For most men, the battle against lust is significant. And the statistics show that for Christian men in the church at large, they are not winning. Although these statistics have sometimes been exaggerated, they are still alarming (https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/factchecker-do-christian-men-watch-more-pornography/). What is crucial to note, however, is that this is not the normative life for the Christian man. God promises power and victory through the Spirit and the Word, and every man ought to fight with faith that he can and will overcome all lust, evil sexual desires, and pornography. This post, however, is not about tackling the big monster of pornography, although it may have some relevance to that battle. It is about, rather, the extermination of the smaller, creeping things that may scurry unchecked around the halls of our hearts. For as long as we walk this earth, our goal must be complete holiness and absolute purity of thought. Anything that deviates the least from this ideal is sin and an affront to a holy God.

I want to suggest to you, and writing especially to you men, a good metric for knowing if you have conquered lust, or conversely where you still need to do some work. This test, if you will, may help you in more ways than you may think. Most obviously, we want to get rid of any vestige of sin so that we can reflect our Lord and walk before Him blamelessly. Having a clear conscience gives us confidence in our prayers and in our worship. We can say along with David, “who shall ascend the hill of the Lord and stand in his holy place. He who has clean hands and a pure heart.” But knowing where we may still fall short can also help us keep away from larger sins, or sins in other areas of our lives. It is the nature of sin that it always spreads. It is like leaven that leavens the whole loaf (1 Cor 5:6-8). If we know, therefore, the smaller (but note: still serious) ways in which we sin, and repent, we keep ourselves from falling into grosser and more serious sin.

The metric is taken from Psalm 15:4. The Psalm starts by saying, “O LORD, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill?” The language here is very similar to the better-known section in Psalm 24. There are several clauses—answers—that are attached to this question, one of which is verse 4, “in whose eyes a vile person is despised.” I want to suggest that this verse is very helpful as a man to know what purity looks like in relation to some women. The idea here is that the sins of others should be hateful to us. In fact, the logic of the verse goes a little farther than this, as it is speaking not only about vile deeds, but a “vile person.”

A little systematic theology is helpful here. We often hear the dictum “love the sinner, hate the sin.” To be sure, there is an important principle in this proverb. Christ commands us to love our enemies, and that means loving sinners (Mat 5:44). In this way we follow in the footsteps of our Saviour who loved us while we were still sinners (Rom 5:8). But this isn’t the only note that is sounded in Scripture. We are also told to hate the wicked (Ps 31:6, 119:113, 139:21). We can put the two ideas together by stating that we hate the sin of sinners and, insomuch as as they are unrepentant and defined by their sin, we are to hate their persons, and yet, we are to also love them as made in the image of God, and capable of repentance and new life in the time of God’s patience (2 Pet 3:9).

As Christian men, how are we to relate to women, whether in the media and movies, or in our workplaces and on the streets, who are “vile” in their immodesty and licentiousness? We are to despise them (in the certain sense explained above.) The challenge is that we remain, even if we were absolutely pure in all our thoughts, sexual beings whom God has created to be attracted to the opposite sex. In the case of men, we are especially attracted to the beauty of woman and this is a good, not an evil. But sin remains, both in women who deliberately tempt, and in men who are tempted and even our attractions must be sanctified. We are no longer slaves of the flesh.

Here is the point: the Christian man ought to despise the vileness of immodesty and of the temptress. He is to ask the Lord to so sanctify his desires that he not only refuses to lust after a deliberately licentious woman, but that he would react to such sin not with a desire he must tame, but with a horror that would make him turn away in disgust. Even while he, in a biblical sense, loves the sinner and honors the image of God in her. A difficult task? Yes, perhaps. But that is the battle. And it is a battle we have to win, not only at the point of not being pierced by sins, but more fundamentally at the point of having our desires transformed to match that of our Lord.

Hep me love what you love, O Lord, and hate what you hate!