ve been searching in all the wrong places. Amen.