If you are a Christian man who wants to conquer a compulsion to watch pornography, and if you have been struggling for some time without success, your problem might be that you aren’t obeying a clear command of Jesus on this issue.
Jesus doesn’t teach explicitly about pornography, of course, but He does teach about how to win the battle with sins that involve your eyes. And that includes the sin of looking at pornographic images and videos. You find this teaching in a few places in the New Testament, in the passages in the Gospels that recount Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Here is what Jesus teaches, as recorded by His disciple Matthew:
“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.”
Matthew 5:27-29
Jesus points to the part of your anatomy that causes you to sin—your right eye. To Jews, “the right hand” denotes strength, and “the right eye” is considered the more valuable. Jesus teaches that, if your valuable right eye causes you to sin, you are to pluck it out of your head and cast it away from you. In other words, you are to take drastic action to conquer sin.
A few observations
- The sin of watching pornography, by definition, involves the eyes. Lusting involves looking. Your eyes cause you to sin.
- To defeat the sin of watching pornography, you must cut off the sin at its source—your eyes.
- Conquering sin that involves your eyes requires drastic action. Wimpy half-measures don’t work (you know this).
- Defeating sin that involves your eyes means forsaking things that are perfectly innocent, valuable or useful to other people, just not to you anymore.
- Your actions to defeat this sin must be decisive and permanent. You not only pluck out your eye, you cast it from you so that you never get it back again.
Naturally, Jesus uses hyperbole when he commands you to pluck out your eye. He uses exaggeration to make His point. You are not to take Jesus literally and gouge out your right eye. You can’t defeat sin with surgery. But what you are to do is understand the meaning of what Jesus commands. Jesus wants you to know that conquering sins that involve your eyes requires drastic action that costs you something.
Your right eye is the more valuable of the two. To pluck it out and cast it from you requires sacrifice. But you must get rid of things in your life that are not intrinsically bad (such as your smartphone and cable TV subscription) in order to avoid sinning against God (and your wife if you are married). If you are serious about never watching pornography again, forget half-measures. Take drastic, decisive action today. Pluck out your eye and cast it from you. People will think you odd, call you a fanatic, and label you a legalist. Ignore them. Your eternal destiny is at stake.
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