I’ll be preaching seven sermons on the Seven Deadly Sins spread over the year finishing with the last one on the 7th December. If it is true that “sin has a thousand faces” the face of sin we’re most familiar with are what’s called Seven Deadly Sins: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy and Pride.
These seven made it to the hit-list not because they were the most gruesome but because they were doorway sins; they were sins through which other sins sneak through. The seven deadly sins were catalogued by Thomas Aquinas a mediaeval theologian and I will be preaching them in the order Dante has it in his Inferno.
So let’s begin with the deadly sin of lust.
Let me begin by saying that when you consider the ways that some Christians have reacted to sex over the centuries you might be forgiven for thinking that sex is dirty. For too long the church has shied away from talking about sex.
In fact it wasn’t until 550 AD that the church allowed the literal reading of the Song of Songs at the Council of Constantinople. If you were a Jew you could not read the Song of Solomon not until you were 30. Today, we’re still embarrassed to have it read in public
In Victorian times people believed that sex between husband and wife was merely a duty; not something to be relished. But Victorian prudery is not biblical reality.
Nowhere in the Bible will you find the teaching that sexual desire is dirty, vile or polluting it itself. God created us sexual beings and sex in itself is not sinful. Soon as God created human people as male and female, He stands back and He says “Behold it is very good”. And He tells husbands and wives to “be fruitful.”
In Proverbs 5:19 He tells husbands and wives to ravish one another sexually. Look at the way Bible translators translate this verse.
NLT / “May you always be captivated by her love”
Now you won’t believe this – the KJV reads “be thou ravished always with her love”
CSB / “be lost in her love forever”
NKJV / “always be enraptured with her love”
NASB / “Be exhilarated always with her love”
ESV / “be intoxicated always in her love”
Looks like the translators really went to town on this verse.
The very fact that the Song of Solomon is in the Bible most evidentially rebuts the distorted view that sex is dirty. 1 Corinthians 7 warmly commends husbands and wives to consciously cultivate sexual desires for each other.
The Bible celebrates sex in a way no other religion even comes near. Compared to other religious books of the world. the Bible, by a long shot, has the most glorious. exalting view of sex. No other religion extolls sex the way the Bible does. It is simply unmatched!
The point is this: Human sexuality can be both erotic and holy. The human sex drive is not the product of cosmic biological accident. God invented sex. He thought sex beautiful enough to invent it and we need not be priggish, puritanical or stuffy over it. God puts a barricade around sex not because it’s dirty but because it’s sacred. He’s jealous to preserve it’s sanctity. It mustn’t be trivialised.
Now if it must not be trivialised, what threatens to trivialise it? If the sanctity of sex needed to be preserved from what does it need to be preserved?
From this, the first of the seven deadly sins, lust.
C.S. Lewis in his book The Four Loves draws the difference between eros and lust. The word eros is not found in the Bible but its imagery is found in many places in the Bible. In the Old Testament, God is the husband to his people. In the New Testament Christ is the bridegroom to his church. The prophets looked at the sins of Israel as spiritual adultery. The Song of Solomon extols the romantic love between a young bride and her groom.
Lewis insists that eros or sexual love is not a curse of the Fall. Our first parents in that pristine Garden of Eden without sin enjoyed pure erotic love .
Genesis 2:25 portrays what pure eros is. “The man and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame”. There was no shame because there was no perversion. There was no perversion because it was pure eroticism. And pure eroticism is never vulgar in itself.
Lewis says we use the wrong idiom when we say that a lustful man prowls the streets because he “wants a woman”. Lewis says a woman is just what he does not want. To a lustful man a woman is merely an essential hardware that he uses to gratify his own lustful desires. He does not seek a person. He seeks his own gratification.
Lewis says that sexual desire without eros love wants only sex. But what eros wants during sex is the intimacy of the beloved.
Lewis, in his usual perceptive brilliance says eros makes a man want not a woman, but one particular woman. He wants her not because she can satisfy his need. He wants her because she is who she is. He is fascinated with her as a whole person, faults and all.
There’s holistic intimacy in eros. Eros will hold the love of his life when she bends over and vomits from morning sickness.
Now lust is a very different thing altogether. Romans 1 talks about women exchanging natural relations for unnatural ones; about men abandoning natural relations with women and becoming inflamed with lust for other men.
Lust cheapens sex. Jesus condemns it. He says: “If a man looks at a woman with lust he has already commit adultery with her” Matt 5:28. You will not find one other religion or culture that has raised the bar of sexual ethics this high.
Lust is a perverted form of eros. Lust desires to paw and claw in order to seize and capture. Lust is an agitated longing; a frightening craving; an out of touch desire to consume or possess a person without caring about the needs or feelings of that person or the will of God. It’s coveting. Lust dehumanises the person who’s the object of lust.
