Author:James (Steve) Clay, MABC, LPC
As a matter of habit, being the generally friendly guy that I am, I often find myself engaging in conversations with other men at the gym, seeking an opening to talk about the Lord. What is also often the case is that I find a brother in Christ, who shares a common faith and wants to talk about things pertaining to Christian life. At other times, men are open to talk about Christ but have no faith of their own. With all that said, the point of my concern in this blog is that of what appears to me as a dichotomy of two opposing worldviews held by a person claiming to know Christ. What I have in mind in particular is that of a Christian man’s view of women and his battle against (or giving into) the flesh.
The Bible seems to be very clear on the subject of sexual lust—we shouldn’t do it. Frankly, Jesus is exceedingly direct about the subject. He says that we should cut off our hand or pluck out our eye before we should give ourselves over to adultery of the heart. Why is the issue so important? Because, according to Jesus, sexual sin will send us to hell.
Matthew 5: 27-30 "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.
Let me clearly say it, men: leering at women with the intent of lusting after them is sin. Yet, I find that many Christian men think little of it as sin. In fact, I have had Christian men shamelessly tell me that one of the reasons they go to the gym is for “eye candy.” What are they thinking? I had one supposed brother in Christ tell me that he cannot believe that God made beautiful women and then tell us that we cannot look at them, to even stare at them. He claims that his looking is purely for artistic reasons, just to enjoy their sheer beauty. When asked if he lusts after them after enjoying their beauty, his reply was, “Well, there really isn’t any way to avoid that, is there?” My reply was, of course, then we shouldn’t look. His circular argument continued.
With all earnestness, let me admonish us all—sexual sin will destroy us. And it is a slippery slope beginning with looking. Its roots are in dissatisfaction with God’s beauty and enjoyment of Him. G.K. Chesterton insightfully wrote, “Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God.” What that man gets instead is quick pleasure and a ticket to hell. We are incurably deceived apart from God’s grace.
Given that sexual sin is one of the primary ways we leave our satisfaction with God, we need to consider the matter seriously. Many things enjoin themselves to men’s sexual appetite, not the least of these is the provocations of a sexualized culture. So much can be said about men’s ease of access to pseudo-sexual pleasure via various sources of media and social interactions. In my counseling practice, where men fall off the sexual wagon only to find themselves in an immoral relationship with a woman, I find that it occurs often times in the workplace and in the gym. The same could be said of women. The workplace provides close proximity; whereas, the gym supplies tantalizing visual material. In regard to where men find titillating adventures of lustful fantasy, he need not go far, for the opportunities are copious around them. So what is a man to do?
Because the Christian life is war, we must think of the issue of sexual lust as war as well. We must fight every morning to regain a biblical perspective, a faith in and love for Christ, and the power by means of an informed mind and the power of the Spirit to do battle against all that would destroy us. Romans 8:5-8 tells us that to set our minds on the flesh is death. It tells us that we will live in accordance to whether we are in the flesh or in the Spirit.
For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
It is first a battle in the mind. We must know something. And whatever that knowing is needs to be biblical. What has God said about feminine beauty? What has He said about our rightful enjoyment of it? What does He say of sexual lust? These and more questions challenge us to think biblically about this matter of sexual looking.
For example, obviously by Adam’s response at God’s presentation to him of Eve, she must have been beautiful to him. She was made different from him in ways that he found delightful in his eyes. Moreover, because she was a gift from God as his wife, the delight he saw in her was connected to his relationship with his creator, who gave her to him. She was to be enjoyed in her beauty by Adam in the context of a covenant relationship. In that context, all that made her feminine and desirable as a woman was to be enjoyed, cultivated, and protected by Adam. She was not to be objectified and used. In other words, before the fall into sin, the gift of the woman to the man was to be enjoyed as acceptable and a reminder of God, the Giver of good gifts (see James 1:17). After the fall, man began to crave what is not given to him. Furthermore, his craving is not connected to the Giver of the gift, rather it is craved without reference to God. This is our natural proclivity. Consider Romans 1 on this point:
21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. 24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
This forces us to ask some questions. What is in the mind of the Christian man who sees little (if anything) wrong with sexually lusting in his looking at a woman? Where does his thinking derive? And what place does the Spirit of God take in the choices he makes when faced with the decision to look or not?
For we who are believers, the Bible is clear in telling us that God has provided good things for our enjoyment. Everything God made is good and to be enjoyed by us who believe. But there are conditions. What are these? We get a good hint from 1 Timothy 4:
1 Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, 2 through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, 3 who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. 4 For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving,5 for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.
