Self Control and Lust
A sermon on Proverbs chapter 9 and Mark chapter 7
at St Mary Islington on
by
Introduction
As we are looking through our pairings of the wisdom of Proverbs and the Fruit of the Spirit, we come now to that rather contentious subject of self-control, and its opposite, lust. Since we’re talking about these things I think I should start off with a confession of my own – a sin committed against my dear wife on a fairly regular basis seven or so years ago. I should mention, that she has cleared it for me to speak to you on this.
Those of you who work in the city may perhaps be familiar with the scenario. In my work as a solicitor I often had cause to work late and would frequently find myself hanging around Liverpool St Station waiting for my train home. I was tired, hungry and emotionally drained. At home I knew that Amy would have cooked up a delicious meal – perhaps Halibut Steak in a Pernod sauce, or maybe a Thai green curry washed down with a bottle of crisp Sauvignon Blanc. All I had to do was to wait another hour and I could be at home tucking in.
But I wanted food now. I couldn’t wait and from the Burger King kiosk some 10m away wafted a smell so enticing that every fibre of my body strained to get hold of it. At that moment there was only one thing in the world that my body wanted: a double whopper meal, go large for a mere £4.79. And even though I knew that fast food usually made me physically sick ten minutes after scoffing it down; and even though I knew that I would have no appetite for the cordon bleu meal at home; even though I knew that the train would be here in 20 minutes and I would be home in an hour, all these thoughts counted for nothing against that sweet fatty smell of deep fried burger.
So I parted with my £4.79 stuffed down the lot, felt sick and explained to Amy that after my hard day at the office I didn’t have much appetite. I’m ashamed to say that this sin was committed on more than one occasion.
What do we mean by lust?
When I talk about lust, I am talking about a strong, even overwhelming desire for immediate self-gratification. Seeing as our strongest desires are frequently connected with sex, lust is very obviously connected with sexual gratification, but I don’t think exclusively so. The opposite pairing of lust, you might think, is love rather than self-control. But lust is not the opposite of love; lust is twisted and warped love taken to an extreme.
All things and people that we love can become objects to be lusted for. I know people who will speak openly of the lust for the latest Apple gadgets or any number and variety of material possessions. We speak of “blood-lust” which takes over when wounded pride turns into aggression which turns into extreme violence. We all have the capacity for lust and many of us may be struggling with lust in different areas of our lives.
Lust is fundamentally selfish – which is one of the ways in which it can be distinguished from love. Love involves self-sacrifice. Lust often involves sacrificing others. When lust takes over other people lose their substance and become shadows. We act out of disregard, perhaps even contempt, for those around us.
Lust also focuses on the immediate and not the future. Burgers now are seen as preferable to Beef Wellington later. It is, as they say, as if a red mist descends upon us. Nothing outside our immediate situation is relevant – certainly not the consequences of our actions. The couple having a casual fling at an office party do not weigh up the precise consequences that their actions will have on their jobs, their relationships, their families or their futures. That reckoning comes painfully later.
In fact I think that one of the reasons that lust is among the deadliest of sins, is that it is closest that most of us will ever get to the feeling of being possessed.
The common phrase “I don’t know what possessed me” is an apt one. We can’t name what has happened to us, but we do feel almost as if we have been taken over by something that is both part of us and horribly alien to us. Our reptilian brain has taken over the controls.
Wisdom and Folly
The book of Proverbs makes much of the contrast between self-controlled and uncontrolled behaviour and in this passage depicts them as two women – Wisdom and Folly. Wisdom is the personification of all the Spirit’s Fruit that Paul speaks of in Galatians. In chapter 8 Wisdom is described as dwelling with prudence, knowledge and discretion. Her fruit is better than gold and silver and her feast is open to all. In Christian tradition this woman Wisdom been seen as a personification of the Holy Spirit, and Paul seems to pick up on this.
The opposite is Folly. Folly is often portrayed in proverbs as a seductive woman, sitting by her tent with her husband away, tempting rash and thoughtless men inside. “Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant”. Lust makes liars of us all – whether it is the petty lies about burgers or the tangled web of deceit that flourishes out of infidelity. Both Wisdom and Folly have set out their feasts for us. Wisdom provides food for growth, folly tempts us with fast food for gratification. We know that it at Wisdom’s feast that we should be dining, but too often we find ourselves at the burger bar.
The importance of Self-Control
Of course we all make mistakes. We have all from time to time wandered into Folly’s tent and come out wishing we’d never even poked our head in. But some would also say “that’s just who I am. I’m impulsive. Self-control simply isn’t part of my make-up”.
Yet as Christians, as followers of Jesus, our lives do need to be marked by self-control in every aspect. To be self-controlled in all things apart from one – whether it’s money, sex., alcohol, eating – is to acknowledge that there is an important part of our life that is not given over wholly to God.
If we are to take Scripture seriously, self-control is a fruit of the Spirit – it’s not simply a matter of temperament, it is also a result and a promise of Christian discipleship. That’s not to say that self-control will come easily. We are not all cut out to be desert hermits happily cutting ourselves off from all pleasure. There are those who have personalities that will make them more prone to uncontrolled, addictive behaviour. But as the success of groups such as Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous show, it is possible to overcome our uncontrolled behaviour – through prayer, through self-discipline and, I would add, through the power of the Spirit.
