The Relationship Between Lust, Temptation, and Sin
An oft-confused topic that demands clarification regarding the temptation of Christians is in the various aspects of temptation as a concept. In our last post we focused mostly on the fact that temptation is sure to come in many external ways. Our Lord Jesus went so far as to say, “But woe to the one through whom they come” (Lk 17:1) (emphasis mine).
External temptations are stumbling blocks that we are responsible for walking around. We are not even to place ourselves in situations where they could potentially ensnare us, thus Paul exhorts us to “make no provision for the flesh” in Romans 13:14 (emphasis mine).
This external form of temptation was lobbed at our Lord Jesus Christ by Satan in Matthew 4. Satan made appeals to the human nature of Christ with the hopes that He would succumb. Satan is opportunistic (a lesson in itself) and now has the Son of God in the flesh, being exposed to natural elements that make the human nature weak, i.e. the sun would sap his energy and the lack of food would make him hungry.
In this event that is called “the temptation of Jesus” we see that He never sinned at any point. Hebrews tells us plainly that, the Lord Jesus Christ, “in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (4:15). The Apostle Paul, likewise, attests that “he knew no sin” (2 Cor 5:21).
It is important to make these distinctions because when we say that “Jesus was tempted,” what we are not saying is that he felt the urge to succumb to sin. Thus, the language is tricky because the English use of the word “tempt” can be meant to imply an external tempter as well as an internal temptation.
If I said I was tempted to rob a bank yesterday, then one person may assume I am saying that I actually felt the desire to do it, while someone else may simply assume that someone approached me with the proposition, but that I never once felt the urge to go along with it. In either case, to say that “I was tempted to rob a bank” is technically correct, but needs clarification.
As we have seen in Jesus’ case, Scripture has provided that clarification and additional information to show us that while He was indeed faced with temptation because He was literally face to face with the Tempter, He did not feel inclined to what He was being tempted by Satan to do. He never once had a moment of even desiring the sin. Thus, while he is certainly unable to empathize—that is, identify with—with our spiritual weaknesses, He is not “unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,” (Heb 4:15) (emphasis mine).
In sympathy, we feel pity and express compassion for what someone may be feeling, but in empathy we actually identify with and share the feelings of someone having experienced it ourselves. Our Lord Jesus Christ can sympathize with us, but He cannot empathize. For both of these we are profoundly thankful and comforted, not to mention that knowing this distinction will protect us from heresy.
With all of this said, there is a massive misconception that is often believed based on this basic understanding of the nature of Jesus’ temptation. Christians often take this example of Jesus being tempted and then assume that all temptations they themselves experience are in the exact same way that Jesus experienced them. This usually happens because they are—as I warned above—generalizing the word “tempted” for both the external and internal source of it.
“Ah,” they say, “It is possible to be tempted and not to sin as Jesus clearly demonstrated, therefore when I am tempted I am also not guilty of, nor culpable for, any sin whatsoever, so long as I do not act upon it.”
Herein lies the problem: We are not Jesus Christ. We are not the exact imprint of God’s nature (Heb 1:3). We are not without sin and without a sin nature. Therefore, it is extremely brash and presumptuous to assume that any temptation we face is somehow identical to Christ’s and external in origin only.
Is it possible that the Christian's temptations can be external only with no guilt of inward lust whatsoever? This is incredibly difficult to discern given that our hearts are so deceitfully wicked and desperately, incurably sick, that no one—including ourselves—can fully understand it, as the prophet Jeremiah lamented. We would be kidding ourselves to constantly acquit ourselves of such internal sin when even David offers up such heartfelt and concerned prayers over the sin he can’t even identify: “Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults” (19:12). Again, he pleads, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me” (139:23–24).
In Leviticus 4, we see an interesting part of the sacrificial law that God had given to the Israelites through Moses. God had made a provision for “unintentional sins” to be atoned for via a “sin offering”. The implications of this are frightening if we are thinking clearly and it is so in this way: We are sometimes guilty of sin even when we have not intended to sin. In other words, with no volitional impulse or desire, the Israelites were sometimes guilty of things they didn’t even realize until it was made known to them later.
Yet, oh how quickly we dismiss our own guilt simply because we have convinced ourselves that there is no will involved with sinful desires we can identify.
