Sleeping with the Enemy
As is often the case, I find that the Greeks had a much deeper grasp of the essential elements of the concepts behind words that we now employ without much inner reflection. We have become anaesthetized to the profound and often revealing connections lying hidden inside our language simply because we have been removed from the origins of these words by thousands of years and millions of repetitions. It is a case of gross neglect of insight through linguistic satiation.
The example I wish to explore today is the English translation of the Greek word epithymia. We find this word in Matthew 5:28, Mark 4:19, I Corinthians 10:6, Galatians 5:17 and approximately 15 other verses. It is translated variously as ‘desire’, ‘lust’ or ‘crave’. But without some reflection on these English translations, we may view this word in the company of description about food addictions, romance letters, or the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. The truth is that the concept here is much stronger and much more severe. Desire comes from both Middle English and French and means “to long for or want earnestly, pray, entreat”. None of these connotations are particularly distasteful, certainly not bent in the direction of something to be avoided. Crave is perhaps a little stronger, meaning “to beg for”, “intense longing”. But again, we have plenty of associations of this word with perfectly laudable ends. We might crave justice, victory, success or harmony. We may crave passion, employing the full meaning of the intensity resident in this word and still not intimate anything askew. Lust, however, moves toward the dark side of this linguistic umbrella. Lust is primarily associated with one thing – sexual appetite. Lust as a noun or a verb conveys the same image – a lascivious passion built on animal desire for sexual indulgence. This is more than the intensity of craving. This is excessive desire.
Our Greek cognate is closer to lust than to any other English translation. But even lust does not reveal all that this Greek expression contains. Epithymia comes from another Greek word, thymos. In its oldest root, this word is associated with the violent movement of air, water, earth, animal or men. It has the meaning of “boiling up”, like the explosion of a volcanic eruption. Because of its connection to the movement of air, it is related in meaning to a very important Greek word, pneuma, which is translated into English as ‘spirit’, and which literally means “breathe”. So, thymos is closely associated with pneuma, the root of the Greek concept of “life” – to breathe. Thymos is also often found in connection with orge; a connection produced because thymos often means sudden rage. Orge means ‘wrath’. It gets this meaning from the same idea as thymos, namely the violent surging. But where thymos moves in the direction of explosive movement, orge adds a another element – punishment. Orge is especially related to revenge and avenging justice. It is wrath wrought by impulsive passion, swift, violent, devastating. It is the preferred expression for the exercise of God’s holy anger. We have two related English expressions: orgy and orgasm. Although modern usage almost always finds these two words associated with sexual activity, even in English they actually come from the concept of violent, excessive indulgence and excitement.
Here, then, we have a linguistic canopy associating the concepts of the vital force of life itself with violence, sudden movement, excessive indulgence, rage and finally sexual frenzy. When we think about this umbrella, we should not be too surprised. The association of life with sex is straightforward. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how the idea of sudden movement, violence and eruption and are connected with sexual activity. The startling association is with the concept of wrath and anger. After all, sexual intensity certainly has an explosive aspect, but it is not usually thought of in the same context as revenge and anger. To understand the background of this direction, we must examine our original Greek word, epithymia, more rigorously.
From its root in thymos, epithymia carries forward the idea of a direct impulse for food, sex or other physical desires. At first there is nothing morally objectionable in its context. But with the influence of Greek philosophy, a chasm was created between the sensual world and the rational world. Things of the body were seen as inferior because they belonged to a material world, which was corrupted, subject to decay and morally reprehensible. The aim of Greek philosophy was to find a way to escape the bonds of sensual desire and free the mind and soul to rise to the heavens. Consequently, epithymia became the hallmark of the base human condition, filled with anxiety, cupidity and fear. Epithymia is the waywardness of man in conflict with his rationality.
But even here, epithymia is an ethical dysfunction, not a religious sin.
