How to Overcome Lust as a Christian: What Jesus Said and Steps That Help

Three practical things help a Christian overcome lust: removing whatever feeds it, telling one trusted person such as a pastor or friend, and deciding ahead of time what to do when temptation comes. Prayer and Scripture hold all three together, and when the habit has become compulsive, a licensed counselor can help.

When Jesus spoke of lust, he placed it where it starts, saying it is committed “in his heart” (Matthew 5:28), for “from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts” (Mark 7:21). The practical steps can guard our eyes and our time, but the heart itself needs a prayer, and the psalmist gives us one: “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10).

Jesus spoke about lust in the Sermon on the Mount, where he took the commandment against adultery and applied it to the eye and the heart:

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

Matthew 5:27–30

When he says “to lust after her”, he means a look aimed at desire, not an accidental glance, and elsewhere he said where such desire starts: “from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications” (Mark 7:21).

One early Christian is reported to have taken such words literally. The historian Eusebius, in the Church History he wrote in the early 300s, says that the young Origen took Matthew 19:12, about those who “have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake,” “in too literal and extreme a sense” and castrated himself. Eusebius saw faith and self-control in what he did, but he also called it the deed of “an immature and youthful mind.”

John Chrysostom, in his sermons on Matthew, read the passage another way. Jesus, he said, was “not discoursing about our limbs,” because “it is not the eye that sees, but the mind and the thought.” He took the right eye and the right hand to mean a person we value that highly, and if that person “hurts your soul,” the tie must be cut. Read like that, what Jesus tells us to cut off is whatever causes us to sin, and not part of the body.

A passing thought or a moment of attraction is a temptation, and temptation is not yet sin, for the Letter to the Hebrews says that Jesus “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). James describes how temptation becomes sin: “every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death” (James 1:14–15). So the sin begins when we welcome the thought, keep it and feed it.

Catholics and Protestants agree that lustful thoughts, kept and cultivated, are sin. The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines lust as “disordered desire for or inordinate enjoyment of sexual pleasure” (paragraph 2351) and lists it among the seven capital sins, with pride, avarice, envy, wrath, gluttony and sloth (paragraph 1866). Its Compendium says the ninth commandment forbids “cultivating thoughts and desires connected to actions forbidden by the sixth commandment.” Reformed Protestants say the same in the Westminster Larger Catechism, which names among the sins forbidden by the seventh commandment “all unclean imaginations, thoughts, purposes, and affections” and “wanton looks” (question 139).

Scripture does not treat sexual desire itself as lust. It tells a husband to “rejoice with the wife of thy youth” (Proverbs 5:18), and Paul advises the unmarried who struggle with desire, “if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn” (1 Corinthians 7:9). The word is wider in the King James Version, where “lust” can mean any strong craving, not only a sexual one, as in “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16).

1. Cut off what feeds it

Paul tells us to “make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” (Romans 13:14). In practice that means naming our own triggers, which differ from person to person: certain shows, websites, social media accounts or apps, late nights alone with a phone, a certain route or place, or a friendship that keeps drifting toward flirting. Then each one gets a concrete change, such as deleting an app, unfollowing accounts, installing a content filter, charging the phone outside the bedroom, or avoiding time alone with a particular person. When the struggle is mainly pornography, the steps in how to stop watching porn as a Christian go further.

The same passage changed Augustine of Hippo, who recalls in his Confessions that as a young man he prayed, “Grant me chastity and continency, but not yet,” because he was afraid God would answer too soon (Book 8, chapter 7). Some time later, in a garden in Milan, he opened Paul’s letters and read Romans 13:13–14, ending with “make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.” He read no further, he writes, and “all the gloom of doubt vanished away” (Book 8, chapter 12).

2. Tell one person

James writes, “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed” (James 5:16). The one we tell should be mature and trustworthy, a pastor, an older Christian, or a friend of the same sex who will ask honest questions. An accountability partner can agree on regular check-ins, receive reports from filtering software, and take a call or text in the moment of temptation. A small group can do the same. Catholics can also bring these sins to a priest in the sacrament of Penance. The Compendium of the Catechism says grave sins “must be brought to the sacrament,” and it recommends confessing lesser sins as well, because confession helps “to fight against evil tendencies” (questions 304 and 306).