The reason why pornography is such a depraved thing is because when you depreciate a person sexually you deface the image of God in this person.
You know your family car takes you and the kids to school and the supermarket. But car thieves don’t look at your car “as a car”. They are interested in the parts. They will strip the car for parts.
Now, that is what lust does. Lust reduces the person they lust after, to their disconnected body parts.
I have a younger brother who is a medical doctor. He tells me that when he was in medical school, he was required, as all medical students are to work on cadavers in the anatomy lab. He tells me that all the time that he was dissecting the body the face of the cadaver was covered by a piece of cloth. He says you should not think of “it” as a person. If you did, If you thought of “it” as a real person, someone who once had hopes, dreams, loves and aspirations, you couldn’t proceed with your dissection. “It” had to remain a specimen, a cadaver. The Latin word cadaver is “fallen one” [Latin. cadere “to fall / perish”]
But that, precisely is what porn does to people who are still alive. Like the car thief you reduce a person to disconnected parts.
See, the most depraved thing about pornography is not that they are sexual. The most depraved thing about pornography is that they are not sexual enough. Pornography is a cheap and tawdry imitation of the real thing. It is too shallow. It reduces something that is soul-deep into something that is merely skin-deep.
But the question still begs to be answered!
Why does God endow sex with such sanctity and sacredness? Why is it that only within the sacred canopy of a marriage may two people give themselves to each other sexually?
There are at least three reasons.
One, and I have alluded somewhat to it already. Our sexuality reflects His image! At the apex of creation right after saying God created man “in His own image” the Word goes on to say: “Male and female He created them” Gen 1:27. It’s not saying that God has both a male or a female deity within Him much like the Hindu god Shiva. Rather God is here saying: “Your sexuality reflects My image!” In some mysterious way our masculinity and our femininity reflect His image.
It is intriguing that when the Bible talks about our betrayal of God and our unfaithfulness to Him, it uses the imagery of marriage. God uses the metaphor of marriage to describe His relationship with human people.
So, sex is sacred because our sexuality reflects His image!
Two: There’s a second reason why God endows sex with such sanctity. Apart from the purpose of procreation God designed sex as a means for two people to commune at the deepest level.Sex between man and wife enables each to say to the other: “I belong totally, exclusively, permanently to you alone. I am committed to you to share the same hopes, the same aspirations, with you alone”.
See the Hebrew people have a word for sex which is a graphic euphemism for such an esoteric communion. It’s the word “yada” meaning to “know”. “Yada” is a splendid euphemism for sexual intimacy. It describes a passionate relationship that’s filled with ardour, with warmth and affinity.
Adam had this beautiful face to face communion with Eve. It’s right there in your ESV text / Genesis 4:1
“Adam knew Eve his wife / and she conceived and bore Cain”. This is profound; “knowing leads to conception” Remember when the Virgin Mary was told that she will conceive and bear a child she exclaimed “How can this be since I do not know a man?” / Lk 1:34
In the sexual union a man and his wife experience a mysterious unique “one flesh” bond. Sex is more than just an act; it is a holy sacrament. Sex involves more than just the body, more than the emotions, more than the psyche.
In a way we cannot fully understand sex unifies two beings together . It gives birth to “hesed” meaning “lovingkindness”. Its an Old Testament word which describes our covenant relationship with God.
This is the reason why you can’t marry a non-Christian for “what has light in common with darkness?”
This is the reason why God prohibits sex outside marriage. It’s not because you’ll catch disease or you’ll get pregnant. It’s because two people are proclaiming that there is “oneness” when in actual fact there isn’t one. You’re acting out something physically that’s not there spiritually! Right at the heart there’s deceit. This sort of sex is portraying a lie; it is duplicitous.
Beware, not all sins have the same permanent effect on the spirit as the sin of fornication. Overeating can be overcome. Stolen goods can be returned. Lies can be owned up, retracted and forgiven and the truth spoken. But a sexual act, once committed with another person, changes something deep in your soul that cannot be easily undone.
It is not for no reason that the Word of God says: “Do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her” “one body” “sфma” (σῶμά). It goes on to say, “For as it is written “The two will become one flesh” 1 Cor 6:16.
The Book of Genesis teaches us / that the sexual union joins the man and woman into “one flesh” sarx (σάρξ). Paul takes it further; they become “one body” sфma (σῶμά).
The changeover from flesh to body is significant. Richard Foster says we need to remember that we do not have a body, we are a body; we do not have a spirit, we are a spirit; and what touches the body touches the spirit.
