A few weeks ago I co-taught a couple of sexual purity lessons for the middle-school and high-school guys at church. These are my (rather lengthy and ramble-y) notes for our lesson about lust. This talk was meant for unmarried young men. I'm sure I would have gone a different direction if I had been addressing married men.
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Every good and perfect gift is from above coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights... James 1:17
Women are awesome, unmatched by anything else in all creation. If you were to take all the glory and splendor of the universe revealed in the night sky and hold it up next to a woman, there would be no contest. Women are, by far, the loveliest features of the whole creation. They are magnificent works from the hand a God who makes beautiful things out of the dust.
That’s what beauty is; it is God’s glory reflected in His created things. God has placed inside all of us an intense craving for Him. We want to see Him. We want to eat and drink Him. We want to bask in His glory. So, when we are awe-struck by the beautiful things God has made, it is not the beautiful thing itself that our senses are responding to. Rather, deep within our hearts we are responding to the glory of the One who created it. We love to see beauty because we love to see God, and we see God’s glory reflected in the beautiful things he has made.
It doesn't matter how old they are or what color they are or how they are built, women reflect the glory of God in ways nothing else does in the whole universe. Women can visibly bubble over with the joy God has placed within them. Their faces can radiate goodness and virtue in ways that our faces just can’t. They can be soft and gentle and nurturing and compassionate in ways that just aren't natural for guys. And when a woman is filled with the joy of the Lord, she can laugh or smile and it almost seems as if the room gets visibly brighter.
When a woman behaves in a way that shows bravery or courage it deeply moves and inspires us. We expect bravery from men with 21 inch biceps, but to see courage come in a small package, with delicacy and grace, is just awe-inspiring because it is unmistakably obvious that the source of that courage is flowing from somewhere beyond her own body.
So, when we look at a woman we are often seeing the reflection of a beautiful and glorious God, His love and His strength, His gentleness and grace. That view can be breath-taking, and it was meant to be breath-taking by the One who made her, because every woman is a daughter of the King of the Universe.
We guys who belong to God (and are trying our best to do His will) often wrestle with the question of what to do about a woman’s beauty. We ask ourselves what it means “to look lustfully at a woman” because Jesus warns us that this is adultery. Some cultures try to solve the problem by making all the women completely cover up with burqas. Some Asian monks try to solve it by holding up a shield in front of their faces in the presence of a woman. Both of these cultures seem to agree that the problem lies in the looking, but Jesus disagrees. According to Jesus, the problem lies in the heart of the one who is looking.
Many of the Jews of Jesus’ time were very careful to faithfully following all the rules that Moses gave. One of the rules that Moses gave was “You shall not commit adultery.” So, under the law of Moses, as long as you didn't actually commit the act of adultery with a woman, you were not sinning. Accordingly to them, you could fantasize about women all you like as long as you just didn't commit adultery with her. But Jesus came along and took things to the next level. He said “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
The Sermon on the Mount isn't about Jesus making up a bunch of new rules that are stricter than the law of Moses. It’s about going deeper than the law of Moses by making sure our hearts and our thoughts (not just our actions) are in line with the will of God. That’s why Jesus says that anyone who looks lustfully at a woman has already committed adultery in his heart. Jesus is concerned about our hearts being adulterous; he is concerned with our adulterous intentions even if we don’t act on them.
Jesus’ primary point in the Sermon on the Mount is that all of the law and the prophets are really about loving God and loving one another. The Old Testament way of thinking about sin is that every time you broke one of God’s rules you got a big black mark next to your name on God’s list. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus replaces that understanding of sin with the idea of aligning our wills with the will of God, to make sure that we are always living a life of love even if what we are doing doesn't violate any particular rule. He wants us to “be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
It’s like God gave us the rules in the Old Testament, but then Jesus comes on the scene and explains the reasoning behind the rules. When our children are toddlers we give them rules because that’s all they understand, but when they get old enough to go to college we don’t send them off with a big list of specific rules about how they should behave in all situations. We try to instill in them some general guiding principles about making good choices, choices that are true to who they want to be as children of God.
That’s what Jesus is doing in the Sermon on the Mount. He is saying that “love God and love your neighbor” is the guiding principle behind the old laws. Anyone who follows these principles will end up obeying the Law of Moses naturally, but those who follow these principles will go even above and beyond what the Law of Moses says because their hearts are aligned with the intentions of the One who gave the law.