The general attitude of Christians today can easily border on blasphemous indifference. When we do not grieve over the very possibility of grieving God then we do not sufficiently appreciate His demand for absolute perfection and holiness without which no one will see the Lord (Heb 12:14).
Our pursuit of holiness must be of the most intense endeavor now that we have been given the Holy Spirit to make that commanded progress. To simply point to the cross while excusing our internal lusts as neutral is missing the whole point of what Jesus said in Matthew 5 about the lust of the flesh being just as guilty as the indulgence of the flesh.
Paul echoed to the Corinthian church—a church with people who were formerly well known for desiring and acting upon sin: “Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God” (2 Cor 7:1) (emphasis mine).
The cleansing and redemptive work of God rids us of both the external and internal defilement of sin.
Knowing these things, then, that our hearts are deceitful and that we do not always know when we sin, we simply cannot presume that we are like Christ in temptation. In fact, James writes about how temptation works in the sinner precisely because we need to know how different we are from Christ in temptation. It is not merely an external and neutral object to circumnavigate, but is actually manifested by an internal desire to sin, thus rendering us guilty of sin already.
Many people make a mistake by improperly parsing out all of the words in James 1:14–15 and up creating a type of multi-step process that eventually ends in a place that leaves us guilty of sin. In these verses we read:
“Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.”
First, some will say, there is the desire, which is neutral, and, secondly, we are then responsible for whether we choose to lust on one hand, or refuse to indulge on the other hand. Thirdly, if we lust, then that can eventually turn into sin. This thought process confounds the text and misses the import of what James is communicating as well as what the rest of the body of Scripture has made so clear up to this point.
This passage revolves around a particular Greek word that James uses: epithumia. It means to desire what is forbidden. It is sometimes translated to “covet”, but is almost always translated to “lust” throughout the New Testament.
James is saying that the presence of this lust is the problem and it is, in itself, sinful. Jesus made crystal clear in Matthew 5 that lust is as adultery. The seventh commandment in Exodus 20 says “you shall not commit adultery” and then in the tenth commandment it even says “you shall not covet your neighbor's wife” (v. 14, 17) (emphasis mine). Romans 1 identifies the accelerated perversion of sexual immorality seen in homosexuality and the “passion for one another” and not the act alone (vv. 26–27) (emphasis mine).
Even in other general ways, desires are condemned as sinful based on the object. Proverbs 24:1 says, “Do not be envious of evil men, nor desire to be with them.” Likewise, in 6:25 the young man is commanded: “Do not desire [the adultress’] beauty in your heart.” Other sins like greed, coveting, envy, pride, selfishness, etc. are all sinful in their very internal conception before any act is ever committed externally.
Why did God blot out mankind from the face of the earth with the world-wide flood? Pay attention here! Because “the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen 6:5) (emphasis mine).
This is the logical, theological framework that James is working within. He is writing with the full counsel of God in mind and not trying to create a separate paradigm from where we can divorce sin from sinful desire, which is, by definition lust.
James is saying that we are tempted by the very presence of our own evil desires, evil attractions and evil wants. It is a self-inflicted temptation. To argue that temptation in itself is not a sin misses the point that you have already sinned by creating and causing the temptation. We are lured and enticed by our lust and our lust brings forth death when fully grown.
Using the imagery of a pregnancy, James identifies that sin at any stage is always sinful, whether it is in the conception of the thought—the lust in embryonic form—or whether the lust is born into an external and visible sin. Just like the baby was always a baby, the sin was always sin.
The Greek word for sin is hamartia and it doesn’t only mean one particular sin, but sin collectively, i.e. the complex or aggregate of sins, so the idea that the lust is not sinful and is in no way connected to the “birth of sin” is unfounded and ignores the greater testimony of the entirety of Scripture.
In fact, in verse 15 of James 1, it is actually the birth, specifically, that is in view here. Again, the imagery he uses is helpful. The birth of a baby is not the beginning of the baby's life, it is simply the beginning of the visible presence of that life. The same goes for sin. The birth of sin is not when sin begins, but is the visible presence of what has been growing for a long period of time.
This all brings new meaning to when Jesus said, “Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come!” (Lk 17:1).
Friends, temptation usually comes through us!
