Lasciviousness

Lasciviousness is the older English word for unrestrained sensual indulgence, what the New Testament names with such terms as "whoring," "impurity," "immoral sexual passion," "erotic desires," and "sexual depravity." Scripture treats it as a sin of the heart that runs out through the eyes, settles into the body, and finally fixes itself as a way of life. The texts gathered here are the wisdom-literature warnings against the strange woman, the Mosaic and apostolic prohibitions against adultery and whoring, and the New Testament vice-catalogues that name lasciviousness among the works of the flesh. The Lord locates the sin's origin precisely: "from inside, out of the heart of men, evil thoughts proceed, whoring, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, wickednesses, deceit, sexual depravity, an evil eye" (Mr 7:21-22).

The Eye and the Heart

Scripture traces lasciviousness inward before it traces it outward. John writes that "the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the vainglory of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world" (1Jn 2:16). The eye is the entry point: "The eye also of the adulterer waits for the twilight, Saying, No eye will see me" (Job 24:15); David, "from the roof he saw a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful to look at" (2Sa 11:2). Job's countervailing discipline is exact: "I made a covenant with my eyes; How then should I look at a virgin?" (Job 31:1). Sirach repeats the lesson: "Hide your eye from a graceful woman; And do not look at beauty that is not yours" (Sir 9:8); "Do not give me a proud look, And turn away lust from me" (Sir 23:5); "Look well after a shameless eye, And do not marvel if it trespasses against you" (Sir 26:11). The whoredom of a woman, Ben Sira observes, "is in the lifting up of her eyes. And she is known by her eyelids" (Sir 26:9).

Behind the eye is the heart. James traces the chain: "Then the desire, when it has conceived, bears sin: and the sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death" (Jas 1:15). Solomon's "Don't lust after her beauty in your heart; Neither let her take you with her eyelids" (Pr 6:25) puts both the heart-step and the eye-step in one line. Sirach's diagnosis is blunt: "Wine and women cause the heart to be lustful" (Sir 19:2).

The Strange Woman

The wisdom literature personifies lasciviousness as the strange woman whose speech is sweet and whose end is death. "For the lips of a strange woman drop honey, And her mouth is smoother than oil: But in the end she is bitter as wormwood, Sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; Her steps take hold on Sheol" (Pr 5:3-5). The young man who follows her is trapped before he understands: "He goes after her right away, As an ox goes to the slaughter, Or as [one in] fetters to the correction of the fool; Until an arrow strikes through his liver; As a bird hurries to the snare, And does not know that it is for his soul" (Pr 7:22-23). Solomon asks his son, "For why should you, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, And embrace the bosom of a foreigner?" (Pr 5:20).

Sirach extends the warning into practical avoidance — of approach, table, and gaze. "Do not come near to a strange woman; Or else you will fall into her snares" (Sir 9:3). "Do not sleep with a female musician; Or else distracting admiration will burn you" (Sir 9:4). "Do not give your soul to a prostitute; Or else you will turn away your inheritance" (Sir 9:6). "Do not taste with her husband; And do not turn away with him drinking. Or else you will incline your heart to her; And your blood will incline to destruction" (Sir 9:9). The warnings against thinking and looking are of a piece: "Do not think about a virgin; Or else you will be snared by her fines" (Sir 9:5); "Your eyes will make a fool of yourself in a vision; And you will be made desolate behind her house" (Sir 9:7).

The Adulterous Bed

The Decalogue's bare prohibition stands behind the whole umbrella: "You will not commit adultery" (Ex 20:14; Deu 5:18). The penalty under the law was death: "And the man who commits adultery with another man's wife — who commits adultery with his fellow man's wife — the adulterer and the adulteress will surely be put to death" (Le 20:10). The hidden character of the sin and its self-justification are caught by Agur: "So is the way of an adulterous woman; She eats, and wipes her mouth, And says, I have done no wickedness" (Pr 30:20). Sirach gives the same picture from the male side: "[There is] a man who goes astray from his own bed, And says in his soul: 'Who sees me? Darkness is around me, and the walls hide me, And no man sees me, of what shall I be afraid? The Most High does not remember my sins'" (Sir 23:18).

Ben Sira ranks the adulterous woman's offense triply against God, against marriage, and against the line of inheritance: "First, she is disobedient to the law of the Most High, Second, she trespasses against her own husband, Third, she commits adultery through her fornication, And brings in children by a stranger" (Sir 23:23). The same fear is the burden of a father over his daughter "in her youth lest she commit adultery, … In her virginity lest she be seduced, And in the house of her husband, lest she be unfaithful" (Sir 42:9-10). Sirach reckons "an old man who is an adulterer" among the three types of men whose life he hates (Sir 25:2), and is ashamed "of being busy with his maid, And of violating her bed" (Sir 41:22). Even Solomon, bringing wrath upon his children, "defiled [his] bed" (Sir 47:20). Under the new covenant the obligation is restated and the judgment retained: "[Let] marriage [be] had in honor among all, and [let] the bed [be] undefiled: for whores and adulterers God will judge" (Heb 13:4).

