*Lust and the Christian Single is a Three Part Series. Read 4 Steps to Handle Lust and Freedom From Lust is Possible as well.*

I’m in Junior high. Always an awkward time.

Only made more awkward by me and my classmates sitting in a circle having the sex talk at our Christian school. We’re each handed a box of Smarties as a lady talks about the importance of saving sex for marriage. 

She says that sleeping around is like handing out all your Smarties to other people and then when you get married you have nothing left for your spouse. 

We are told to keep the Smarties as a reminder of this. Then on our wedding night to give them to our spouse as a symbol of how we saved sex for marriage. 

I don’t think I’ve ever talked about this. Only while typing it am I realizing just how weird the whole thing is. 

I believe saving sex for marriage is beautiful and godly, and to be able to tell your spouse you waited is amazing. But why would you give them Smarties that have been sitting in a sock drawer for a decade, ew. Plus telling kids having sex before marriage means you’ll have nothing to give your spouse is illogical and harmful. 

I digress, but don’t worry this isn’t a post discussing the flaws of purity culture.

I’m a rule follower, so I kept that box of Smarties for at least four years untouched. This was a full size box too, not like one of those little Halloween ones. After four years I thought it was silly and hopefully threw them out and didn’t eat them. 😬

That was the extent of my sex education. I didn’t have any more conversations with my parents, the church, my school or even friends until I graduated high school. 

My life is an example of how infrequently Christian circles talk about sex or lust. 

It is a HUGE problem. 

Our world is HYPER sexualized. Sex is a business in numerous ways and boy does it sell. As the world enters into these conversations daily it’s an opportunity for the church to do the same. 

Instead it seems to cause fear among Christians and the church. In an attempt to protect people (usually kids and teens) Christians withdraw and hide from conversations around sex rather than welcoming the conversation from a Biblical viewpoint. The thought process is that by talking about sex you are promoting all the immorality that comes with it, but that’s not true.

I can understand not wanting to make sex the focus, and the desire to avoid sin. Which leads to the conversations we are having in churches about saving sex for marriage, physical boundaries, and how to prevent crossing those boundaries. 

However, there is so much missing from those conversations that it’s actually causing harm to many Christian singles. 

What people don’t talk about is how you’ll WANT to cross those boundaries (99% of humans have a sexual desire), the different ways lust manifests, the difference between lust and sexual desire, or what to do if you are struggling. 

The quantity and quality of conversations around sex needs to improve in the church.

I’ve seen, and experienced personally, how people hide their burdens connected to sex or lust from their Christian community. Such as pornography addiction, masturbation, premarital sex, abortion, sexual fantasy, etc. 

Shame is one of the enemy’s greatest tools. He convinces you that what you have done is unforgivable and that you are alone in it. By failing to have full conversations around sex, this shame over sexual sin becomes amplified and debilitating in the Christian singles mind.

Christians need to talk about sex and lust not to celebrate or promote it, but because it needs to be in the light. In Christianity darkness is generally bad, because the Bible refers to God as light.¹ Conversations with others is what brings things into the light, so now you can process and deal with it together. 

Shame grows in darkness, freedom is found in the light.  

Let me take a moment to say something very important: Sexual desire is NOT a sin. God made sexual desire; I guess He wanted people to enjoy intimacy in marriage and making babies.

John Mark Comer says, “Sexual desire is a good thing, designed by God himself. And it is core to humanity; we were sexual before we were sinful, and we must celebrate sexual desire not shun it.”² 

God also gave the ideal circumstances to act on our sexual desire. Sex is ideally between a man and a woman once they’ve committed to sacrifice and serve each other through marriage.

You can interpret these circumstances as rules, but the rules FREE you from the effects of lust on your relationship with God, yourself and others. Everyone is enslaved to something, so you can either be a slave to sin or a slave to righteousness.³ It’s called the paradox of freedom. R.C. Sproul says it this way, “the only freedom that man ever has is when he becomes a slave to Jesus Christ.”⁴

While we were “sexual before we were sinful”, sin unfortunately twisted sex in many ways that the Bible calls sexual immorality. Lust is the root of all sexual immorality. 