So the second reason why God endows sex with such sacredness is because He meant sex to be a means for man and wife to commune at the deepest level.
Three, God deems sex to be sacred because it serves as an image of this rapturous and euphoric relationship between Christ the Bridegroom and the Church His Bride.
Keller says that according to biblical theology sex is a foretaste, a harbinger, pointing to the incredible joy and ecstasy that we will have when we have that total complete union with God.
Keller cites Ephesians 5:31,32. These have got to be one of the most profound verses in the entire Bible.
Imagine after saying “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh”, Paul goes on to say “This mystery is profound and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church”.
Paul is saying a husband and wife’s “one flesh” relationship is symbolic of Christ’s relationship with His people.
And it leads to a most joyous end. Let me put it this way: See at the root of the joy of sex is safety. Safety from the vulnerability of nakedness.
If this is the case, then, that moment you see God, that is the moment when once again, you’ll be naked before Him. But you’ll not be ashamed. You’ll hear Him say “I see you completely naked and I do not condemn you. I died naked to cover your nakedness. You are fully loved and accepted”.
Now if sex symbolises this then surely it is sacred.
So those then are the three reasons why God endows sex with sanctity.
I want us to see how close Satan is to all this. But before do I need to say a word about people who are singles. Sometimes singles in church struggle to find their place within this conversation on sexuality. I need to emphasise as clearly as I can that the spiritual family that Jesus talks about includes singles as much. Jesus never married; Paul never married and many of His disciples were singles; among them John, Mary, Martha and Lazarus.
There are at least two reasons why it would be wrong to conclude that single persons cannot truly image God in their lives unless they image God in marriage.
One, If the image of God is found only in a marriage relationship then people will not be bearing God’s image when they were born but only on the day they get married. But that sounds contrived!
Two, the fact that there will be no marriage in heaven tells us that although marriage serves as a metaphor of the union of Christ and His Bride. Our final identity is not in marriage but in who we are in Christ.
Marriage is not the only station we can image God. When single people relate wholesomely with one another and nurture their relationship in Christ they bear the image God in their lives.
The question now is this. Just how close is Satan to all this?
As close as your next breath.
Why? Because sex between a man and wife signs his death warrant. Satan messes with sex because sex spells his doom!
We’ve got this idea that sex is Satan’s playground. No it isn’t. Sex isn’t Satan’s playground. Satan is engrossed with sex only in order to twist and distort it. He hates sex because sex points forward to the ultimate union between Christ the Bridegroom and the Church His Bride.
Where sex is concerned Satan daily attacks us on two fronts: One, he plots to blur any reflection of God’s image in us. Two, he plots to block the world from seeing the love that Christ the Bridegroom has for the Church His Bride.
But pure sex tears at the heart of His scheme on both counts.
Sex between a man and wife points to a day when the union between Christ the Bridegroom, and we, His spotless Bride will be finally consummated. On that day, Satan will see the undoing of his destructive work. On that day, we will be redeemed from the Fall.
Now because Satan is a murderer from the beginning, lust is not a game to be played, He entices with lust with one ultimate goal, and that is to kill.
Lust kills and it’s right from God’s Word. James 1:14-15; “But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin when it is full grown, gives birth to death.”
The best commentary to this verse comes from all places in Greenland. In Greenland there’s a tribe known as the Inuit They have a traditional way of hunting wolves. They would take a long razor-sharp blade coat it with a layer of caribou blood allow it to freeze; then coat it with another layer of blood; let it freeze and he will do this until the entire blade is completely concealed by frozen blood. Then they fix the blade firmly on a block of ice. The wolf picks up the scent, finds the blood-coated knife and it would begin to lick the blade furiously. When it tastes the fresh frozen blood it begins to lick faster and more vigorously lapping the blade until the keen edge is bare. So inflamed is it’s appetite for blood / the wolf does not notice the razor-sharp sting of the naked blade on his tongue. Neither does it recognise the instant at which his insatiable thirst is being satisfied by his own warm blood. He licks the blade all through the arctic night until the dawn comes and finds it dead in the snow.
That is what lust ultimately does. It kills. Always remember James 1:14-15: “The seed of lust, when it germinates and is full grown, leads to death”
Now at this point you ask: “What about those who have messed it up?” What will Jesus say to you? He will say to you exactly what He said to the woman caught in adultery. Remember He stoop low almost at her feet; something a Middle-eastern man will never do before a woman. He’s bending low and He’s writing on the sand and looking up at her He said to her: “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more”.
I believe there a reason why Scripture should go into such details telling us that that He was down there looking up at her. He sees Himself as a servant; here to lay down His life for her.
