Sensuality or Debauchery

You may have observed certain gross forms of sensuality in our day and thought to yourself, “This can’t be right!  It violates all forms of self-restraints and purity!”  This is right.  The Greek word aselgeia means “debauchery, lewdness, sensuality.”[1]  Formerly translated as lasciviousness in the KJV, today it is generally rendered as sensuality.  W. E. Vine says that it denotes “excess, licentiousness, absence of restraint, indecency, wantonness.”[2]  It expresses “a shameless self-indulgence, an abandoned commitment to pleasures of the flesh.  There is no sense of restraint or shame.”[3]

William Barclay sees aselgeia as a extreme of evil.  He says, “Aselgeia indicates a love for sin so reckless and so audacious that a man has ceased to care what God or man thinks of his actions.”  He says that the Greek scholar Lightfoot says that “the essence of aselgeia is that it has come to such a stage of sinning that it makes no attempt whatever to hide or cloak its sin; it is sin lost to shame.”[4]

There are many examples of sensuality in our day, especially since the infamous “decade of rebellion” of the 1960s.  For instance, before that time, some people did practice sodomy or homosexuality “in the closet,” but after that decade sodomites increasingly made themselves known, even parading down city streets, shamelessly proclaiming their unnatural sexual orientation and deviant lifestyle.  Today it is increasingly accepted in society, including educational circles, entertainment, and government.

At one time, homosexuality was a capital offense, with sodomites deserving the death penalty in the United States, then it became merely illegal, with no execution. Finally, shameless sodomites openly declare their sexual perversion, without much opposition from an increasingly secular and amoral society.  San Francisco is openly sodomite at the present time. Thousands of sodomites parade the streets of New York and other cities, not hiding in back rooms, but announcing to the world their perversion.  This demonstrates aselgeia in its most blatant and shameless form.

Aselgeia is also found among the revelers at Mardi Gras in New Orleans.  It is demonstrated in the loose living found in Los Vegas, Hollywood, New York, and every other location. It is manifested in the topless beaches, the nudist colonies, and even expressed in most regular beaches, where scantily clad and near naked men and women show their bodies in a shameless display of flesh.

Sensuality is rampant in the discos of the country, and every other unrestrained and sensual dance.  Aselgeia is demonstrated in the drinking parties and bars of the country, where drunk patrons stager out to become a menace on the highway. The sensualist caters to the fleshly senses and incurs God’s hot displeasure in the process.

As we mentioned above, Barclay sees aselgeia as an extreme form of immorality and evil.  He writes, “It denotes sin so open and so blatant that it has ceased to have any regard for what anyone may think or feel or say.”  He says that it has three characteristics: (1) “It is wanton and undisciplined action.  It is the action of a man who is at the mercy of his passions and his impulses and his emotions. . . .” (2) It has respect neither for the persons nor the rights of anyone else.  It is violent, insolent, abusive, audacious.”  (3) “It is completely indifferent to public opinion and to public decency.”  What one did secretly at first, becomes open and blatant.  “He does openly and blatantly that which he did secretly and in concealment.”[5]  Barclay describes it more fully but in a helpful way:

In many ways aselgeia is the ugliest word in the list of NT sins. . . . It is described as “the spirit which knows no restraints and which dares whatever caprice and wanton insolence suggest.” . . . The man who is aselges (the adjective) shocks public decency [according to Lightfoot].  Here is the very essence of aselgeia; the man in whose soul aselgeia dwells is so much in the grip of sin, so much under its domination, that he does not care what people say or think so long as he can gratify his evil desire. He is the man who is lost to shame.  Most men have enough decency left to seek to hide their sin, but the aselges is long past that.  He will be guilty of any outrageous conduct, and care for nothing except to satisfy his desires.[6]

The Lord Jesus says that sensuality comes “from within, out of the heart of men,” and it defiles a man (Mark 7:21-23).  Paul says that sensuality is a “deed of the flesh” that will prevent one from inheriting the kingdom of God (cf. Galatians 5:19-21).  He says that the unsaved Gentiles have “become callous” and have “given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness” (Ephesians 4:19).

Does this sound like some whom you know?  Peter says that before coming to Christ, his Gentile readers had “pursued a course of sensuality, lusts, drunkenness, carousing, drinking parties and abominable idolatries” (1 Peter 4:3), but now they were to “live the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for the lusts of men, but for the will of God” (v. 2).

Peter even says that false teachers will live sinful lives, and “many will follow their sensuality” (2 Peter 2:2).  He cites the example of Sodom (from which we derive the sin of Sodom, which is sodomy), where Lot was “oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men” (2:7).  He also writes of the evil intentions of the false teachers who “entice by fleshly desires, by sensuality, those who barely escape from the ones who live in error” (2:18).   Jude refers to certain false teachers who “turn the grace of God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (v. 4).  Paul was concerned that some at Corinth may not have “repented of the impurity, immorality and sensuality which they have practiced” (2 Corinthians 12:21).

Can one escape the trap of sensuality (aselgeia)?  Or has such a person gone so far that he is a reprobate, beyond repentance?  As we have noticed in 1 Peter 4:2-3, some sensual persons did escape this immoral and shameless sin and began to live lives of purity, godliness, and righteousness.  Paul writes, “Let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy.  But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to the lusts” (Romans 13:13-14).  He calls on the sensual to repent and put on Christ Jesus.  Sensuality can be forgiven and overcome, through the power of Jesus Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit!

 

[1] Mounce, Expository Dictionary.

[2] Expository Dictionary.

[3] Richards, Expository Dictionary.

[4] Barclay, Flesh and Spirit, p. 31.

[5] Flesh and Spirit, pp. 32-33.

[6] William Barclay, New Testament Words, pp. 60-61.