We must believe that forgiveness is possible.  Habitual porn use brings guilt and shame—and to some extent it should—but that should drive us to Christ not away from Him.[14]  We already saw that Judah forgot Tamar’s humanity much like all men do when they view porn. But when his sin was revealed, his repentance was immediate and comprehensive. He literally turned his life around after that. Let that be an encouragement for everyone struggling with porn: forgiveness is possible.

Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

-1 Corinthians 6:18-20, ESV

Recently, we discussed the household gods of the “yard sign creed”, but there is a much more prevalent idol: sex. Our culture views unrestrained sexual indulgence as a right, necessity, and even virtue—and worshiping this idol has upended much that God created as good.  It has become so central that “sexual orientation” is more important for many people’s identity than being made in God’s image as male or female.  God designed marriage as beautiful, but it restrains sex so society regards it as ugly and obsolete.  Scripture repeatedly emphasizes the necessity and blessing of children, but society sees them as worthless and unfortunate byproducts of sex—and discards them accordingly.  Despite the tear-inducing stories of desperation often told by those who scream “my body, my choice”, the vast majority of babies murdered in the womb are slaughtered because their parents want sex without consequences.  But there is a much more prevalent form of this idolatry that has so thoroughly infected most churches that the majority of men and even many women at least sometimes indulge in it: pornography.  What was once hidden behind the counter or restricted to seedy stores is now accessible anywhere at any time on any device, even popping up unsolicited.  Many have simply accepted it, denying or downplaying its destructive effects on individuals, marriages, families, churches, and society.  Others recognize the dangers but only shame those who struggle without offering any help to fight it. We need to get serious about fighting against this great evil, which is our topic this time.  Next time, we will see how that seriousness drives a strategy to achieve victory.

The Big Problem with Porn

We must address pornography because the sheer scale of the problem is destroying our churches.  One study found that 68% of churchgoing men and over 50% of pastors regularly view porn.  As a result, 69% of pastors say porn adversely impacts their churches and 57% say porn addiction is the most damaging issue for their congregations.  A major reason porn is so common is that many people view it as harmless or even beneficial.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Porn is very harmful in part because it is very addictive, making it just as destructive in the life of an addict as any drug or alcohol.  Contrary to popular belief, porn is also emasculating: “Porn and masturbation in tandem are a great engine of our modern plague of effeminacy in men. And this happens while the man concerned is being lied to—the porn makes him feel like he is running a surplus of testosterone”.[1]  Porn also gives men wildly unrealistic expectations by portraying women as acting like men and being just as desirous of sex as men, so it is detrimental to married men in their own marriages and single men in preparing for marriage.[2]  Pornography like any other sexual sin is a sin against a man’s own body (1 Corinthians 6:18).  It is also a sin against its victims: the women it objectifies for the pleasure of strangers.  We have previously seen how it is hateful to identify anyone as anything other than a person made in the image of God, but porn reduces God’s image bearers to mere bodies existing solely for pleasure just as Judah sinfully viewed Tamar.  When a man watches porn, he is summoning a woman to be dehumanized, denigrated, and abused in his presence for his viewing pleasure.  Can there be a greater insult to her or her Maker?  So when a man views porn, he is sinning against God, himself, and the woman whose body he is coveting.

But he is sinning against someone else who is often forgotten: his wife.  God created sex among other purposes to be immensely pleasureful for a husband and wife within the confines of marriage.  Not long after exhorting the Corinthian men to cease the common practice of visiting temple prostitutes because that was sin against their own bodies and against Christ (much like porn today), Paul says this: “Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband” (1 Corinthians 7:1-2).  Paul is echoing the wisdom of Solomon.  Proverbs 5-7 warns of the dangers of pursuing the adulteress (literally “foreign” or “strange” woman) and exhorts the young man to instead be content with his own wife:

My son, be attentive to my wisdom; incline your ear to my understanding, that you may keep discretion, and your lips may guard knowledge. For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil, but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to Sheol….Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love. Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?

-Proverbs 5:1-4,18-20, ESV

The contrast couldn’t be any clearer.  One of the main reasons people struggle so much when fighting sin in general and pornography in particular is that they focus on stopping the sin but fail to replace it with righteousness (Ephesians 4:22-23). When we only flee the sin, we leave a void that sin can readily enter.  Therefore, we must also redirect our energies toward the opposite righteousness.  In this case, fighting lust (and the porn we use to feed it) requires not only “bouncing the eyes”, installing blockers and accountability software, or other mere “put off” techniques.

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