But self-control is also a mark of Christian maturity and of being filled with the Spirit. Jesus said that you will know a tree by its fruit. We know Christians by the fruit of the Spirit that they display. So if there are areas of our lives where self-control is clearly lacking then that is evidence that there are parts of our life where we have not allowed the Spirit of Wisdom to do her work. Of course those are also precisely those parts of our lives that we try to hide from others and ourselves. Lust is dressed up as a “weakness of the moment” and not a longer term enemy to overcome.
And then there’s Jesus’ teaching. Think of the wise man building his house on the rock, patiently digging the foundations and the foolish man quickly erecting his house on sand. Jesus’ own self-control was put to the test by the devil in the wilderness – his human lust for food, for power and for recognition. As he overcame it, so we too are encouraged to show self-control in our lives, remembering Paul's words that no temptation has seized us except that which is common to humanity, and that when we are tested God will provide a way out. If, that is, we have the courage to take it.
The Bible is silent on Jesus’ struggle with sexual temptation, but if we believe that he was tempted in every way like us then I believe that Jesus must also have been tempted in that way as well. Given the number of women that he was surrounded by, and the background that they came from, he would have been less than human had he not had to confront that particular battle.
Self-control and Sex
This is all fairly obvious stuff. We might all agree that self-control is good and should be practiced. But how do we apply this to sex. Should we even apply it to sex?
The church often falls into two opposite errors. There’s a part of the church that can’t seem to stop talking about sex, and unfortunately that’s the part of the church that makes it into the press most of the time. Then there is the large part of the church that would prefer to leave sex out of it altogether, as if our sexuality could have no relevance to our lives of discipleship.
But how strange it would be if the Christian Gospel – the good news about and for humans – had nothing to say on this amazing, complicated, physical part of our humanity? The early church tried its best not to fall into the Greek heresy of saying that our bodies were bad and that only spiritual things were important. Sex is important to God because it’s important to us. He made us sexual beings and in some way, there is a reflection of the image of God in that.
Jesus’ own teaching on sexuality is interesting. He doesn’t harp on about it, and scandalously spends a lot of time with men and women who were certainly not behaving as the Jewish law required them to.
But then in this passage from Mark, three of his nine examples of “evil intentions” are related to sex – fornication (going to bed with someone to whom you’re not married), adultery (going to bed with someone who is married, but not to you – or vice versa) and licentiousness (going to bed with lots of people, possibly at the same time: an activity practiced by some of the Roman elite and these days apparently practised (if media gossip is to be believed) by premier league footballers).
And Jesus speaks of these activities as defiling us. In other words we are blemished or damaged because of them. The image of God in which we have been made has been defaced – chipped away. Perhaps you’ve never thought of it in those terms, but the sad thing about sin is that it has the capacity to change us. Our actions – for good or bad – do have consequences that affect us physically, emotionally and spiritually.
How can sex change us spiritually? This is such a massive subject that I can only touch on it here. But it seems to me that the Bible clearly suggests that there is a strong link between sexual and spiritual intimacy. The intensity and yearning of our sexual desires point us to an intimacy that we strive to have with a fellow human, but that ultimately can only be satisfied by our complete union with Christ. If there wasn’t that spiritual dimension to it I’m not sure that sex would be quite so exciting, or that it would serve any purpose other than procreation. Lust exercises the power that it does because of what it seems to promise.
In addressing this issue to the Corinthians Paul speaks of our bodies as being temples of the Holy Spirit. Being a good Jewish theologian he saw no divide between physicality and spirituality. What we do with our bodies we do to God’s Spirit within us.
And that’s why the church has always held that the appropriate expression of sexual love takes place within a life-long, committed and monogamous relationship blessed by God through marriage.
In marriage we publicly commit ourselves to the discipline of self-control in sharing our whole lives with one other person – physically, financially, emotionally and spiritually – “with my body I honour you, all that I am I give to you, and all that I have I share with you.” It is the very opposite attitude to lust which says “all that you have I want from you”.
I know that there are some here who disagree with me, who perhaps might even take offence at what I’ve just said or seemed to imply. But the question that I would like to leave hanging with you is this. Given the demands of being a follower of Jesus - demands that require faithfulness, self-control and even self-sacrifice - given the fruit of the Spirit that we are expected to demonstrate in our lives, how does being a Spirit-filled disciple of Jesus affect the way that we use our bodies and relate to those we love? That question will pose a different challenge to each of us but I hope that it’s a challenge that we won’t duck.
Conclusion
As I was preparing this talk, I found myself meditation on the collect for the Third Sunday before Lent. It is a beautiful prayer which expresses something of what I’ve been grappling with today. We pray that God would give us grace to “love what you command and desire what you promise.”
God promises growth and transformation into the fully human people he made us to be and he commands us to be self-controlled in order that we might grow and bear fruit. Too often we turn the prayer around and instead ask that God command what we love and promise what we desire. But discipleship doesn’t work like that and neither does fruit-growing. Paradoxically, if we are to be self-controlled we have to hand that control over to God, to tend and prune us as is right. Our self-control means being controlled – or rather directed – by God’s Spirit and by his grace we may grow in stature and grow fruitfully.
Almighty God,
who alone can bring order
to the unruly wills and passions of sinful humanity:
give your people grace
so to love what you command
and to desire what you promise,
that, among the many changes of this world,
our hearts may surely there be fixed
where true joys are to be found;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
The Revd
These posts are by guest authors for Fulcrum