{"id":383,"date":"2024-04-29T11:36:30","date_gmt":"2024-04-29T16:36:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnwilliamschwartz.net\/?p=383"},"modified":"2024-04-29T12:29:04","modified_gmt":"2024-04-29T17:29:04","slug":"to-be-a-stronger-longer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnwilliamschwartz.net\/?p=383","title":{"rendered":"To Be a Stronger Longer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Did Jesus lust?

Sometimes when I’m feeling ornery, I’ll ask people that. Because usually their knee-jerk response is (often with horror) “No!”<\/em> And then I’ll point out Luke 22:15, where Jesus says to his disciples, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” — literally (and very Hebrewly) “I have lusted with lust to eat…”<\/em>

So Jesus did<\/strong> lust, in that the basic word translated lust simply means to have a desire for. Of course he didn’t lust in the sinful way, but that’s exactly my ornery point. What is it that makes desire, sin? When does desire become sin? Obviously Jesus strongly desired and didn’t sin. In fact, maybe he had strong desires that set in place and even crowded out lesser desires. And maybe there’s a lesson for us.

This line of thought has recently connected with\/given me a new lens with which to view James 1:14-15: “But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is brought to completion, it brings forth death.”<\/em> Note that lust and sin are not the same thing. (Also note that the NIV and CSB unhelpfully translate “lust” as “evil desires,” when the text does not specify if the desire is evil or not. The NIV’s translation, at least if made formulaic for how all sin works, pretty much rules out that Jesus was ACTUALLY tempted, as he wouldn’t have had evil <\/strong>desires… so this understanding might help us there too.)<\/em>

All this might go along with the famous C. S. Lewis quote about desire: \u201cIt would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.\u201d<\/em>

Boy, amen. I am driven by desire. Perhaps we all are, I don’t know. So here’s a very simple poem about all that. First lines tip the hat to Judy Blume.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Did Jesus lust? Sometimes when I’m feeling ornery, I’ll ask people that. Because usually their knee-jerk response is (often with horror) “No!” And then I’ll point out Luke 22:15, where Jesus says to his disciples, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” — literally (and very Hebrewly) “I have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnwilliamschwartz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnwilliamschwartz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnwilliamschwartz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnwilliamschwartz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnwilliamschwartz.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=383"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/johnwilliamschwartz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":386,"href":"https:\/\/johnwilliamschwartz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions\/386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnwilliamschwartz.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnwilliamschwartz.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnwilliamschwartz.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}