is always built on a lie. And so for you and me to be free from lust, we have to begin by understanding the lie and where it comes from and why it can be so alluring.
The word lust in the Greek language is the word epithumia. It’s actually two words in Greek: the word epi, which means “in,” and the word thumos, which refers to “the mind.”
In the mind.
Think about the head space we give to things and people we want. It’s easy for our thoughts to be dominated by a craving. We’re in a meeting, we’re taking a walk, we’re studying, we’re doing jobs around the house, and the whole time our brain is miles away, trying to figure out how to get it.
It takes ahold of us.
We are not free. Lust is slavery.
If I want something to the point that I can’t conceive of being content without it, then it owns me.
One writer in the scriptures puts it like this: “ ‘I have the right to do anything’—but I will not be mastered by anything.”9
That last part is great, isn’t it? “I will not be mastered by anything.”
We are free to do anything we want. But because I can doesn’t mean I should. There is a massive distance between “can” and “best.”
We’re addictive creatures. We try things, we experiment, we explore, and certain things hook us. They get their tentacles in us, and we can’t get away from them. What started out as freedom can quickly become slavery. Often freedom is seen as the ability to do whatever you want. But freedom isn’t being able to have whatever we crave. Freedom is going without whatever we crave and being fine with it.
Where It Leads
In the book of Ephesians, the writer claims that we get enslaved to lust because we become “darkened” in our understanding. The passage explains that we’re separated from the life of God because of ignorance due to the hardening of our hearts.10
It isn’t just what lust does, it’s where lust leads. God made us to appreciate aesthetics: taste, smell, touch, hearing, sight. Shape, texture, consistency, color. It all flows from the endless creativity at the center of the universe, and we were created to enjoy it. But when lust has us in its grip, one of the first things to suffer is our appreciation for whatever it is we’re fixated on.
The scriptures call this “having lost all sensitivity.”11
The word insensitivity is the Greek word apalgeo. It comes from the root word algeo, which means “to feel pain,” and apo, which means “lacking or going without.” It’s the condition of being void of or past feeling. We could translate the phrase in Ephesians as “having lost the ability to feel things like they used to.”
Addictions often rob people of their appreciation of things.
An alcoholic may have once enjoyed the taste, but now he is using drinking to numb and escape and avoid, and the last thing he’s reflecting on is the quality of the brew or the vintage of the grapes.
And she used to appreciate food—the spices and the aromas and the art of cooking—but now her taste buds have dulled. She no longer savors every bite. She has lost her enjoyment of food as a gift from God that comes from the earth for our pleasure and sustenance. Her addiction, her turning to food for what it can’t deliver, has caused her to have contempt for food, and so she’s losing sensitivity.
There’s a progression here. The loss of sensitivity and enjoyment often leads to what the scriptures call being given over to sensuality.12 The Greek word for sensuality is aselgeia. It’s the absence of restraint, an insatiable desire for pleasure. When our lusts get the best of us, they trap us. Whether it’s food, sex, shopping, whatever, what was supposed to fill the hole within us didn’t. It betrayed us. It owns us. And it always leaves us wanting more.
And so we’re
emptier lonelier hungrier more depressed.
“He hated her more than he had loved her.”
And so we go to the refrigerator and eat the whole box.
We go to the website and watch every clip. We buy one in every color. We take another.
And then we’re right back where we started. We’re momentarily satisfied, and then we experience letdown because it didn’t deliver what it promised.
Which of course leaves us wanting more. The passage in Ephesians calls it “greed”—the word pleion in Greek, which means “more,” combined with the word echo, which means “to have.”
We have to have more.
But when we get more, it leads to . . . more.
Lust does not operate on a flat line, as if we can give in and stay at the same level of consumption indefinitely. People who are not aware of what they’re dealing with will keep insisting that they’re fine and that they can stop at any time. But they’re “darkened in their understanding.” They’re operating under the assumption that lust can plateau at a certain level and simply stay there. But lust always wants more.
Which is why lust, over time, will always lead to despair. Which will always lead to anger.
Lust always leads to anger.
Sometimes it isn’t expressed on the outside because it turns inward. That’s depression. When it goes outward, it will often affect what a person indulges in—darker and darker expressions of unfulfilled desire mixed with contempt. Is that how someone ends up at leather and whips?13
Food or clothes or position or approval or power or sex—it grabbed us and said, “You are missing out until you have me.” And it was a lie. It promised us something. It claimed to be the answer.
But it wasn’t.
Lust says to us, “If you just had this, everything would be fine.”
But it’s not true. We wouldn’t be okay, and we have closets full of clothes to prove this. We thought that shirt and those pants would change the way we feel about our bodies, about how others perceive us, about how comfortable we are in our own skin. And then we got them and nothing changed, except the size of our bills.
Lust promises what it can’t deliver.14
Dark to Light
To be free from lust, we have to move from being darkened in our understanding to being enlightened in our understanding. And to be enlightened, we have to ask lots of questions about the things we crave:
What is this craving promising?
Can it deliver? Is this lust about something else? What is the lie here? Where is the good in this person or thing? Where is the good that has been distorted? What good thing has God made here that has been hijacked? Have I been tempted like this before? Have I given in before? What was it like? Did it work? Was I more
