Resurrection Life Ministries (Daily Reflections from the Word)

Lust, What is It?

James 1:15 Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. KJV

As procreating human beings, we are all too familiar with our English definition of the word conceive. We most often think of it when a man and woman come together in sexual intercourse and a pregnancy is the result of their union, whether intended or unintended. However, the Greek word sullambano used here means something completely different. It is a verb also in the Greek language, but it means to clasp, to seize, to arrest, or to capture. It has the idea of a person being taken captive or prisoner by something or someone very strong. The conception of lust is very strong and it is more corruptive in my opinion than any drug one could put into their body.

However, it gives the appearance that it is not so controlling and thus deceives unsuspecting souls repeatedly. When we look at the statistics of drug use and abuse in this country and the world at large, we are sure in the results we find that those things carry a much greater threat to our way of life. But the breakdown of the family due to sexual misconduct and infidelity is serving as a far greater threat to the destruction of society than any drug. A foreign substance has to be made and then brought from the outside to be introduced into the body. Lust on the other hand lies within the mind and can be awakened at any moment. Therefore, every one of us requires something on the inside of us that can wage war with this enemy lust and overcome it.

Mark 7:21-23 For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man. KJV

The heart He (my Lord Jesus) refers to here is the soul the mind of every person. Every person has corruption built in but there are external stimuli that work jointly with the built in lust to produce sin.

James 1:13-15 Whenever you feel tempted to do something bad, you should not say, "God is tempting me." Evil cannot tempt God, and God himself does not tempt anyone. You are tempted by the evil things you want. Your own desire leads you away and traps you. Your desire grows inside you until it results in sin. Then the sin grows bigger and bigger and finally ends in death. ERV

Lust is always an inside job and consequently it has to be the greatest threat to society and to the future of humanity. All of the Historian writers document that the great empires of the past like Greece led by Alexander the Great, and Egypt with its many Pharaohs, and Rome with all its Emperors were destroyed from within and not by any outside strong or mighty army coming against them. An individual person is more likely to destroy himself by the horrible choices they make in life than from any outside enemy. Is it the mind or brain of every person that holds lust in storage? How can we delineate between the two? Aren’t they the same thing?

Our English dictionary defines the word brain as mental ability, that which is responsible for one's thoughts and feelings; the seat of the faculty of reason, and responsible for someone having exceptional intellectual ability and originality. Well, all of that sounds good but is it factual. One might argue that it must be factual if it is found in the dictionary, hold up let’s not get carried away with Excellency in our humanity. Every dictionary is written and published by man who is from beneath and not from above. Listen to what the Lord Jesus Christ said to some Jews who continued to be antagonistic with Him, John 8:23 But Jesus said to them, "You people are from here below, but I am from above. You belong to this world, but I don't belong to this world. ERV

Guess what? Our English dictionary defines the word mind as that which is responsible for one's thoughts and feelings; the seat of the faculty of reason. Wait a minute, isn’t that the same definition of the word brain. Are we human beings saying that the brain and the mind are the same thing? How is that possible? We can open up a person’s skull and visibly see their brain. Can we see a person’s mind when the skull is opened up? Of course not. The problem with accepting the difference between the physical visible brain and the non-physical invisible mind is due to our spiritual deadness from birth. A spiritually dead man no matter his human intellect or IQ can never resolve or understand what he cannot see, taste, touch, hear, or smell. Get the picture?

Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? KJV

The Hebrew word used in the above scripture for heart is the word leb, which means feelings, will, and even intellect. The English word desperately is from the Hebrew word anash, which means incurable, sick, and in an abnormal state.

People this is our mind from birth. It matters not if you were born into a rich family or poor family, whether you were born as the son or daughter of King or the son or daughter of a slave. At birth we all receive the same corruption in the mind.

I submit to everyone reading this that the Bible tells us the mind is the heart or the inner most part of man and it is the seat of all of our struggles. Did you know that there is not one reference in the entire Bible that references the brain as the center of man? I checked 4 different translations and they were absent the word brain. Our human unregenerate mind is the vilest thing in the entire universe. Lust lives there along with its neighbors, hate, greed, envy, jealousy, pride, etc. How can this type of mind ever produce anything good or acceptable to the One True God?

In my book, entitled “Silent Assassins of the Soul”, I document some of the world’s most well-known and highly respected human Philosophers (example Plato & Aristotle), and discovered that they came up with some of the most bizarre theories and explanations for the mind and its function in man. The Greek philosopher and mathematician Plato (429-347 B.C.) theorized that the mind is a nonphysical thing, which enjoys an existence independent of the body, both before the body’s birth and after its death. The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) taught that the mind was not a thing separate and distinct from the physical body. Rather, it was the “form” of the body, in the most general sense of the term “form” that includes all of the body’s properties and activities. A body with a mind is not two things but just a body of a certain kind: a body with mental properties.

However to a person without the Spirit of God these things don’t sound so bizarre, but gives to them some way of logically differentiating between the mind and the brain. Let’s be clear people, we all know that the mind and brain cannot be the same thing, if so why won’t the brain function after a person dies? Even in our spiritual deadness and separation from God we know that these two are different. The visible brain without the invisible mind is nothing more than a lifeless blob of tissue.

Finally, then what shall I conclude from the Word of God about lust in every man born of the flesh into the earth. The Bible clearly tells us that lust is sin that we are born with in our first birth and has its seat, place, or headquarters in the mind of every person. Therefore, we need a cure for this corruption of our mind. The cure can’t come from within us because our inner man or woman houses the disease. Jesus Christ’s supernatural birth, His sinless life, His sacrificial death on the cross shedding His blood and being buried, then 3 days later He proved He was God by His resurrection from that death and tomb and any person turning from their sin and trusting Him is the only hope and cure for our mind where lust lives.

Isaiah 26:3 Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose MIND is stayed on Thee: because he trusteth in Thee. KJV

Listen to what Matthew Henry (1662-1714) had to say, “All moral evil is owing to some disorder in the being that is chargeable with it, to a want of wisdom, or of power, or of decorum and purity in the will. But who can impeach the holy God with the want of these, which are His very essence? No exigence of affairs can ever tempt Him to dishonour or deny Himself, and therefore He cannot be tempted with evil. There is nothing in the providential dispensations of God that the blame of any man's sin can be laid upon. Those who lay the blame of their sins either upon their constitution or upon their condition in the world, or who pretend they are under a fatal necessity of sinning, wrong God, as if He were the author of sin. Afflictions, as sent by God, are designed to draw out our graces, but not our corruptions.”