We live in a culture obsessed with pleasing the senses. Your counselee’s daily habits—and perhaps your own—are often dominated by the cravings of our five senses.
The Five Senses Are Everywhere
Look around you at what the world is selling (and, let’s be honest, what we’re buying).
Sight. We stimulate ourselves with social media feeds, aesthetically pleasing Pinterest boards or trips to Target, and video entertainment and education. In all of this, sexually suggestive advertising has become so prevalent and normalized that we almost fail to notice it anymore.
Sound. Everywhere you look, people are walking around with headphones in, experiencing near constant auditory stimulation. Think of the most popular musical artists and podcasts—few are known for purity of speech. What are you listening to? What is your counselee hearing?
Smell. Aromatherapies and scented candles, body spray and cologne, good food, the aroma of your favorite coffee shop or bakery. These are gifts from God, yet is there a point at which we overindulge? Have you ever thought about it? At the very least, observe ads (whether in print or on video) for scents. You may be surprised to notice a hint of lewdness, a suggestion of sex.
Taste. More than 2 in 5 adults and nearly 1 in 5 children and adolescents are obese.[i] Yet we rarely use the biblical term “gluttony,” favoring instead the milder and more medical-sounding “eating disorder.”
Touch. Sex is one of the ultimate physical pleasures, perhaps along with food, alcohol, drugs, and thrill-seeking activities. All day, every day, advertisers are trying to sell your counselee the promise of pleasure or the relief of pain, often with a hint of sex involved.[ii]
As biblical counselors, if we fail to consider our counselee’s sensory experience of the world we will lack the biblical vocabulary to understand and help them where they need it most. One word we can use to describe these experiences is sensuality.
The English word is defined thus: “Sensual means physically pleasing. It often is used in a sexual context, but is not exclusively sexual in meaning. Sensual has to do with the five senses, but comes with a hint of lewdness, a suggestion of sex.”[iii]
Because sensuality so dominates our culture and our experience of the world, we must understand it biblically. So, what does the Bible say about sensuality, and how can we help counselees recognize it in their own hearts and lives?
A Biblical Definition of Sensuality
The word “sensuality” (aselgeia in Greek) only appears ten times in the entire Bible, all in the New Testament.[iv]
Frequently we find the term in a list of sins (Mark 7:22; Romans 13:13; 2 Corinthians 12:21; Galatians 5:19–21; 1 Peter 4:3). In these passages, sensuality is often associated with sexual immorality, coveting, impurity, jealousy, drunkenness, and more. Because of its close association with sexual sins, apparent euphemistic use in some extra-biblical Greek texts, and Peter’s mention of Sodom in 2 Peter 2:7, some scholars argue that aselgeia refers to homosexual behavior.[v]
While that interpretation may have merit in some cases, most lexicons define aselgeia as something akin to intemperance, unbridled lust, wantonness or lack of restraint. An association with sexuality is certainly part of its semantic range, but its meaning is not exclusive to sex.
For instance, in Ephesians we see that those who are futile in mind (Ephesians 4:17), darkened in understanding, and hard of heart (Ephesians 4:18) “have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity” (Ephesians 4:19). Note the connection between sensuality and greed—those who give themselves to sensuality are those who are greedy for every kind of impurity (not just sexual impurity).
Greed is also closely linked to sensuality in 2 Peter, twice referring to the same people who are caught in sensuality.[vi] These are all reasons why the English word “sensual” is an appropriate and fitting translation.
Here’s the definition again: “Sensual means physically pleasing. It often is used in a sexual context, but is not exclusively sexual in meaning. Sensual has to do with the five senses, but comes with a hint of lewdness, a suggestion of sex.”[iv]
Sensuality Is the Air We Breathe
Read that last part of the definition again: “Sensual has to do with the five senses, but comes with a hint of lewdness, a suggestion of sex.” Isn’t that a perfect description of contemporary Western culture?
Confronting Sensuality with the Light of Day
Romans 13:11–14 tells us exactly how to deal with sensuality.
The first step to confronting sensuality is to recognize our place in salvation history. Paul sets the stage by way of analogy, likening our sanctification to the dawning of a new day. He says, “the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now that when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand” (Romans 13:11–12).
In the New Testament, “hour” and “day” typically refer to the consummation at Christ’s return. This is the “salvation” to which Paul refers.[vii] Christ has come! And he is coming again! It is the dawn of a new and better day in which Christ reigns. A Christ-centered (and eternal) perspective will set the earthly (and sensual) realities in their proper place.
The second step to confronting sensuality is to surround ourselves with prayer, righteous living, and the truth of God’s Word (c.f. Ephesians 6:10–18). As this new day begins to dawn, we are called to cast off the blankets that paralyze us with drowsy apathy and exchange them for a covering appropriate to the daytime. “So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light” (Romans 13:12).
The picture is of someone who tucks their head under the blanket—warm, seemingly content, yet alone and cut off from help and hope in their battle with darkness—even as the sun’s rays break into the bedroom. Paul’s point is that Christ is coming, so we must leave the blankets and dress for the day. We have a calling, and that calling requires us to be dressed in strong armor, which is defined as light.
The third step to confronting sensuality isn’t really a step at all; it is our everything: to put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Sensuality cannot survive in the light. “Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Romans 13:13–14).
Sensual temptations love the night. Many of our most persistent sins thrive in the warm, enticing, private cocoon of darkness we create away from the light. (As an aside, this is why smartphones present so many dangers.)
But when we cast off the weight of sin that clings so closely to us (Hebrews 12:1), we discover it was only the weight of a blanket that held us back. With the covers off, the light of day dawning, and the armor of Christ shining around us, the empty promises of sensuality are exposed.
To be clothed in Christ is to be the beneficiary of his warming and revealing light. In his light, the dark depravity of sin is exposed. Clothed in the armor of his truth and righteousness, we have everything we need provided for us in the gospel (2 Peter 1:3), and there is no need—and no desire—to “make provision for the flesh” with its sensual desires.
[i] https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/overweight-obesity
[ii] See Jean Kilbourne’s famous lecture/documentary, “Killing Us Softly.” Viewer discretion is advised, due to examples of sexual content in advertising.
[iii] https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/sensual
[iv] ἀσέλγεια does not appear in the Septuagint and no word is translated “sensual/sensuality” in most English translations. For a one-page Bible study on ἀσέλγεια in the NT for yourself or to assign your counselees, see “Overcoming Sensuality” at https://counselbiblically.com/resources/
[v] Tom Hobson, “ἀσέλγεια in Mark 7:22,” https://www.academia.edu/31907497/ASELGEIA_IN_MARK_7_22
[vi] In 2 Peter 2:1–3, false prophets “secretly bring in destructive heresies,” lead people away with “their sensuality… and in their greed they will exploit you with false words.” This seems to indicate that the sensuality is something that is not flaunted, like wonton sexuality, but rather subtly and secretly appeals to their listeners’ lusts. Jude 1:4 also emphasizes the secretive nature of the deception, saying that “certain people have crept in unnoticed… who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality.” Peter’s second mention of greed in 2 Peter 2:14 says that these same false prophets “entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed.” After mentioning Balaam’s folly, he continues to state that “they entice by sensual passions of the flesh” (2 Peter 2:18). Of course, much of this does have to do with sexual immorality. But sexual sin is simply one expression of sensuality. This is evident in Peter’s conclusion: “For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved” (2 Peter 2:20). Sensuality has to do with a greed for physical, sensual pleasures, including but not limited to various forms of sex.
[vii] John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987), 165–170.