Love vs. Lust

I don't think people that do that love their partners. First off, when you love someone, you won't NEED to have sex with them. People that hook up only do it for the sex. There's no love involved. In my area, it's like a disease. A guy wants sex, and a girl wants a somewhat honest relationship. If at any point he says he wants out because he's not getting what he wanted, she cries, posts it all on facebook, talks trash about him. It happens constantly in my neck of the woods. One of the more recent ones stands out in my memory. A girl compared her ex to a toilet saying he "is dirty and full of crap". Interesting.

Pray that God may open up your mind with wisdom and knowledge and that you can have this issue clarified.

In the bible, lusting seems to be used in an adulterous sort of way. Basically if you have ill-thoughts towards another person when you're not married, then you're lusting. Or if you're married and you have ill-thoughts for another person other than your spouse, then you're also lusting.
Matthew 5:28 " But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

I hope I don't come across as a anti-Hollywood person because I do appreciate alot of the ideals and movies that they can also portray. But generally, a lot of what we see in the media (particularly Hollywood) about love is a very misconstrued idea about what love actually is as taught from the bible. Love is not necessarily that tingly feeling you get about someone or the fluffy lovey dovey stuff of going on romantic dates and places. While love can comprise these feelings/emotions/states of mind, they are not the main focus of love.

If we look at what God tells us about love in the bible, a lot of it points to his son Jesus Christ. More than anything love seems to be about self sacrifice for others. Jesus lived out this to the point that he died on the cross.
John 3:16, For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Loving someone would mean you commit to them for the rest of your life and sacrifice yourself for them in any and every way.
If you love someone would you be willing to clean the toilet or take out the rubbish for them day in day out?
If you love someone, would you be willing to take of them if they become extremely ill? If you love someone, would you be able to still love them when their skin become saggy, their face becomes wrinkly, their hair becomes white?



Hopefully that sort of clarifies what love and lust is. So now, answering your questions

1. When you love someone and want to have sex with them is that considered lust?
If you love someone in a husband/wife sort of way, then you should probably be married to them. If you're married then wanting to have sex with your spouse is not lust. The bible teaches the husband and wife to fulfill each other's desires.
But if you're not married to them, and want to have sex with them, then yes it is lust. God teaches us through the bible that men should treat females as sisters and having no impure thoughts about them.

2. When people 'hook up' on the college scene do you think they actually love their partners?
Sex is only a small part of loving someone. The bible does teach Christians not to have premarital sex and for husbands to present their wives to be pure and blameless before God. So in light of these teachings from the bible, it's hard to see how hooking up during college can be a loving thing to do.

While some of the above things are what we have been taught by God through the bible, we are still humans and aren't perfect. We might have done these things in the past, but the important thing is that Christ died for our sins once and for all. Believing this means we repent of our old ways and live a life that's regenerative (changed) and following His way, not our way or the world's way.

A lot of what your mentioning is lustful...
Love is when your married and truly know you
love that person enough to make that commitment

Avant87 said:

So now more than ever I've been wondering what the difference is between love and lust. I'm sure alot of you have been wondering too. When you love someone and want to have sex with them is that considered lust? When people 'hook up' on the college scene do you think they actually love their partners?

Click to expand...

I can't answer for the situations above. I'm not them.

Lust: fleeting, instant gratification, selfish, one sided

Love: lasting, patient, giving, mutual, respect


Lust is the mirror image of a pure passion.

Lust is ... (according to the dictionary)
1) intense or unrestrained sexual craving, or
2) an overwhelming desire or craving.

http://www.gotquestions.org/what-is-lust.html

Love is ... (according to the Bible)

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." (1 Corinthians 4-7)

When you love someone and want to have sex with them is that considered lust?
-Wanting to have sex with them is, IMO, considered lust. Also, IMO, it is only natural to want to have sex with someone you love (romantically). Do I want to have sex with my future husband? Yes! But is that desire unrestrained? No. We're waiting. Since the desire is there, though, I guess we're guilty of lust.

When people 'hook up' on the college scene do you think they actually love their partners?
-Not for one night stands - I think these are scenarios where people are acting based solely on lust. However, I do believe that people who engage in premarital sex while in long term relationships do love their partners a lot of the time.

Things are always black and white as to whether or not a person loves or lusts after someone else. It is more an issue of which emotion (love or lust) is dominant that determines how they treat the other person.

As my fiancee said, Love and lust arn't mutually exclusive. Often they come together. The love also helps cause the lust.

But the important question to ask is if there is love that comes with the lust or if the lust comes by itself.

Love is a selfless desire that seeks to serve the other person and take care of their needs. And it accepts people despite what faults that they might have.

No people hooking up don't love eachother. They both love themselves and have found an arrangement to gain mutual sexual pleasure. But the very nature of "hooking up" indicates no committment to eachother outside of sexual pleasure. Love means committment among other things.

To know love and lust, you really must know yourself. I do not believe in objective definitions for these two words outside of a few really general concepts that apply to them. This is because these two words are personal feelings / impulses / mental states / emotions / etc. and must be determined and differentiated by the person who is experiencing them.

Know yourself, and you will know if it's love or lust in your life. Most people already have the answer to the question "Is this lust or love," they are often just hesitant to admit it to themselves fully.

