The word translated "lust" or "lusts" in Scripture (King James Version) usually is the same word that is translated desires. Paul has a desire to depart and be with Christ, and he warns and exhorts Christian saints to put off the old man and his lusts. The same Greek word is used.
Desires are not evil on their own. What marks them as evil is what they are set upon. John makes this clear in 1John 2:15 where he writes, "love not the world, neither the things that are in the world".
Our love and our desires are tied together, brought out by what John writes next: For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the vain glory of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
Therefore we have a basis for evaluating and managing our lusts.
We are going to desire what we love. This is why John puts love before the desires of lusts. However, it would be wrong to begin with love. To evaluate our love we must first look at our desires. Why? Because you can say "I love the Lord" but your desires may be those of the dead nature. You can say I love the truth, but your desires may lead you to continue to lie or hold on to a lie in your beliefs so that you can continue in a certain sin.
Your desires reveal what you love. This is why we must first inspect our desires.
Next, we have to evaluate our desires and classify them as either those that are "of the Father" or those that are "of the world".
Here we may want to seek to identify "of the world" by some objective standard. It is easy to look out at the world and subjectively deny something as being "of the world" because it is something we crave. This must be avoided if we are to properly and objectively identify "of the world" so that we can root it out of our heart.
1John 3:4 is that objective standard. "of the world" is that which is against God, and sin is that which is against God. Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law.
Sin is against God, and it is the transgression of the law of God.
Now we have objective standards to evaluate our desires. Sin and the law.
Some here may make a point of saying that the law has changed. However, the clear teaching of Scripture is that the moral law given to Israel at Sinai (Exodus 20) is also the same law given to God's spiritual Israel, the Church.
I hope that I've not lost anyone by this point. I am not presenting the law and sin as a means of obtaining God's righteousness. They are a measure to identify the desires of our hearts. Are we continuing to walk in the ways of the old man, the old sinful nature, or are we walking in the ways of the new man, the ways of the new spiritual nature. Paul says the law is spiritual, and it is for sinners of which he says he is chief. It is not to crush us down under condemnation, but to help us to evaluate whether we are walking in the flesh or walking in the Spirit.
It in turn will help us to cry out to God in humility as we come to see once again that we cannot save ourself from the wretchedness of sin, but that we are completely saved by grace by faith.
Because of the length of this post, I will end here and continue at some point in the future.
Look at your desires against God's standard and identify in your own heart whether they are of the world or of the Father, and where you see they are of the world, cry out to God for mercy and forgiveness. Remember, John says in this same book that "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
We need not despair when we sin. We need to confess and cry out to God for mercy as we did in the beginning of our walk in faith.
Lord bless you in Christ Jesus.