And on top of all that, God has given us His Holy Spirit to continually remind us of His principles at those very times that we need to be reminded the most. The Holy Spirit is the very real indwelling of God within us. He’s not just an idea. He’s really there and He really works and He really speaks and He really reminds us of the principles He has taught us and continues to teach us.
If we just dig through the Bible looking for rules and commandments to follow, we are going to completely miss the point of this spirit-based New Covenant. For instance we will find a rule that says “do not look lustfully at a woman” but we just aren't going to find anything that says “don’t send sexual text messages to a woman.” However, if we are really listening to Spirit of God and we think to ourselves “Is it okay for me to send this slightly off-color text message to a girl? It doesn't even have any cuss words in it.” The Spirit of God within us is going to loudly scream “No! No! No! For the sake of the girl, and for the sake of yourself, and for sake of the the Kingdom, No!” We just have to be listening instead of digging through the Bible looking for loopholes.
So, instead of asking ourselves “are there any specific rules against what I want to do?” Jesus is teaching us to ask instead “How do I respond to a beautiful woman in a way that shows love to God and to my neighbor?”
Jesus isn't just giving us a few more commandments to follow in the Sermon on the Mount. He is teaching us a new way to think about sin. Sin is when we fail to love God and love our neighbor. We can still have hearts full of sin even if we aren't breaking any particular rule.
So then, “How DO we respond to a beautiful woman in a way that shows love to God and to our neighbor?”
I have several answers to that question that I want to share with you. The first answer is that we should consciously look at every woman like she is a daughter of the King of the universe. Sometimes women don’t know or understand that they are daughters of the King, and sometimes they don’t act or dress in a way that shows they know that.
(By the way, that behavior is between her and God and your judgement isn't going to fix her. Only Jesus can rescue her from that lie the enemy plants in the hearts of women, that her value is completely derived from how she looks. However, at some point God might be calling you to minister to one of His daughters who needs to find her identity in Him alone. In that case, you should be quick to respond to His leading. For the most part, though, sitting in judgement on a woman for the way she acts and dresses is going to be of no Kingdom value.)
But even if they don’t act or dress like a daughter of the King, it is our role as sons of the King to always treat them as such. That means that whenever we look at a woman we look only to see a real soul, a real person with real value. No woman is an object for our viewing pleasure, and they should never be looked at that way or talked about that way or treated that way. Every woman has her own real desires and real needs and real fears and real dreams, and Love demands that every time we see a woman we always remember that she is a real person with a real soul and a real heavenly Father who loves her deeply.
This is not a rule. This is the natural response to following the principle of loving our neighbors as ourselves, and if we learn to listen closely to the Spirit of God, He is going to remind us of this at those very times that we need to hear it most.
When a woman walks by and guys say “Whoa, look at THAT!” That is treating the woman as an object, not as a daughter of the King. When men look at pornography or pictures of nude and scantily-clad women for the purpose of our own gratification, we are treating those women as objects for our own pleasure and we are also training our minds to treat women as objects in the future. Practicing shooting free throws on the basketball court really does make us better at shooting free throws. Practicing our band music really does make us better at performing it. Our brains really do respond amazingly well to training. This is an awe-inspiring aspect of God’s creation, but it also means that when we practice over and over again to treat women as objects for our pleasure, are brains are naturally going to learn to do it better.
On the other hand, if we practice treating women with respect and thinking about them with respect, we are going to become better at doing that as well.
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you. Phil 4:8-9
So the first way we can respond to a beautiful woman is to learn to think about her and treat her as a daughter of the King. The second response I want to share with you is that the way we treat women is not just a personal struggle between us and our sin. There is a much larger battle taking place on the earth. There is a very real war between the children of God and the spiritual forces of evil in the world, and each of us is a real soldier in that real fight. Everywhere we look we can see the spiritual forces of evil winning victories over the children of God.
When we see broken homes and broken marriages, that is evil winning.
When we see rape and abuse and sex slavery, that is evil winning.
When we see women who buy into the destructive lie that their self-worth is
determined by how good they look or by whether or not they have a
boyfriend, that is evil winning.
When we see guys pressuring girls to go farther with them sexually, that is evil
winning.
When we see dating couples who actually despise each other but who are unable
to break up with each other because their sexual activity has trapped them,
that is evil winning.
