By Felix Ngunjiri Gichuri

“Everyone is tempted to sin by his own lust which seduces him and lures him away from the truth and traps him. Then when lust is conceived in his heart, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is full grown, it gives birth to death.”  (James 1:14-15 GOD’S WORD Translation)

We are Conceived and Born in Sin

“Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalm 51:5King James Version). Man is conceived and shapen in sin; he brings it into the world with him. The original sin continues in a person and is passed on to his or her descendants, and it is called man’s heart’s lust. Our sin nature is a part of us from birth (Psalm 58:3; Proverbs 22:15); we are born sinners. Even before we are conscious of sin, it influences our bodies and our actions. King David wrote, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalm 51:5). Children have a natural inclination to sin. They can insult, hit you, take what is not theirs, cheat or deceive, disobey parents because of their sinful nature. That is why it is important to teach them the way to go and bring them up in a Godly way so that when they grow up, they will make a decision to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour of their lives. “Train up a child in the way he should go, [a]And when he is old he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6 New King James Version)

What is Lust?

Lust is “excessive or unrestrained sexual desire.”  It is probably best defined in this context as “sexual desire for what is forbidden.” The author of the book of James chapter 1 verses 14-15 doesn’t equate lust with sin. He says that “when lust has conceived (when the lust of the eyes and lust of the flesh combine or team up, lust acquires a life of its own), it gives birth to sin.” (James 1:15 (NASB)

We are tempted to sin by our own lusts which lure us away from the truth and then trap us or enslave us.” Lust is our corrupt nature, which has its residence in the heart of man; is natural and hereditary to him, and therefore it is called ‘his own lust’.

How Does Man Get Tempted by their Own Lust?

Man gets tempted, seduced, lured, ensnared, drawn away when he lusts for a bait that promises pleasure or profit and he is then ushered into sin by his own lust and so the temptation begins.  The man will not even know that the seduction that promised profit and pleasure was an imaginary and a short lived venture that is craftily tucked inside a bait to trap whoever is foolish enough to fall into the temptation. He will have been led away into sin by the lusts of his eyes which teamed up with the lust of his flesh and the two conceived in his heart giving birth to sin. “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.” (1John 2:15-17 [KJV])

Now this meeting with some bait, which entices and draws it out, or with some external object, which promises pleasure or profit, a man is allured, and ensnared, and drawn away by it, and so the temptation begins: thus, for instance, covetousness was the predominant lust in Judas; this meeting with an external object, or objects, which promised him profit, he was at once enticed and drawn away to betray his Lord and master for the sake of it. So sin often promises pleasure, though it is but an imaginary, and a short lived one; which binds itself into a man’s own lust, and corruption within him, and so he is allured and drawn aside; and to this, and not to God, should he attribute temptation to sin. A proposal of pleasure or profit having being made, appears agreeable to lust. The sinful man gets enticed and drawn away into sin. The principle of corrupt nature in the sinful man is pleased with the sin; and instead of resisting and rejecting it, he admits it, receives it, cherishes it in his mind; dillydallies with it, plays with it, meditates and dwells upon it in his thoughts, hides it in his heart, forsakes it not and contrives ways and means of how to act it out and continue doing it. When sin is full grown, it brings forth death and the devil knows it already.

“The Angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear Him, and rescues them.” (Ps 34:7 [HCSB]) No power of hell can force its way through the barriers which God the Holy Ghost erects around the faithful and confiding soul: only by treason of the man himself can the great enemy enter in and reign.

Cases of lust maturing to sin and death is illustrated by the stories of Ted Bundy and Arthur Bishop.

Ted Bundy was one of the worst serial killers in U.S. history. An infamous murderer, rapist and necrophile (sexual act with corpses) in the 1970s. Ted Bundy’s life continues to attract the interest of psychologists today, who speculate about what drove the promising young law student to commit such horrific crimes.

Bundy admitted to committing 30 homicides of young women and girls in the 1970s, though he may have been guilty of many more. He appeared charming and approachable, which allowed him to lure his victims into brutal and often fatal assaults. Many of his victims were young, attractive college women in the Pacific Northwest.

But what exactly led Bundy to commit these heinous acts? According to the serial killer himself, watching violent pornography was a huge motivating factor.

On the day before he was put to death by electric chair in 1989, Bundy received hundreds of interview requests from media outlets nationwide. He declined these requests and granted his final interview to Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, to whom he said he believed he had something to say.  

In their exclusive interview, Bundy discussed pornography as a possible explanation for what drove his behavior.

