Lust

Lust in the UPDV is the disordered appetite of the heart — the inward pull toward what God forbids, whether the body of another, the property of a fellow man, or the pleasures of the age. Scripture traces it from the eyes that first see what is "good for food" and "a delight to the eyes" (Gen 3:6) to the desire that "when it has conceived, bears sin: and the sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death" (Jas 1:15). The pattern recurs across Torah, Wisdom, Prophets, Gospels, and Apostolic letters: lust begins as a look, ripens into intent, issues in act, and ends in destruction.

The Look That Conceives

The eye is where the trail begins. The fall opens with the woman seeing that the tree was "good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes" (Gen 3:6). David sees Bathsheba "from the roof... and the woman was very beautiful to look at" (2 Sam 11:2), and the chain to adultery and murder is set in motion. Job, by contrast, names the only safe path: "I made a covenant with my eyes; How then should I look at a virgin?" (Job 31:1). The adulterer reverses Job's covenant — "The eye also of the adulterer waits for the twilight, Saying, No eye will see me: And he disguises his face" (Job 24:15).

Wisdom develops the same diagnosis. "Don't lust after her beauty in your heart; Neither let her take you with her eyelids" (Prov 6:25). Sirach piles up warnings against the eye: "Do not think about a virgin; Or else you will be snared by her fines" (Sir 9:5); "Hide your eye from a graceful woman; And do not look at beauty that is not yours. On account of a woman many have been destroyed" (Sir 9:8); "Do not give me a proud look, And turn away lust from me" (Sir 23:5); "The whoredom of a woman is in the lifting up of her eyes. And she is known by her eyelids" (Sir 26:9); "Look well after a shameless eye, And do not marvel if it trespasses against you" (Sir 26:11). The eye is not innocent — it is the inlet through which evil reaches the heart.

John names this faculty directly. "For all that is in the world, 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" (1 Jn 2:16). Lust of the eyes stands in his triad alongside lust of the flesh and pride of life as the world's whole inventory of opposition to the Father.

Evil Desire as a Force

Beyond the look, Scripture treats desire itself as an animate force, capable of swallowing its host. The wicked are those whose "soul... desires evil" (Prov 21:10). The horseleach's daughters "never say, Enough" (Prov 30:15). The proud man "does not keep at home; who enlarges his soul as Sheol, and he is as death, and can't be satisfied, but gathers to himself all nations" (Hab 2:5).

Sirach personifies desire as a devourer: "Do not fall into the hand of your desire; Or it will smother your strength over you. It will eat your leaves and root out your fruit; And leave you like a dry tree. For excessive desire destroys its owners; And the gladness of an enemy will overtake them" (Sir 6:2-4). The counsel is total denial: "Do not go after your heart and your eyes, To walk in the pleasures of evil" (Sir 5:2); "Do not go after your desires, And refrain yourself from your appetites" (Sir 18:30). The man "who has pleasure in evil will be condemned" (Sir 19:5), and even powerlessness is no virtue: "if, for lack of power, he is hindered from sinning, He will do evil when he finds opportunity" (Sir 19:28). The proud appetite of the eye returns in Sirach's economic register: gold ill suits "the man who has an evil eye" (Sir 14:3); the stumbler's portion is small (Sir 14:9); "The eye of him with an evil eye pounces on his bread; And there is turmoil at his table" (Sir 14:10); "an evil eye is an evil thing; God has created nothing more evil than the [evil] eye" (Sir 31:13).

The wilderness generation made the same mistake corporately. "And the mixed multitude that was among them lusted exceedingly: and the sons of Israel also wept again, and said, Who will give us flesh to eat?" (Num 11:4). Paul cites the episode as a permanent warning: "Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted" (1 Cor 10:6). Yahweh's judicial response is to release: "So I let them go after the stubbornness of their heart, That they might walk in their own counsels" (Ps 81:12). Mark hears the same pattern in the parable of the sower — "the cares of the age, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful" (Mk 4:19). James reads it forward to its end: "each man is tempted, when he is drawn away by his own desire, and enticed. Then the desire, when it has conceived, bears sin: and the sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death" (Jas 1:14-15). And again: "From where [come] wars and from where [come] fightings among you⁺? Don't [they come] from here, [even] of your⁺ pleasures that war in your⁺ members? You⁺ lust and don't have; so you⁺ kill. And you⁺ covet and cannot obtain; so you⁺ fight and war" (Jas 4:1-2).

Coveting the Fellow Man

The Decalogue names the disorder in its most concrete form. "You will not covet your fellow man's house, you will not covet your fellow man's wife, nor his male slave, nor his female slave, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your fellow man's" (Ex 20:17). The prohibition is interior — the act named is the wanting itself. Job binds himself by the same standard: "If my heart has been enticed to a woman, And I have laid wait at my fellow man's door; Then let my wife grind to another, And let others have sex with her. For that were a heinous crime; Yes, it were an iniquity to be punished by the judges: For it is a fire that consumes to Destruction, And would root out all my increase" (Job 31:9-12).

Adultery and Whoredom

Where lust is permitted to ripen, it crosses into adultery, which Torah meets with the death penalty. "You will not commit adultery" (Ex 20:14). "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" (Lev 20:10). Paul includes adulterers in the catalogue of those who "will not inherit the kingdom of God" alongside whores, idolaters, the effeminate, and homosexuals (1 Cor 6:9). Peter describes the false teachers as men "having eyes full of adultery, and that can't cease from sin; enticing unstedfast souls; having a heart exercised in greed; sons of cursing" (2 Pet 2:14).