Works of the Flesh

The New Testament names lasciviousness in catalogues. The Lord's catalogue traces the sin to the heart (Mr 7:21-23, above). Paul's catalogues organize it under "the works of the flesh": "whoring, impurity, sexual depravity, idolatry, witchcraft, enmities, strife, jealousy, wraths, factions, divisions, parties, envyings, drunkenness, revelings, and things similar to these; of which I forewarn you⁺, even as I did forewarn you⁺, that those who participate in such things will not inherit the kingdom of God" (Ga 5:19-21). The same exclusion is repeated to the Corinthians — "neither whores, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals" will inherit the kingdom (1Co 6:9) — and to the Ephesians: "anyone who is a whore, or unclean, or greedy (that is, an idolater) has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God" (Eph 5:5). To the Romans Paul names the day-and-night antithesis: "Let us walk becomingly, as in the day; not in reveling and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and sexual depravity, not in strife and jealousy" (Ro 13:13).

Romans 1 frames lasciviousness as the form God's wrath takes when it gives a culture over to itself: "Therefore God delivered them up in the desires of their hearts to impurity, that their bodies should be shamed among themselves" (Ro 1:24); "and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, became passionate with each other, men with men, shamefully having sex together, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was due" (Ro 1:27). Ephesians traces the cognitive precondition — "the vanity of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart" (Eph 4:17-18) — and then names the outcome: "who, feeling no more pain, delivered themselves up to sexual depravity, to work all impurity with greed" (Eph 4:19). Peter addresses it as the Christian's discarded past: "the time past may suffice to have worked the desire of the Gentiles, and to have walked in sexual depravity, erotic desires, winebibbings, revelings, carousings, and horrible idolatries" (1Pe 4:3); "those who walk after the flesh in the desire of defilement" stand under judgment (2Pe 2:10), having "eyes full of adultery, and that can't cease from sin" (2Pe 2:14). Jude names the most pointed form of the sin against grace: "ungodly men, changing the grace of our God into sexual depravity, and denying our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ" (Jude 1:4); the historic warning is Sodom and Gomorrah, which "committed sexual depravity and homosexuality as do these [men], are set forth as an example, serving a penalty of eternal fire" (Jude 1:7).

The apostolic remedy is decisive. "Stop being a whore. Every sin that a man does is outside the body; but he who goes whoring sins against his own body" (1Co 6:18). "Put to death therefore your⁺ members which are on the earth: whoring, impurity, immoral sexual passion, evil desire, and greed, which is idolatry" (Col 3:5). "But I say, Walk by the Spirit, and you⁺ will not fulfill the desire of the flesh" (Ga 5:16). "Beloved, I urge you⁺ as sojourners and pilgrims, to abstain from fleshly desires, which war against the soul" (1Pe 2:11). "But flee youthful lusts, and follow after righteousness, faith, love, peace, with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart" (2Ti 2:22).

The Call to Chastity

The positive form of the umbrella is sanctification. "For this is the will of God, [even] your⁺ sanctification, that you⁺ abstain from whoring" (1Th 4:3); "not by immoral sexual passion, even as the Gentiles who don't know God" (1Th 4:5); "For God called us not for impurity, but in sanctification" (1Th 4:7). Paul's first counsel to the Corinthians is single-mindedness: "Now concerning the things of which you⁺ wrote: It is good for a man not to have any sex with a woman" (1Co 7:1). The corresponding pastoral arrangement, "because of the whoring going on, let each have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband" (1Co 7:2), keeps marriage as the protected channel; "But whoring, all impurity, or greed, don't let it even be named among you⁺, as becomes saints" (Eph 5:3). Older women are charged to teach the younger "[to be] sober-minded, chaste, workers at home, kind, being in subjection to their own husbands, that the word of God not be blasphemed" (Tit 2:5). The eschatological picture in the Revelation is the same chastity carried to its end: "These are those who were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These [are] those who follow the Lamb wherever he may go" (Re 14:4).

The wisdom literature has a parallel positive note. "Grace upon grace is a modest woman, And there is no weight [of gold] worth a self-controlled soul" (Sir 26:15). The Epistle to Diognetus describes the early Christian household with the same restraint at its plainest — "They eat together, but do not sleep together" (Gr 5:7). And the call is reciprocal — eyes covenanted (Job 31:1), heart guarded (Pr 6:25), members presented "[as] slaves to righteousness to sanctification" (Ro 6:19) rather than to impurity. Where lasciviousness ends in a fire that "is not quenched until it is consumed" (Sir 23:16) and a fornicator who "will not leave off until he dies" (Sir 23:17), chastity ends in inheritance and life.