47 Bible Verses about Self Indulgence

And among them we all once passed our lives, indulging the passions of our flesh, carrying out the dictates of our senses and temperament, and were by nature the children of wrath like all the rest.

But when sin had gained a vantage-ground, by means of the commandment, it stirred up within me all manner of lust; for where there is no law, sin is dead.

Turn away from them. For men of that stamp are not the slaves of Christ, but are slaves to their own appetites. By their smooth and fair speech they beguile the hearts of the innocent.

For we were ourselves once foolish, disobedient, deceived, slaving for various lusts and pleasures, passing our lives in malice and envy. We were hateful, and we hated one another.

But each man is tempted by his own lusts that allure and entice him.

For speaking great swelling words of vanity, they entangle, by their lasciviousness, in the lusts of the flesh, those who are just about to escape from the men that live in misconduct. They promise them liberty, while they themselves are slaves of rottenness! (For indeed a man is the slave of anything which masters him.)

For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the proud glory of life, is not from the Father, but from the world;

But if you have bitter jealousy and faction in your heart, do not be boasting of that, and be false to the truth. Such wisdom is not that which is descending from on high, but is earthly, sensual, demonlike. For wherever jealousy and faction exist, there is confusion and every evil deed.

idol-worship, sorcery, quarrels, party-spirit, jealousy, passionate anger, intrigues, factions, sectarianism,

These latter out of their love, because they know that I am set here for the defense of the gospel;

Where do the conflicts and quarrels that go on among you come from? Do they not come from your passions which are always making war among your bodily members? You continually crave and do not obtain; you are killing and coveting and cannot acquire; you are fighting and at war. You do not have, because you do not ask. You continue to ask and do not receive, because you are asking with a wrong purpose, in order to spend it upon your pleasures.

Now the works of the flesh are manifest; such, for instance, as fornication, impurity, indecency,

Nor must we act licentiously, as some of them did, and fell in a single day, twenty-three thousand of them.

and lest when I come again my God may humble me before you, and lest I shall mourn for many those who have sinned before, and have not repented of the impurity and immorality and wantonness which they have practised.

They have eyes full of harlots, eyes that cannot stop sinning. They entice unsteady souls. Their heart is trained in greed. They are an accursed generation.

Your gold and silver are rusted. and their rust will be for a testimony against you, and it will eat your flesh. For you have been storing up fire in these last days! Look! the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you have been keeping back by fraud, are crying aloud! And the cries of the reapers have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth! You have lived luxuriously on earth, you have taken your pleasure, you have fattened your hearts for a day of slaughter.

for they upset whole households and, for filthy lucre's sake, teach what they ought not to teach.

These being past feeling have given themselves over to sensuality, in order to practise every form of impurity with greedy zest.

That is why God has given them up to passions of dishonor; for on the one hand their women actually changed the natural function of sex into that which is against nature; and on the other hand their men likewise abandoned the natural use of women, and were ablaze with passion for one another; men with men practising shameless acts and receiving in their own person that recompense of their wrong-doing which necessarily followed. And just as they refused to continue to retain God in their knowledge, so did God cast them out to an outcast mind, to do those things which were indecent.read more.
They were overflowing with every kind of iniquity, depravity, greed, and malice. They were full of envy, murder, quarreling, deceit, and malignity. They became whisperers, back-biters, hated of God, insolent, haughty, boastful. They invented sins. They were disobedient to parents. They were without sense, without faith, without natural affection, without mercy.

But of this be sure. In the last days grievous times will come. For men will be selfish, mercenary, boastful, haughty, blasphemous, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, irreligious, without natural affection, merciless, slanderous, dissolute, and brutal.read more.
They will hate goodness, they will be treacherous, reckless, blinded with pride, lovers of pleasure, rather than lovers of God.

"And he said to himself. 'This is what I will do. I will pull down my barns and build larger ones in which I will store all my wheat and my goods. "'And I will say to my soul, "'Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years! Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry.' "But God said to him. 'Foolish man! This very night your soul is wanted! And these things you have prepared, whose shall they be?read more.
"So is he that lays up treasures for himself and is not rich toward God."

"Not many days after that the younger son gathered everything together and took his journey into a distant country; and there he wasted his money on living unsavingly. "After he had spent everything there came a terrible famine in the land, and he began to be in want. "So he went and hired to one of the citizens of that land, who sent him out into the fields to feed swine.read more.
"And he was longing to be filled with the husks which the swine were eating, but no one gave him any.

But she who lives in wantonness is dead even while she still lives.

but anger and wrath upon those who are self-willed and disobey the truth, but obey unrighteousness.

Their end is destruction, their belly is their god, their glory is in their shame, and their minds are set on earthly things.

"'And I will say to my soul, "'Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years! Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry.' "But God said to him. 'Foolish man! This very night your soul is wanted! And these things you have prepared, whose shall they be?

"Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but within they are filled with extortion and excess.

And be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

For these precepts, although they have a show of wisdom with their self-imposed devotions and fastings and bodily austerities, are of no real value against the indulgence of the carnal appetites.

But clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, And make no provisions for your earthly nature And the gratification of its lusts.

And those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and appetites.

"For God's grace has shined forth bringing salvation to all men And schooling us to renounce impiety and evil passions, And to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age;

For they who live after the flesh, give their attention to the things of the flesh; But they who live after the spirit, give their attention to spiritual things.

This is my meaning. Let your steps be guided by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

Like obedient children, do not fashion yourselves according to the former passions of your days of ignorance,

so that in future you may not spend your life in the flesh according to men's desires, but in the will of God.

For this is God's will, even your sanctification; that you should abstain from sexual vice. That each one should learn how to take a wife in purity and honor. Not in the passion of lust, like the Gentiles who know not God.

Every man who contends in the games continually trains himself by all manner of self-restraint. Now they do it to get a fading garland, but we, one that is unfading. For my part, then, I run with no wavering to the goal. I box not as one beating the air, but I bruise my body and keep it in subjection, lest having called others to the contest, I should myself be disqualified.

But the end of all things is close at hand; so be sober, watch and pray.

and to knowledge self-control, and to self-control stedfastness, and to stedfastness piety,

So slay your baser inclinations. fornication, impurity, appetite, unnatural desires, and the greed which is idolatry.

But I say to you that whoever looks with lust at a woman has already committed adultery with her in his heart. And if your eye, your right eye, entices you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you. It is better for you to lose one of your bodily organs, than to have your whole body go down into the pit.

I beseech you, beloved, as pilgrims and exiles, to abstain from passions of the flesh that war upon your souls.

For you, brothers, were called for freedom; only do not make your freedom an excuse for self-indulgence, but in love enslave yourselves to one another.

"All things are lawful," you say? But not all things are expedient; "all things are lawful"; but not all build up. Let not each one be always seeking his own, but rather his neighbor's good.

Do nothing out of strife, nothing out of vanity, but let each one in true humility consider the others to be of more account than himself. Let each have an eye not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.

But Zaccheus stood up and said to the Lord, "I give half my property to the poor, Lord, and if I have defrauded any man of anything I am restoring it to him fourfold."