Notice a few keys words and phrases—received, thanksgiving, believe, truth, created, good, holy, word of God, prayer. These words are critical to our understanding of how we are to think about the physical attractiveness of women. Let’s put it together: God made the female gender; part of what indicates their gender is their body; their bodies are attractively different than males—this is good, because God designed it this way. Believers have been given by God the privilege to receive enjoyment from all that God created as good, including feminine beauty. However, the manner in which this beauty is to be enjoyed in made holy (fit for its intended purpose) by the instruction of God’s word and through Spirit-dependant prayer. Let’s take a look at a few passages that give us that instruction.
Consider what the scriptures say in both instructing our thinking and in warning us against disobedience in regard to sexual looking and lusting:
Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised. (Proverbs 31:30)
Notice here that God’s interest for a man’s attention toward a woman is not primarily physical, but a matter of the heart. The woman to be desired should be desired for her fear of the Lord. The man who is seeking the instant gratification of his flesh will care little about a woman’s fear of the Lord, except perhaps to be glad she has little of it, evidenced by the lack of clothing she wears. But because sexual sin of the eyes is powerful toward fueling sinful lust, then we need to think carefully about on what our eyes gaze.
It is common that men don’t even take into consideration what God says about their looking. My common experience of having Christian men talking about women in the gym as “hot”, “eye candy”, and even worse, leads me to believe that there is a major gap in their thinking on this issue, or that they have so numbed the voice of the Spirit that the convicting work of the word has no effect. The latter leads me to question whether they even have the Spirit.
Consider the words of Paul in Ephesians 5:
1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. 3 But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. 4 Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. 5 For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. 6Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. 7 Therefore do not become partners with them; 8 for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light 9 (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), 10 and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. 11 Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. 12 For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. 13 But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, 14 for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says," Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you." 15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
With the temptations around us to look (ladies, many of you are not helping very much with this in the way you dress), we men must act like men, and not like boys. Consider the call to wisdom and the stern warning of the Proverbs:
to preserve you from the evil woman, from the smooth tongue of the adulteress. Do not desire her beauty in your heart, and do not let her capture you with her eyelashes; for the price of a prostitute is only a loaf of bread, but a married woman hunts down a precious life. Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned? Or can one walk on hot coals and his feet not be scorched? (Proverbs 6:24-28)
Paul elaborates on the issue of sexual immorality:
For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality;that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. (1 Thessalonians 4:3-7)
The man (or woman for that matter) who sins sexually is wronging his brother (or sister). Sexual sin is not just a matter of belittling God as our greatest satisfaction (as bad as that it), but it is also a failure to love. Paul’s warning is that the Lord is the avenger of these sorts of wrongs against others. Men, we are called to purity, in order that we might love God and others well. It is Paul’s intent to instruct us in self-control toward this goal.
Furthermore, it is imperative that we understand that God’s intention for us as men is that we might lead women well, for their good and God’s glory--not with objectifying eyes, but with protective intentions. Women thrive in the well-prepared soil of men who cultivate their hearts toward knowledge of God and trust in Him. This can’t be done when we are seeking them for our own gratuitous satisfaction. This could not be more relevant than in marriage, where the man, as Christ to His church, ever lives for her spiritual beauty.
that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. (Ephesians 5:26-27)
The Lord has graciously given me a beautiful wife and two beautiful daughters (and two handsome sons to boot). What makes them beautiful to me is that they are a gift to me, in order that I might love them well. As they remind me of their Giver, and as I enjoy them to the fullest through my sacrificial love of them, I find them to be altogether more and more beautiful. The converse is also true with us; to the degree that I crave to glance at other women, I love my family and God less. And to the degree that I love them less, the more tempted I am to look at other women. Wow! How deceitful is the heart of man. God ways are always right.
To sum up, men, let’s get a grip on our eyes and begin to focus them on the hearts of women around us, especially, if married on our wives (and daughters). See women in our churches as sisters in Christ rather than opportunities to look. Let’s seek the good of their hearts. Let’s understand that it is God whom our hearts ultimately crave after. Let’s ask Him to open the eyes of our hearts to see Him as gloriously beautiful above all else. Then let’s ask Him to change our lustful looking into sacrificial seeking to love. And if you run into me at the gym, bust my chops if I’m gazing and not grunting. May God help us be men of pure eyes and giving hearts.