Sirach's pastoral counsel works the same axis. The young man is told: "Do not come near to a strange woman; Or else you will fall into her snares. Do not sleep with a female musician; Or else distracting admiration will burn you... Do not give your soul to a prostitute; Or else you will turn away your inheritance... 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 9:3-4, 6, 9). The adulterer's self-talk is unmasked: "[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).

The unfaithful wife is condemned in the same breath: "So also a wife who leaves her husband, And brings in an heir by a stranger; 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 23:22-23). The aged adulterer earns particular contempt: "Three types [of men] my soul hates... The poor man who is arrogant and the rich man who is deceitful, And an old man who is an adulterer" (Sir 25:2). The promiscuous woman is described in stark image: "As a thirsty traveller opens his mouth, And drinks of any water that is near, So she sits down at every tent peg, And opens her quiver to any arrow" (Sir 26:12). Whoredom in any household — father, mother, prince, ruler, friend's bed, the maid — is named as cause for shame (Sir 41:17, 21-22; Sir 42:8). David's own house is invoked: "Yes, you brought a blemish upon your honor, And defiled your bed, So as to bring wrath upon your children, And sighing concerning your couch" (Sir 47:20).

A father's anxiety over a daughter is woven of the same fabric. "A daughter is to a father a deceptive treasure, And the care of her puts away sleep; In her youth lest she commit adultery, And when she is married, lest she be hated; In her virginity lest she be seduced, And in the house of her husband, lest she be unfaithful" (Sir 42:9-10).

Sinful Passions and the Flesh

Paul makes lust a property of unredeemed humanity. "For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were through the law, worked in our members to bring forth fruit to death" (Rom 7:5). Apart from God, "God delivered them up to immoral sexual passions of shame: for even their women changed the natural use into what is against nature" (Rom 1:26). Believers are to live the opposite: "not by immoral sexual passion, even as the Gentiles who don't know God" (1 Thess 4:5). The flesh and the Spirit are at war: "the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are contrary the one to the other" (Gal 5:17). Crucifixion is the only resolution: "those who are of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires" (Gal 5:24).

The flesh, in this register, is the locus of sin's reign. "I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing" (Rom 7:18). With the mind Paul serves the law of God, "but with the flesh, to the law of sin" (Rom 7:25). "those who are in the flesh can't please God" (Rom 8:8). "if you⁺ live after the flesh, you⁺ must die; but if by the Spirit you⁺ put to death the activities of the body, you⁺ will live" (Rom 8:13). "he who sows to his own flesh will of the flesh reap corruption; but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap eternal life" (Gal 6:8). Once the believers themselves "lived in the desires of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest" (Eph 2:3). The Epistle to Diognetus names the same opposition in its own idiom: Christians "are in the flesh, but do not live after the flesh" (Gr 5:8); and "The flesh hates the soul, and without having been wronged wars against it, because the flesh is prevented from enjoying pleasures. And the world, without having been wronged, hates Christians, because they resist its pleasures" (Gr 6:5).

Lust as Diabolical Inheritance

Jesus traces the lineage. "You⁺ are of the father the devil, and the desires of your⁺ father it is your⁺ will to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and is not in the truth, and the truth is not in him" (Jn 8:44). To live for one's desires is to claim the devil as father. Mockers in the last days, says Peter, walk "after their own desires" (2 Pet 3:3); the false teachers "entice in the desires of the flesh, by sexual depravity, those who are truly escaping from the ones who live in error" (2 Pet 2:18). Jude echoes: "These [men] are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own desires, and their mouth speaks great swelling [words], sweet talking so they can take advantage" (Jude 1:16); and: "in the last time there will be mockers, walking after their own ungodly desires" (Jude 1:18).

The Disciplined Life

The apostolic answer is renunciation and pursuit. Paul disciplines himself: "I buffet my body, and bring it into slavery: lest by any means, after I have preached to others, I myself should be disapproved" (1 Cor 9:27). Israel's old idolatry — "The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play" — is held up as warning (1 Cor 10:7). Believers "put away, as concerning your⁺ former manner of life, the old man, that waxes corrupt after the desires of deceit" (Eph 4:22). Those who chase wealth "fall into a temptation and a snare and many foolish and hurtful desires, such as drown men in ruin and destruction" (1 Tim 6:9). Timothy is told to "flee youthful lusts, and follow after righteousness, faith, love, peace, with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart" (2 Tim 2:22). The day comes when men "will not endure the sound doctrine; but, having itching ears, will heap to themselves teachers after their own desires" (2 Tim 4:3). Grace itself instructs the church "denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we should live soberly and righteously and godly in this present age" (Tit 2:12).

Peter's counsel matches: "I urge you⁺ as sojourners and pilgrims, to abstain from fleshly desires, which war against the soul" (1 Pet 2:11). The Gentile past is over: "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" (1 Pet 4:3). And John frames the whole matter in eschatological terms: "the world passes away, and its desire: but he who does the will of God stays forever" (1 Jn 2:17). Lust is the appetite of what is passing away; obedience is the appetite of what abides.