I read this somewhere a long time ago and saved it for some reason, I gave it to someone one other time. I have no idea where I found it, at least it says where it came from though. I think a lot of them are true, it doesn't exactly say lust but I think infatuation could be similar depending on the case.

Is it “Love” or “Infatuation?” (Twelve Tests)
[Adapted from Marriage for Moderns by Dr. Henry Bowman]

Test #1 – TIME
Love grows, and all growth requires time. Infatuation may come suddenly.

Test #2 – KNOWLEDGE
Love grows out of an appraisal of all the known characteristics of the other person. Infatuation may arise from an acquaintance with only a few or only one of these characteristics.

Test #3 – FOCUS
Love is other-person-centred. It is outgoing. It results in sharing. Infatuation is self-centered.

Test #4 – SINGULARITY
Genuine love in centred on one person only. An infatuated individual may be “in love” with two or more persons simultaneously.

Test #5 – SECURITY
An individual in love tends to have a sense of security and a feeling of trust after considering everything involved in his relationship with the other person. An infatuated individual tends to have a blind sense of security based upon wishful thinking rather than upon careful consideration, or he may have a sense of insecurity that is sometimes expressed as jealousy.

Test #6 – WORK
An individual in love works for the other person or for their mutual benefit. He may study to make the other person proud of him. His ambition is spurred and he plans and saves for the future. He may daydream, but his dreams are reasonably attainable. An infatuated person may lose his ambition, his appetite, and his interest in everyday affairs. He thinks of his own misery. He often daydreams, but his dreams are sometimes not limited to the attainable and are given free rein. At times the dreams become substitute for reality and the individual lives in his world of dreams.

Test #7 – PROBLEM SOLVING
A couple in love faces problems frankly and attempts to solve them. If there are barriers to their getting married, these barriers are approached intelligently and removed. Such as cannot be removed may be circumvented, but with knowledge that what is done is deliberate circumvention. In infatuation, problems tend to be disregarded or glossed over.

Test #8 – DISTANCE
Love tends to be constant. Infatuation often varies with the distance between the couple.

Test #9 – PHYSICAL ATTRACTION & INVOLVEMENT
Physical attraction is a relatively smaller part of their total relationship when a couple is in love, a relatively greater part when they are infatuated. When a couple is in love, and physical contact they have tends to have meaning as well as be a pleasurable experience in and of itself. It tends to express what they feel toward each other. In infatuation, physical contact tends to be an end in itself. It represents only pleasurable experience devoid of meaning.

Test #10 – AFFECTION
In love an expression of affection tends to come relatively late in the couple’s relationship. In infatuation, it may come earlier, sometimes from the very beginning.

Test #11 – STABILITY
Love tends to endure. Infatuation may change suddenly, unpredictably.

Test #12 – DELAYED GRATIFICATION
A couple in love is not indifferent to the effects of postponement of their wedding and do not prolong the period of postponement unless they find it wiser to wait a reasonable time; they do not feel an almost irresistible drive toward hast. Infatuated couples tend to feel an urge toward getting married. Postponement is intolerable to them and they interpret is as deprivation rather than preparation.

Love and lust are so different. It has many different definitions, but sex is only a very small part of loving someone. Like some have said, love may cause lust...or infatuation may cause lust. Love grows over time, like a relationship. You begin to get to know the person and love the little things about them that you didn't know before when you met them. Lust is strictly wanting to have sex with someone...nothing more, nothing less.

Definitions (dictionary.com):
Love - A profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.
Lust - Intense sexual desire or appetite.

And as for your questions...

Someone can love another person in a husband/wife kind of way and it be okay to desire them in a sexual way. However, if you're not married to him/her, it's a completely different story. Although you may love the person, you are lusting after them if you are unmarried and desire the other person sexually. People who "hook up" do not love each other, they may love each other some day, but if you're looking for just a "hook up", it's not love. God meant for sex to be only inside of marriage. To protect us! It's best to stay as far away as possible from lust to prevent yourself from doing something you may regret. Guard yourself and your heart.

For me I try to keep it simple and ask myself this question:
Am I willing to commit myself to a long term relationship with this person?

It seems to have worked so far but then again why am I still single?hahahaha

Anyway the general word 'lust' in christian circles I believe has been a bit misrepresented.....
Lust
(n.) Hence: Virility; vigor; active power.
(n.) Inclination; desire.
(n.) Licentious craving; sexual appetite.
(n.) Longing desire; eagerness to possess or enjoy; -- in a had sense; as, the lust of gain.
(n.) Pleasure.
(n.) To have an eager, passionate, and especially an inordinate or sinful desire, as for the gratification of the sexual appetite or of covetousness; -- often with after.
(n.) To list; to like.


Of course some definitions of lust are bad but you could also say some would be quite healthy in marriage

its lust dude - love wouldn't want to cause another person to sin

Lust is destroying the world, bit by bit. It is the most bestial and base of all human behaviors. All the occult, evil forces had to do was give humanity one little push towards sexual liberation and then all anarchy would break loose. With man focused solely on lust his ambitions to create beauty and good things becomes secondary. The reason why the great civilizations of the past, both East and West, managed to attain their heights was because of their ability to control themselves on an individual level. But once that went out the window then society began to deteriorate, as it is now.