See, the traditional prelude to stoning is first to push the sinner to the ground rendering her helpless. Then rocks would be hurled at her. It’s as if Jesus is here saying to her “I am down here. I will not cast a stone at you. I will take the stones that come for you.”
This is the heart of the gospel. Christ becomes the curse for you to bear God’s wrath, Galatians 3:13 “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.”
If you’ve messed up, there is no future either in trying to make penance or slide into remorse. Christ has absorbed all the wrath of God that was aimed at you. There is forgiveness in Him. Repent of your sin freely accept His forgiveness and move on.
But the question still begs for an answer. Why are people afflicted like they do. Why are people this overly-preoccupied with sex?
Let me put it this way
Human people might not know it, but in desiring sex, they are desiring something far beyond sex itself.
This is one reason why when people fall in love they say silly thing to one another; things so lofty so sublime they simply can’t be true. But they say it anyway. They’ll say things like “I’ll love you till the moon deserts the sky; till all the seas run dry. I’ll love you till the sun grows cold; till the rivers flow upstream; till lovers cease to dream.”
You know I could never have a condensation on our bedroom window on a cold morning and not walk to it and scrawl the words “Gloria Forever”. I did that for 31 years.
We know that it can’t be true. Because people die! If they don’t die they open the front door and walk out on us.
But we go on talking like that. We want to believe it. We want to believe that there’s something that lasts forever. It’s a deep longing to be in touch with the never-ending.
Have you never woken up to the fact that all said and done everything down here is so trivial, plain and ordinary – the town we live in’ the neighbourhood we grew up; our jobs; our relationships; our hobbies; the parties; the gatherings; the small talk we make. All told they’re frivolous and inconsequential. People who are deeply in touch with themselves find this world somewhat flat and colourless
Twelve years ago I preached through the Book of Jeremiah; and in my study for it I read Eugene Peterson’s Run with the Horses. And in it he has this quote from William McNamara.
McNamara writes:
“My grievance with contemporary society is with its decrepitude. There are few towering pleasures to allure me, almost no beauty to bewitch me, nothing erotic to arouse me, no intellectual circles or positions to challenge or provoke me, no burgeoning philosophies or theologies and no new art to catch my attention or engage my mind, no arousing political, social, or religious movements to stimulate or excite me. There are no free men to lead me. No saints to inspire me. No sinners sinful enough to either impress me or share my plight. No one human enough to validate the “going” lifestyle. It is hard to linger in that dull world without being dulled.”
We may not put it quite like that, but isn’t it true that ultimately nothing down here quenches our thirst for rest and contentment.
The reason sexual sins are so prevalent in our time is because spiritually and emotively, we are dislocated from the infinite, soul-stirring grandeur for which we were created.
What we’re longing and pinning for is transcendence and eternity.
Deprive of this, sex is the next best kick, the next best buzz. And because people defy God, sex, is their best buzz.
See, the human heart longs to be gratified by something astoundingly sublime that will last forever.
Your heart is made to be staggered by something infinitely, divinely beautiful, someone stupendously alluring and captivating; Your heart is made to be stunned by Someone ravishingly enchanting.
So, how then may we be helped! Just what is the cure for lust?
It is this. Shocking as it might sound, the cure for lust is lust.
See, the word that’s frequently translated as “lust” in the Bible is the word epithumia / it simply means longing or craving. This very same word is also used for earnest wholesome desire.
Jesus Himself used this very word to describe His own desire to eat the Passover with His disciples.
The strategy for combating lust is simple: You fight bad lust with good lust. You deploy an all-out offensive by engaging yourself in consecrated, sanctified lust. You learn what it means to desire and long for Jesus. You set your heart on the transcendence; on the beauty of Christ.
Your heart was created to be enlarged and filled by Christ and no created thing can satisfy your thirst.
Your puny soul was created to savour the beauty of Jesus. You can search the world over you’ll not find anything big enough to fill your hungry soul that God alone can.
Unless you’re smitten by the beauty of Jesus / to the point of deep ecstasy everything else is humdrum and mediocre.
But if you keep busy or rushing, you’ll never be smitten by His beauty. How did the psalmist get it? By not rushing but contemplating. He “gaze upon the beauty of the LORD” Ps 27:4. How did the hymn-writer get it? He did not pass by the cross hastily. He surveyed, “When I survey the wondrous cross.”
And if like the psalmist you give time to behold the beauty of Jesus, in time you will grow a delightful gratification; a joyful contentment. Your thirst will be quenched. Your soul will be assuaged. You will finally find rest for your restless heart.
Augustine said: “Thou hast made us for Thyself. And our hearts are restless till they find their rest in Thee.”
Find Jesus beautiful and the lusts of the flesh will evaporate into vapours.
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