Lust is so common, whether you are single or married, I believe it makes more sense to ask how do you struggle with lust, rather than do you struggle.

What is lust? 

It’s important to separate lust from sexual desire. At its core, lust is selfishness; a desire to please yourself. Which is probably why it’s a sin. In most contexts, lust refers to pleasing your sexual desire. 

Lust is surface level. It’s about instantly gratifying your desire in a way that feels good, mentally and physically, to YOU. Ironically, when it’s all about you, you often lack self-control. Lust starts to control you. 

Lust should never be a part of sex. A healthy sexual desire before marriage remains healthy after marriage. While lust is ALWAYS sinful and rooted in selfishness. Which means once married, what was lust does NOT turn into a healthy sexual desire, it remains as lust. As a result, you could still struggle with lust in marriage through pornography, adultery or doing things sexually that aren’t honouring to God or your bodies, even if it’s with your spouse. 

If lust is an issue now in your singleness, it isn’t going to go away automatically in marriage. Which is another reason having these conversations around sex and lust are vital. 

Marriage is not the solution to your lust problem.

All sin is an issue that comes with consequences. James says, “when desire has conceived, it engenders sin and sin when it’s fully grown, gives birth to death.”⁵ That being said, lust seems to be a particularly devastating sin. Probably because it’s a sin against the body itself and our bodies are meant to be temples of the Holy Spirit,⁶ and probably because the church doesn’t talk about it.  

If you’re reading this and feeling incredibly guilty it could be the Holy Spirit convicting you of things in your life. Maybe you have lust you need to confess. Don’t panic. Sin is part of life and human nature. Working through conviction, confession and repentance is a healthy practice. Involve people in this practice.

When you internalize that feeling and believe lies about your identity, that, my friend, is called shame. It is NOT from God. You can find freedom in Jesus through conviction followed by confession. Shame is what the enemy uses to keep you from confessing and enjoying that freedom.

There is no sin deep or dark enough that God won’t forgive. Jesus’ blood covered ALL sin and sinners.

Listen to the voice of your heavenly Father, not Satan’s. 

This beautiful passage in John shows how Jesus graciously handled those who was stuck in lust.

“Early in the morning he [Jesus] came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”⁷   

John 8:2-11

This passage brings me to tears on a regular basis. Let’s be honest, most of us (including me) can relate to the woman caught in adultery in some way. Whether it’s that feeling of shame over what you’ve done or feeling of judgement from the “holier” people around you.  

If you’ve struggled with lust in any form, there is forgiveness for that. Even if the church makes it seem like it’s the sin we can’t talk about or ever move past. I’m sorry you’ve been told that lie.

In this passage Jesus doesn’t condone or celebrate her sin, He tells her to “sin no more”. She’s forgiven and she needs to deal with her sin. The practical steps for handling lust is what we’ll be talking about in, Lust and the Christian Single: Part Two (of three). That’s next week.

For now, know that there is “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”.⁸

Jesus doesn’t condemn you. Paul doesn’t condemn you. I don’t condemn you. Everyone sins, in some way, multiple times a day. While that shouldn’t make you happy and complacent, it also shouldn’t make you filled with shame and hiding in darkness. Step into the light and embrace forgiveness.  

Thanks for having this conversation with me 🙂

Mindy

References

1. 1 John 1:5. The Bible. English Standard Version, Crossway, 2001. 
2. Comer, John Mark. Live No Lies. Colorado Springs, WaterBrook, 2021. 
3. Romans 6:15-18. The Bible. English Standard Version, Crossway, 2001. 
4. R.C. Sproul Quote. AZ Quotes, 2024, https://www.azquotes.com/quote/868194. Accessed on 14 February, 2024. 
5. James 1:15. The Bible. English Standard Version, Crossway, 2001. 
6. 1 Corinthians 6:18-20. The Bible. New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition, Zondervan 2022.
7. John 8:2-11. The Bible. English Standard Version, Crossway, 2001. Emphasis added.
8. Romans 8:1. The Bible. English Standard Version, Crossway, 2001.