Love and Lust

Overview

Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, is telling us how he wants us to live in every area of life. Love and sex is one of those areas of life, and so he gets to that here. When you first read it, it would be natural to have a negative response, because on the surface it looks like Jesus is saying, “If you have sexual desire, you’re going to hell.”

It would be very natural for somebody to say, “Aha! See? That’s that negative view of sex everybody says Christians have.” But that’s a great misunderstanding. I’m going to show you that the biblical or Christian understanding of sex, while it is very different from that which the culture gives you, nevertheless is one of the most attractive things about Christianity. There are three things we see here: the integrity of sex, the challenge of lust, and the future of love.