“I was essentially a normal person, I had good friends, I led a normal life except for this one small but very potent, very destructive segment of it that I kept very secret and very close to myself and I didn’t let anybody know about it: watching pornography.” he said.

Bundy said he first discovered “soft core pornography” in grocery stores, and was compelled to consume more and increasingly violent forms. “…like an addiction, you keep craving something harder, which gives you a greater sense of excitement, until you reach a point where the pornography only goes so far and the sexual urges raging in your mind force you to act it out.”

Another case involved an innocent looking student by the name Arthur Bishop who at the age of 18 served as a missionary in the Philippines. He was lured to homosexuality by watching pornography. Bishop was brought to trial on February 27, 1984 and charged for serial murder. During his trial, Bishop claimed that an addiction to child pornography molded his violent sexual fantasies and eventually drove him to act them out.The trial lasted six weeks; on March 19, 1984, Bishop was found guilty of five counts of aggravated murder of five young boys, five counts of aggravated kidnapping, and sexually abusing the minors and was sentenced to death. Upon receiving his sentence, Bishop apologized to his victims’ families and made a request to be executed by lethal injection. After his conviction he wrote a letter in which he explained the motivation for his crimes:
“ I am a homosexual pedophile convicted of murder, and pornography was a determining factor in my downfall. Somehow I became sexually attracted to young boys and I would fantasize about them naked. Certain bookstores offered sex education, photographic, or art books which occasionally contained pictures of nude boys. I purchased such books and used them to enhance my masturbatory fantasies… Finding and procuring sexually arousing materials became an obsession. For me, seeing pornography was lighting a fuse on a stick of dynamite in my mind. I became stimulated and had to gratify my urges or explode. All boys became mere sexual objects. My conscience was desensitized and my sexual appetite entirely controlled my actions. ”

Bishop was executed by lethal injection at Utah State Prison in Point of the Mountain on June 10, 1988. Prior to his execution, he again expressed remorse for his crimes.

Man has within himself a deep longing for satisfaction, for relationship and subsequent help from a superior being. This longing has been a real mystery to man from the time he was kicked out of the Garden of Eden. It is like he was emotionally affected by that loss and he has frantically been seeking to be reunited with that superior being who was satisfying his thirsty soul. In fact he said that it was a longing that has haunted him all of his life, a deep yearning in his soul, a longing that only God can satisfy.

The psychiatrist Gerald C. May observed, “After twenty years of listening to the yearnings of people’s hearts, I am convinced that human beings have an inborn desire for God. Whether we are consciously religious or not, this desire is our deepest longing and most precious treasure.”

The Bible describes this longing as a thirst of the soul. King David says, “For He has satisfied the thirsty soul, and the hungry soul He has filled with what is good.” (Psalm 107:9)

In another passage David says, “As the deer pants for the waterbrook, so my soul thirsts for God.” (Psalm 42:1)

As a counselor once put it, “people are driven and ruled by unsatisfied desires, and they are desperately looking everywhere that they can in hopes of finding satisfaction.” He goes on to say the prophet Jeremiah was right when he wrote:

For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me. The fountain of living waters, to hewn for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water (Jeremiah 2:13 NIV).

We forsake God, the fountain of living waters, and we construct a life strategy of making our own cisterns and filling them with water that will satisfy us. The problem is this: all of our cisterns leak. They cannot hold water. We are continually thirsty.

“The Wages or Consequences of Sin is Death “but the Gift of God is Eternal Life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

In the Book of John, Jesus makes this declaration: “If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the scripture said, “From his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.” (John 7:37, 39). This is how it has always worked. And this is how it will ever work.  The devil has never changed and the nature of sin has never changed! The devil knows that “the wages or consequences of sin is death …” but he does not want us to know or believe the second part of that verse which says “but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23) At its core, sin is rebellion against God. Our sin separates us from God, the creator and sustainer of life. “Behold, the LORD’S hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear dull, that it cannot hear:But your iniquities/sins have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.” (Isa 59:1-2 [KJV]) “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9) So, when we sin and become separated from God, we become separated from true life and therefore experience death: spiritual death which later ends up in physical death. Everything that happens on earth first happens in the spiritual. That is why before death happens here on earth upon man, it first happens in the spiritual. That is why when Adam ate the forbidden tree despite having been warned that the moment he shall eat of it he shall surely die, he actually died spiritually in the garden of Eden/paradise of God/ heaven and died physically here on earth years later. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6a). He is our life here on earth and in heaven. If we make Jesus Christ our way, our truth and our life, we shall be saved from this present evil world and inherit everlasting life. For “God so loved the world that he gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:16–17).

Amen.