It took the association of this word with Old Testament meanings to move the concept from its ethical base to the meaning, which it carries in the New Testament usage. In the LXX, epithymia is used to highlight the sin of longing for desires outside the will of God. It is associated with the commandment not to covet, and in particular, not to covet sexual relationships outside the bonds set by a holy God. Thus, the word is used of King David’s desire for Bathsheba. Epithymia marks the inability of human beings to maintain holy self-discipline in the face of God’s ordinances, especially in relation to sexual activity. Epithymia is not primarily an affront to proper human social mores, but rather a deliberate violation (violence) against the will of God. Therefore, David’s lament in Psalm 51 addressed his sin against God, not against Bathsheba or Uriah, because David rightly recognized that his was a sin of willful disobedience marked by violent overthrowing of God’s expressed will.
It is this background of aggressive, violent, willful disobedience, that impresses itself on the character of epithymia used in the New Testament. In the New Testament, epithymia is evil, not because it is irrational (as with Greek philosophy) but because it is willful disobedience. Epithymia is a manifestation of sin that dwells in man and that controls him, for although unholy desires are kindled as a result of the presentations of the world, it is the internal resolution to self-will, stirred up in impulsive motion that causes violence toward God’s rule. Lust is nothing less than the spiritual outburst of anxious self-seeking. Lust characterizes man as he really is, apart from God as a being who is at any moment willing to erupt in a burst of self-proclamation and self-determination.
Since sexual relations show most clearly the character of a person, whether the motive is self-sacrificing, self-submitting mutual commitment or self-fulfilling, self-dominating unilateral aggregation, obedience in this realm of human behavior is a mark of true subjugation to God’s will. No man or woman can be sexually lustful and at the same time be obedient to God. Therefore, the New Testament contains dire warnings against the danger of lust and instructs Christians to fight against such impulses. Here is instruction to use spiritual warfare and resistance against a great enemy of God, namely, the desire within us to create our own world.
The reference in James is quite instructive. James 1:15 says that when lust conceives, it brings forth sin. This description is in character with what we have been able to discover about the word canopy. It is a fact of human experience that lust is often expressed quite literally in sexual intercourse, the act of conception. But here James scribes an amazing metaphor. No matter the physical association of lust with coitus, James makes it clear that the very presence of epithymia is the seedbed for the propagation of sin. I have often heard sermons that distinguish lust and sin in this verse, arguing that lust itself is not a sinful act; that sin occurs only when lust is allowed to bring forth its fruit. But now I believe that this exegesis is mistaken. Jesus noted that having epithymia in one’s heart toward a woman was the spiritual equivalent of committing the act of adultery. Is James lessening the connection? I think not. What James is saying is simply this: the presence of lust (epithymia) is pregnant with sin. Lust always conceives. There is no numinous condom that prevents lust from impregnating its recipient. If you and I allow lust to penetrate our lives, we have already assented to the dominance of our will in opposition to the will of God and that can mean only one result – the birth of sin. No wonder we are exhorted to violent action against such an enemy. There is no passive acquiescence here, no humble supplication. This is war, a war of self-will against the divine will and the prize is none other than our very being. Lust is not subtle. It is aggressive, violent, impulsive, explosive, demanding, commanding and overpowering. It wants only one thing – the object of its desire. And this is the antinomy of God’s way.
Let us not be deluded. Lust is a powerful, cunning enemy, hideously concealed within our very being. But epithymia is no match for the love of God when God’s love is practiced in obedience. Why? Because epithymia requires concurrence of the will in order to boil over. The strategy of God’s battle against this enemy of our souls is that of tiny victories, of deflection rather than confrontation, of ego deflation rather than ego bolstering, of moment-by-moment admission to our natural inclination toward self-will, to the recognition of our powerlessness over the lust that has already impregnated us. God forgives. We obey. One single moment of submission at a time.
It is impossible not to sleep with this enemy. The enemy is my-self. But it is possible not to let the enemy “sleep” with me. So help me God.