Once we realize this, then we can start to pray like David did above in asking God to reveal to us and forgive us of our unknown sin. With a right biblical understanding of where sin begins we will then acknowledge the guilt of our sin like we read about in Hosea in previous posts. Only at this point and in this understanding will it be possible to be healed of our iniquity and overcome sin in our life.
We cannot be sanctified from what we refuse to acknowledge as sin.
The popular arguments today—to bring our current topic to the forefront for a moment—that same-sex attraction is neutral until it becomes lust is theologically unsound and antithetical to the Word of God as well as his majesty and holiness. It draws imaginary lines where Scripture has never drawn them. It thinks too low about the standard of God’s holiness and does not appreciate just how low the human mind can be.
Modern proponents of this, like "same-sex attracted pastors" Sam Allberry and Ed Shaw of the UK, are getting a lot of attention and stage time from historically conservative and biblically-minded American evangelical leaders who are buying into their false teaching that specific attractions to sin are fixed and thus not sinful until acted upon. They go so far as to say that a change from this so-called innate attraction is not promised, thus asserting that the Holy Spirit has no interest in purifying and correcting one's sexual desires.
Allberry writes in his popular little book Is God Anti-Gay?: "To say that the very experience of SSA is a sin seems to suggest that even having the capacity to be tempted is itself a sin, something that I do not believe Scripture teaches."
The subtlety here is hard to discern because of his acronym usage (thus removing the words from our head) and his quick step to equating personal lust with the "capacity" to sin itself. He has said elsewhere this is like saying one needs to repent of their fallenness. This, however, twists the truth in an attempt to remove the culpability and guilt of the lust itself.
He continues: "To hear that the very presence of this temptation . . . is itself a sin to be repented of might easily crush an already very tender believer."
Do not miss the position from which he argues. He is appealing to the frailty of a "tender believer" to then conclude for his readers at what point they are responsible for internal sin. He does not argue from Scripture to make this point, he argues that it is too much for people to handle. The entire paradigm that men like Allberry are arguing from springs solely from their personal perspectives. Their doctrine is determined by their experience, thus they back into erroneous positions and bend Scripture to make it work. This is how false teaching works.
Once you start arguing from potential human experience and then use that to reinterpret Scripture, you have moved away from the authority of Scripture. James has made clear that the temptation is already there because of our evil wants and desires. The only thing that will crush a tender believer who wants to rid himself of homosexual lust is to tell him it is something that may never change because it is innate to them—which is precisely what Allberry teaches.
In a best case scenario, these are men who have been poorly counseled and unbiblically pastored in their own struggle against sin and have found an eager audience in American evangelicalism where some type of "middle ground" was desperately trying to be found.
It must be said, however, that any teaching that downplays sin and in fact teaches that sin is not sin, is worthy of the pronouncement of woe and judgement as it is the very same lie that Satan has been whispering since the day he deceived Eve with the same arguments.
Some arguments being made for same-sex attraction as a neutral desire go so far as to say that it could be used by God as a thorn in the flesh for sanctification(!) whereas Isaiah said, "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil" (5:20).
It shouldn't be missed that right before Jesus spoke about lust in Matthew 5, he leveled with His audience: "Whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven" (v. 19).
Satan would love for us to think that 1) lust is neutral and 2) it is engrained and unchangeable, thus not needing repentance.
In truth, only under the crushing realization that we cannot restrain the flesh without the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit in us to will as He wills, can we overcome the sin that so easily entangles. There is freedom from sin only when there is a right understanding that the lust-driven temptations are our own fault. Knowing this will actually help us to confess them and take every thought captive to Christ, allowing the Word of God to “train us in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16) so that these lusts become a relic of the past.
To think, like many modern teachers do, that we are stuck in a sinful desire as a result of biological corruption that is attributed to the Fall, is a false and hopeless message that is only being propagated by those who have not overcome sin in their own life. Don’t let their shortcomings convince you that you are less able to overcome.
To the man or woman who wants to be rid of evil desires in any form, I encourage you with the message of hope from the Word of God:
"Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom!" | 2 Corinthians 3:17
Turn to the person and work of Jesus Christ in faith and acknowledge your guiltiness before Him and confess your sins to Him and He will be faithful and just to forgive you of your sins and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness (1 Jn 1:9).
“Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom 7:24–25).
“You have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4:21–24) (emphasis mine).
Praise God for such a glorious gospel!
In Christ Alone,
Ben
