Lustful Adultery? Matt 5:21

[Jagged Zen Monkey]

Jesus promoted an unselfish love. Lust is desiring to posses another as property, whereas love only desires the best for them and their happiness. Lust leads to jealousy, anger, and wrath. Lust has torment, but love is gentle, kind, and is far from self seeking. Lustful adultery is having a lustful desire to possess, whereby the one who desires possession becomes tormented by that desire. Look at David and Bathsheba. David had Bathsheba's husband murdered because he lusted after her and desired to take her as his own. Lustful adultery has nothing to do with sexual thoughts about another individual and everything to do with the desire to possess another as human property.

 

Thoughts?

[JosephM]

JZM,

 

I think you have said it well.

 

Joseph

[JenellYB]

I looked at how the Greek word from which 'lust' is translated in the NT, and found it interesting that is isn't a specific reference to sex or sexuality or even sexual desire, though we have all pretty much come to think of it in that context. If you will browse a NT concordiance for 'lust' and 'lusts', and read context, is is quickly evident it isn't in itself sexual.

 

Lust seems to have a meaning more along the line of never being content, happy, with what you have, always wanting more, never satisfied. It seems to me actually quite close in meaning to 'greed', whereas greed is usually applied in matters of money and wealth, material things of value, lust more to other things, things of desire, such as pleasure, feeling superior for things one has or even just the ability to get what one wants, especially more so than others. Sexual conquest can certainly involve that, the conquest not only over the object of desire, but over others with an interest in 'having' him/her, as well...spouse or parents for example.

Another difference between greed and lust seems to me, greed is to want to 'have', to accumulate more, while lust is more about the 'getting'. Once one has the object of desire, they often soon loose interest in that one, and again not content with what they have, are off looking for something/one else.

 

I have an image of a comparative metaphor in mind that seems to illustrate the two...imagine two kids, always wanting a new toy or game...one kid hoards his toys, maybe lays them all out to admire and play with, keeps each one polished and carefully kept,his goal to have more and more of them (greed)....while the other kid plays with each toy a little while, soon tires of it, tosses it aside or tears it up or leaves it outside to ruin in the rain, only eager for a new one. (lust)

 

I think the 'sin' in adultery, even just adulterously looking at,thinking about, a person other than one's present partner, isn't as much in getting'having the new one, but in the devaluing, discarding, the partner he/she already has. In the example of David, he had something like 200 wives, whom he devalued as "not enough", in his lust for Bathsheba...I wonder if she would have seemed nearly so appealing had she been legitimately available to him, rather than at the cost of his having her husband killed, the "challenge" of taking her away from someone else, that aparantly really loved and valued her. Consider too, virgins were far more valued, so that she was another man's wife indicates something was more valued to David than virginity,perhaps that she WAS another man's wife, the challenge of conquest over her husband to have her?

 

Jenell