"We must therefore guard against evil desires, because death hath his station near the entrance of pleasure."
Humility of the embodied creature such as ourselves, endowed with reason and the ability to sense the spiritual, however vaguely and inconsistently, is best expressed in the domination of our reason over our animal natures.
"Lust" is often taken in two senses by spiritual writers: first, there is the literal sense of the regulation of our sexual drives. Since human sexuality has a divine purpose in the creation of embodied souls, sex is not something that can be used for its own sake. Because the responsibile use of sexuality necessarily implies constraints, the appetitive soul (that is, the lowest rung of the psyche) will resist being told what it can and cannot enjoy.
This brings us to the second meaning of "lust" in the metaphorical sense of self-abandonment to our impulses:
A soul that has lost itself to the body cannot by virtue of its self-abdication follow God's will and His call to Himself who is pure Spirit and who is above any the highest reaches of our soul-- namely, our rationality.
Given that sex is the strongest of aminal desires, the battle against lust comprises the first battle in the Spiritual Warfare against the forces of darkness who seek our ruin in their eternal contempt of God. Victory in the temporal sphere is never always assured against any evil spirit, but the first gains in self-mastery over the body prepare us for the next battles against envy, avarice, pride, and more challenging evils than mere lust.
If a man cannot control his lusts, he cannot control anything above his body. Such a man is easily frustrated and enervated by his own dissipation. Situations and other people easily enthrall or ensnare him. He has no resistance to impulse. He ceases to be a man and becomes neither angel above him nor beast below. In throwing his reason into the trash, a fornicator, masturbator, adulterer, etc. risks being even less than a beast.
Fight the good fight!
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