Giving or Taking

What is actually moving between two people when they come together?

Jesus says something that I used to read as a rule and now read as a description:

"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." (Matthew 5:27–28)

He moves the whole thing inward. The question isn't only what you do with your body. It's what's happening in you while you look, while you want, while you reach toward someone. I relate to this from the inside. I don't understand it as a theory so much as something I keep feeling in my own body and noticing in my own heart.

Two different energies

There's a distinction I can't unsee anymore. Love and lust can look almost identical from the outside: the same attraction, the same closeness, sometimes the same act. But the energy is completely different.

Love is giving yourself, all of yourself, to the other.

Lust is taking from the other. Or, just as often, letting yourself be taken.

That second part matters to me. Lust isn't only the person grabbing. It's also the person who offers themselves up to be consumed so they can feel wanted. Both are in the same loop. Something is being extracted, and nobody is really being given.

Paul's description of love reads like the exact opposite of that loop:

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking…" (1 Corinthians 13:4–5)

Not self-seeking. That's the line. Lust is self-seeking by definition, even when it's dressed up as generosity.

Why are we even here with each other?

I've started to think you can enter sex, or a relationship in general, for reasons other than sharing the love God has for you with the other person. Actually, it seems like almost every other reason ends up lust-oriented in some way. Security, validation, boredom, loneliness, status, the feeling of being chosen. None of them are evil in themselves, but they all lean toward getting.

And I notice a lot of people looking for their "match" in what they find lustful in the other. The right body, the right energy, the right chemistry. We call it compatibility. Sometimes it's really just two appetites that fit together for a while.

John puts the order of things very simply:

"We love because he first loved us." (1 John 4:19)

Love doesn't start in me. It starts in God, and it reaches me first. Then the only thing I actually have to give someone is what I've been given. If I enter a relationship empty, trying to get filled by the other person, I'm already in taking mode, no matter how sweet it looks. If I enter it full of what God has poured into me, I can give without needing to extract anything back.

Both people giving everything

So what does true love look like between two people? I think it's both of them consciously giving everything to each other, with neither one slipping into lust.

Paul tells husbands to love their wives "just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her" (Ephesians 5:25). Gave himself up. That's the model, and it's not a small one. It's the cross.

And it's not supposed to be one-sided:

"Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others." (Philippians 2:3–4)

Each of you. When both people are giving, something strange happens. Nobody is taking, and yet both are receiving more than they could ever take. That's the economy of love. It runs on giving, and it never runs out, because it isn't drawing from the people. It's drawing from God.

The fine line

Here's where I have to be honest: this is really, really hard, especially in sex, even with someone you love and are committed to.

Desire is good. God made it. The Song of Songs isn't shy about it at all: "I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine" (Song of Songs 6:3). That's mutual belonging, not mutual consumption. The same book also warns, more than once, "Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires" (Song of Songs 2:7). There's an order to it. There's timing. There's something to protect.

But in the moment, the shift from giving into taking can happen in a second. You start out offering yourself and suddenly you're just chasing a feeling. Or you're performing for the other person's hunger instead of being present with them. It's a fine line, and I don't think anyone walks it perfectly.

Paul names the difference this way:

"It is God's will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God." (1 Thessalonians 4:3–5)

Learn. That word gives me some hope. It's not a switch you flip. It's something you learn to control, slowly, over a lifetime.

God teaching us

The longer I deal with love versus lust in my own life, the more it feels like God is teaching me what love actually is, through the contrast. I don't think I would understand giving if I hadn't felt so clearly what taking feels like. I don't think I'd recognize real love if I hadn't been in so many loops that only looked like it.

Maybe that's part of the point. Every time I notice myself grabbing, or letting myself be grabbed, I'm being shown the outline of the thing I actually want. Every lustful loop is a negative image of love, and if you look at it long enough, you start to see the real picture.

I'm not writing this from the other side of it. I'm in it. But I'm starting to think the question I should ask in any relationship, in any moment of desire, is simple:

Am I giving right now, or am I taking?

And underneath that one: Am I giving from what God first gave me, or from what I'm trying to get?

Scripture quotations from the NIV.