You may have gone your entire life without being exposed to the word “concupiscence.” It is an antiquated word that means “an intense longing” or “a passion” that’s usually connected to sensuality. The King James Version (KJV) uses the word in Romans 7 in place of “covetousness.”
What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. (Rom. 7:7–9)
Admittedly, we don’t use the word “covet” often either, but you’ve probably heard it in a church service. The tenth command is “You shall not covet” your neighbor’s house, wife, ox, donkey, etc. A cold reading of the tenth commandment in the Old Testament may not portray coveting with the same intensity as it is does in Romans 7. Here the Old English helps. The KJV reveals a greater sense of what takes place in the heart when one covets. The sin is tied to a passion for what someone else has. It tugs at the heart. It consumes the thoughts. It influences decisions.
According to Romans 7, God’s law uncovers what our heart wants to keep sealed away. It exposes those evil longings so they do not take root and give birth to sin. To that point, the KJV uses “concupiscence” in Colossians 3:5. “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” Again, the old word (translated here as “covetousness”) is situated with “sexual immorality,” “passion” and “evil desire.” The tentacles of covetousness run deep, which is why verse eight mandates that after the law brings conviction, “you must put them all away.”
Putting covetous longing away is a matter of war, and it’s one that has no middle ground. Either you are fighting it or indulging it. Notice that Romans 7 says that sin “seizes the opportunity” to create more sin. This is reminiscent of the exchange between God and Cain, before he murdered his brother. God warned Cain, “If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin in crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it” (Gen. 4:7).
God warned that there was no neutral territory when it involves sinful desires (“concupiscence”). Like an eager predator, it was “crouching at the door.” His only hope of victory was to proactively “rule over it.” To ignore it is to accommodate it. To fail to fight it, is to show it love.
The KJV uses “concupiscence” in one more place. “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, nor in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God” (1 Thes. 4:3-5). Here a modern translation replaces the Old English with “lust.” And again, those that fail to fight against sin, love it and long for it like those who “do not know God.”
Has it occurred to you that a failure to fight against your sinful passions is to act like you don’t know God? There are no holding patterns with sin. To “work on it later” is to coddle and care for it. When the law reveals the concupiscence of your heart, take off the kid gloves and get to work! Take aggressive measures to overcome the sin crouching at the door by ruling over it! Be a fighter, not a lover.
Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. (Jam. 4:7–8)