"To sin is to love yourself at the expense of your neighbor. More than that, it is to love yourself at the expense of God. Sin-shaped love expresses itself primarily in the form of narcissism. It is self-absorbed love. This affection is hate masquerading as love, compelling us to engage in self-destructive behavior. Sin promises freedom and delivers slavery. It speaks the language of friendship while treating us like enemies. Sin is a cruel master who promises good wages only to reward our loyalty with hard service, disappointment and death. For some reason, we return again and again to this false lover and expect a different result.
The answer to sinful lust is love - God's love, which comes to us from the outside, like the righteousness of Christ. Adopting the language that Martin Luther used to speak of Christ's righteousness, we might call it 'alien love' because it does not originate with us. It is a love that begins with God and can come to us only as a gift. For the Christian, this greater love is the organizing force for all our other desires. In this regard, love is not so much an emotion as it is a disposition. We might call it a divinely empowered direction for our lives.....What is true of lust is true of all capitol sins. Change may require discipline, but it does not begin with discipline. What is required is a miracle of grace."
John Koessler
Dangerous Virtues: How to Follow Jesus When Evil Masquerades as Good
