The Real Reason You Shouldn’t Lust
If you’re like me, you grew up in the church knowing that you shouldn’t lust after the opposite sex. But if I’m honest, it was difficult to differentiate between having a healthy sex drive that desires intimacy and actually lusting.
As a teenager and early 20-something, I assumed that because I was single and found someone attractive who wasn’t my wife, I must have been lusting.
Then I started to wonder—can you lust after your wife? Or is that just a healthy sexual desire for her?
After 10+ years of studying relationships, sex, creating multiple dating courses, and writing a book on physical boundaries, here’s what I’ve learned:
Lust Is the Dehumanization of a Person
Lust is when you reduce a person down to their physical body, specifically for their ability to give you pleasure.
In that moment, we begin to dehumanize them. They are no longer a full person with thoughts, ideas, opinions, and permission. They become a physical object that exists to fulfill our desires.
This happens whether we’re fantasizing about someone or acting on it physically. We create them in our minds as we want them to be, not as they really are. In doing so, we make them our romantic or sexual slave.
God Teaches Us to Elevate, Not Objectify
If you look at how God teaches us to treat one another, His goal is always to elevate a person’s value—not strip it away.
Sex was designed to be a deeply intimate connection between two people—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. 1 Corinthians 6 describes it as the uniting of our spirits to become one.
But lust reduces sex to nothing more than a physical experience. Lust is to the mind and soul what casual sex is to the body—it’s achieving pleasure at the cost of true connection.
Lust Trains You to Lose Control
Lust doesn’t just make the other person a sexual object—it also hands control of your life over to your urges.
When we give in to lust, we let our “pleasure now” desires dictate our choices rather than living by our values and purpose. It’s like drinking too much alcohol—you lose control of yourself in exchange for a short burst of pleasure.
In biblical terms, that’s called feeding your flesh (which was crucified with Christ) rather than living by the Spirit (Galatians 5:16).
I’ve heard, Well, I’m not actually having sex with her. This is just a relief valve to blow off some steam. But here’s the truth:
Lust is not an outlet for an active sex drive. It’s the activation of it.
At the very least, you’re sexually frustrating yourself. It’s like giving a two-year-old a coffee and then telling them not to run. You’re hyping up your internal world for something it cannot act on in a healthy way.
Lust Sets You Up for Unfaithfulness
We now know through neuroscience that fantasy creates neural pathways in the brain. The more we engage in certain thought patterns, the deeper those grooves become, making them easier to repeat.
If we allow our minds to wander from pleasure to pleasure, we’re actually training ourselves to be unfaithful in the future.
Why? Because we’re stepping outside of the commitment of marriage to sexually satisfy ourselves. Lust teaches our brains to take whenever we feel the urge, rather than to connect in the right context.
If you’re thinking “Wow, that’s too intense” well, Jesus made it pretty intense:
"If your eye causes you to lust, pluck it out. It’s better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into h***." (Matthew 5:28-29)
Jesus wasn’t just saying, “Hey, lust is bad.” He was warning us about how serious it is—because it shapes us, our relationships, and our views of those around us.
Here’s What It Boils Down To:
Lust takes the gift of sex out of the context where it thrives and lets the appetite for pleasure pursue it at the cost of those around us. It teaches us to be sexually driven rather than values-driven. It turns people into sexual objects for our pleasure rather than partners for connection and intimacy.
In doing so, lust becomes the driver and dictator of our lives—rather than Jesus.