When we see babies being killed in the womb and children growing up without a
father, that is evil winning.
Everywhere we look in the world we see evil winning, and the role of the children of God in this world is not just to sit by passively and “try not to sin.” Jesus says to Peter that “on this rock I will build my Church and the gates of Hell will not overcome it.” It is supposed to be the powers of evil that are hiding behind the gates of Hell, and the Church, the children of the King, are supposed to overcome the gates of Hell, smash them to pieces, and set free those who are held captive. We are actively at war against the evil in the world, and the goal of our God is that His Kingdom may come to Earth more and more fully as more and more of His children submit to His reign.
Remember, we are not at war against any of the people God has made. All people, regardless of what they do, are children of God and we must love them as God loves them. Our battle is not against the people, against the flesh and blood. Rather our battle is against the evil in the world. Sometimes we like to pretend that evil is something that other people do, and so we lash out in judgement and self-righteous condemnation against all the evil we see other people doing. But Jesus says that we are to “first remove the plank from our own eye.” And there is enough evil within ourselves to keep us occupied for a lifetime.
The best way to fight against evil in the world is not to drop bombs or pass legislation. The best way to fight against the evil in the world is to fight against the evil in us, and to give support to others as they fight against the evil in themselves. So an excellent way to respond to a beautiful woman is to remember that you are a soldier in the army of the Supreme Commander. Your brothers are out there fighting and dying on the battlefield in an brave effort to rout evil and bring more and more of the earth under the reign of the King. This is a real fight in a real war with real consequences, and you are a real soldier in that fight. Now, while your brothers are fighting to the death against evil, are you going to lay down your weapons and slip off with some woman and pleasure yourself and bring just that much more evil into the world. No, heaven forbid! There is already enough evil in the world without the soldiers of God betraying our brothers and our King to commit treason and invite just a little bit more evil into the world.
So, in your relationships with women keep in mind that you are needed on the battlefield. We can’t afford having you go AWOL. And that daughter of the King you are with is needed on the battlefield, too. If she surrenders to her temptations and does things with you that she regrets, that is going to knock her out of commission, too, while she nurses her spiritual wounds. We need her to be at the top of her game as well, because she is fighting against the same enemy.
And the last thing I want to share with you about responding to women is that we can combat the temptation to lust by giving God the glory for the women we see. There was guy named Nicodemus who lived about 250 years ago who gives this excellent advice:
Every time you feel in God’s creatures something pleasing and attractive, do not let your attention be arrested by them alone, but, passing them by, transfer your thought to God and say: “O my God, if Thy creations are so full of beauty, delight and joy, how infinitely more full of beauty, delight and joy art Thou Thyself, Creator of all!”
What this means is that whenever we see something beautiful we can immediately give God thanks and praise for the beauty we see because the Creator of beauty is even more beautiful still. That moves our thoughts from the beautiful thing to the one who created it. This advice works for our relationships with women as well. Personally, I like the quote from Nicodemus: “O my God, if Thy creations are so full of beauty, delight and joy, how infinitely more full of beauty, delight and joy art Thou Thyself, Creator of all!” But that can be a bit of a mouthful, so if you want something easier you can sing that song by Gungor “Beautiful Things”:
You make beautiful things.
You make beautiful things out of the dust.
You make beautiful things.
You make beautiful things out of us.
However you choose to give God the praise, the important thing is to turn our thoughts to God and to give Him the praise for the woman. Ultimately, that’s how we draw closer to God, by living a life that is filled with worship, that is a constant prayer of thanksgiving to our Maker. A life of joyful gratitude is a full and abundant life, and living a life that is filled with God is far more satisfying than any woman can ever be.
Women are awesome. They are awesome because they are created by an awesome God. It really is possible to take our encounters with women and transform them from struggles with lust into opportunities for giving thanks to our awesome God for the awesome creatures He made.
Doing this, of course, is going to take a LOT of practice. In fact, it will take a lifetime of practice and a lifetime of being continually reminded by the Spirit of God. It’s not something you are going to master on day one, so don’t get discouraged when you forget and drop back into old habits. But by daily following the urging of the Spirit of God and by daily living a life of praise and thanksgiving, He will slowly transform you into an amazing ninja warrior on the battlefield against the forces of evil.
And I want some amazing ninja warriors on my side.
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