3. Decide in advance what to do in the moment

When Scripture shows people resisting sexual temptation, it mostly shows them leaving. Joseph, when Potiphar’s wife caught hold of him, “left his garment in her hand, and fled, and got him out” (Genesis 39:12). Paul’s advice is just as short: “Flee fornication” (1 Corinthians 6:18) and “Flee also youthful lusts” (2 Timothy 2:22). Job tells of a decision made beforehand: “I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid?” (Job 31:1). And King David’s fall began with a look from a rooftop at a woman bathing (2 Samuel 11:2).

The plan can be simple: look away at once, leave the room, put the phone down in another room, call or text the accountability partner, go for a walk, and say a short prayer or a verse. When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness he answered each time with Scripture, beginning, “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone” (Matthew 4:4). Paul promises that God “will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

Idle, empty hours are a common trigger, and the Westminster Larger Catechism lists “idleness” among the things that lead to sexual sin. Jerome gave a young monk the same advice in a letter: “Always have some work on hand, that the devil may find you busy” (Letter 125). Exercise, work, hobbies, time with friends and serving other people all fill hours that would otherwise go to temptation.

4. Fill the mind with something better

Removing triggers leaves a gap, and Paul tells Christians what to fill it with: “whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things” (Philippians 4:8). He calls this being “transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2). A thought that arrives uninvited can be refused and replaced, “bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).

These verses are short enough to learn by heart for the moment of temptation:

• “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.” (Psalm 119:11)
• “Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” (Galatians 5:16)
• “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” (James 4:7)
• “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.” (Proverbs 4:23)
• “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.” (Psalm 51:10)

5. See a counselor when the habit is compulsive

Some people find that prayer, accountability and good intentions are not enough to break the habit. The World Health Organization’s ICD-11 classifies compulsive sexual behaviour disorder (code 6C72) as “a persistent pattern of failure to control intense, repetitive sexual impulses or urges resulting in repetitive sexual behaviour,” including the use of pornography. Its signs include “numerous unsuccessful efforts” to cut back, carrying on “despite adverse consequences” or with little satisfaction, and a pattern lasting six months or more that causes marked distress or harm to family, work or social life. The ICD-11 notes that people with the disorder often turn to sexual behavior “in response to feelings of depression, anxiety, boredom, loneliness, or other negative affective states.”

The same entry also sets limits: a high sex drive without loss of control is not a disorder, and distress “entirely related to moral judgments and disapproval” of one’s own desires is not enough for the diagnosis. For someone whose behavior does fit the pattern, a licensed counselor or psychologist who treats compulsive sexual behavior can help, alongside a pastor. Going to one is no failure of faith, and treating the depression or loneliness underneath often makes the other steps easier to keep.

Lust can be forgiven, however many times we have fallen, for “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). When a woman caught in adultery was brought to Jesus, he said to her, “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more” (John 8:11), and in those few words he gave her both the forgiveness and the command.

The New Testament speaks of the fight against lust as one that goes on. “Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence,” Paul writes (Colossians 3:5); “mortify” means “put to death,” and the work is done “through the Spirit” (Romans 8:13). Proverbs says that “a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again” (Proverbs 24:16). So after a fall, the thing to do is confess it quickly to God and to the accountability partner, then ask what led to it (a time, a place, a mood or an app) and change the plan to close that gap.

Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:28 apply inside marriage as much as outside it, and “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled” (Hebrews 13:4). Paul tells husbands and wives to give each other what marriage owes and not to “defraud” one another, except by agreement for a time of prayer, “that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency” (1 Corinthians 7:5). A couple guards against lust by talking honestly about temptation, keeping up their physical and emotional closeness, setting shared limits on media and on friendships with the opposite sex, and refusing to compare husband or wife with anyone else. Where one of them has hidden a struggle with lust or pornography, that spouse can ask a pastor or counselor to help with the conversation.

The prayer known as the Collect for Purity is said near the start of the Communion service in the Episcopal Church’s 1928 Book of Common Prayer. It asks God to cleanse thoughts at their source:

Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Book of Common Prayer (1928), The Holy Communion, p. 67

The same book gives this collect for the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity:

Lord, we beseech thee, grant thy people grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil; and with pure hearts and minds to follow thee, the only God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Book of Common Prayer (1928), The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity, p. 214

In the moment of temptation

Lord Jesus, you were tempted and did not sin. This thought is here now, and I do not want it. Turn my eyes away, give me the strength to get up and leave, and bring to mind the person I promised to call. Amen.

After a fall

Father, I have done it again, and I will not hide it from you. Forgive me and cleanse me, as you have promised. Show me what led me here, give me the courage to tell the person I need to tell, and keep me from despair. Amen.

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