Watching pornography isn’t a victimless crime. Each time you look at a woman to lust after her, you sin against four people. One way to quit porn is to appreciate that your sin harms others. Your sexual immorality involves more than just you.
When You View Porn, You Sin Against God
“Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight— that You may be found just when You speak, and blameless when You judge.”
Psalm 51:4
Psalm 51 is a prayer of repentance. The author is David. He wrote this psalm after Nathan the prophet confronted him about his adultery with Bathsheba, and about his sin in orchestrating events so that Bathsheba’s husband would be killed in battle so that David could have his wife. You read about these events in the book of 2 Samuel, starting at chapter 11. This chapter recounts the infamous scene in which David spies Bathsheba bathing, sends servants to inquire after her, has Bathsheba visit him, and then commits adultery with her.
David’s sins were many:
- He saw a woman bathing, but kept on looking when he should have looked away
- He lusted after a woman who was not his wife
- He committed adultery
- He forced a married woman to commit adultery
Notice the victims in this sinful episode of human history. David sinned against Bathsheba. He sinned against her husband, Uriah. He sinned against their family. He sinned against his own conscience. And he sinned against the nation of Israel as their king. But who does David single out as the primary person he has sinned against? God.
“Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight,” writes David. He does not mean this in an absolute sense, of course. Because David knows that he also sinned against Bathsheba and her husband. What David means is that, comparatively speaking, his sin is against God alone because nothing is more grievous to David than sinning against his God.
David acknowledges the contempt that he had for God by committing adultery in God’s sight. He acknowledges that God was a spectator of David’s secret, sinful actions. His sin was mainly against God. His “offence derived its chief heinousness from the fact that it was a violation of the law of God,” says Barnes in his Notes on the Bible.
The lesson for you and me from this episode in the life of David is that sexual immorality is primarily a sin against God. When you and I look at pornography, or masturbate, we violate God’s written law. We sin against His holy character. We grieve the Holy Spirit dwelling in us. We trample the blood of Christ underfoot. David recognized this, and put his remorse and repentance in writing so that all the world would see that he acknowledged the gravity of his sin. David knew that the remedy for his wickedness was confessing his sin to God, and receiving forgiveness and cleansing from God. That’s where victory over pornography starts—with God.
When You Look at Pornography, You Sin Against Your Wife
“Whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
Matthew 5:27-28
Don’t base your morality off a dictionary. After all, when it comes to adultery, Noah Webster and the other lexicographers are wrong. They tell you that “adultery is voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and a person who is not their spouse.” Which might lead you to think that, if you don’t have sexual intercourse, it can’t be adultery. Or, if you aren’t married, it isn’t wrong either.
But your rule for life isn’t Webster’s or The Oxford English Dictionary, is it? Your guide is the Bible. And the Bible tells you that you can commit adultery with your mind alone. You don’t have to jump into a bed with anyone. Just imagine you are doing the act with someone who is not your wife, and you commit adultery (Matthew 5:27-28).
Adultery, of course, always involves at least three people. If you are a married man and you look at porn, you commit sexual sin with whoever you are looking at. But the adultery you commit is not against the porn actress—it’s against your wife. Adultery is a sin committed against a spouse. Yes, it involves a third party (the porn star), but the victim is your wife.
If you are like many Christian men, you haven’t given this much thought. I know I didn’t. You think that your sin is private and victimless. After all, who is harmed if you look at pornographic videos and images while alone? Who is hurt when you act out sexually all on your lonesome? Your wife is. This is what Jesus teaches. When you lust at a woman with your eyes, you don’t commit an act that is sort of like adultery, or not as bad as adultery, or simply heart adultery. You commit adultery. And you don’t do this without hurting anyone. Because adultery, by definition, injures your wife.
The easiest way to discover this truth, other than by reading, understanding and believing what Jesus teaches (Matthew 5:27-28), is to ask your wife if lusting after other women is OK with her. Ask your wife if it’s OK for you to watch men and women performing sex, and for you to imagine that you are the male performer, and that the female performer is your sexual partner. Ask your wife if it’s OK with her for you to have sex with yourself while you are looking at porn. You know her answer. You know that your wife looks at your porn habit as marital unfaithfulness. You don’t want your wife to fantasize about having sex with other men anymore than she wants you to fantasize about having sex with other women.
By the way, this teaching of Jesus applies to single men, too. If you are a single man who looks at a woman to lust after her, you have already committed sex outside of marriage with her in your heart. That’s sexual immorality, a sin that God also forbids, just as He forbids adultery.
The key to victory in this area is to realize that sexual sin, whether adultery or sexual immorality, is a heart issue. The way to avoid porn and to live a life that is sexually pure is to have a renewed heart, one that doesn’t need to lust after women or engage in sexual sin. If adultery starts with the eyes and mind, then these are the two places where you must start your spiritual transformation. You could start by reading God’s word and then hiding it in your heart (Psalm 119:11). Just saying.
When You Look at Pornography, You Sin Against Yourself
“Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.”
1 Corinthians 6:18
Looking at pornography isn’t a victimless crime because one of the people you hurt is yourself. You cannot view pornographic images and videos free of charge. Someone has to pay for your sin, and one of those people is going to be you.
In the church of Corinth, men and women were having sex before marriage. Paul warned them against this sin. And he commanded them to flee this sin. When you commit sexual immorality by having sex before marriage, said Paul, you sin against your own body. You use your body to commit an act that God forbids. You defile your body by performing an act that is only for marriage. Plenty of times, the consequences of having sex before marriage are also physical. Men and women who engage in sexual immorality contract sexually transmitted diseases, such as human papillomavirus, chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis and AIDS. Their bodies pay the price for their sins.
Viewing pornography is a form of sexual immorality. It is an act that God forbids. And viewing pornography also sins against your body because the viewing is typically accompanied by masturbation. When you masturbate to pornography, you sin against your own body. You reach orgasm with yourself instead of with your spouse. You have fantasy sex with a woman on a screen, a woman who is not your wife.
Viewing pornography affects your body, too. The medical literature shows conclusively that compulsive viewing of pornography increases feelings of guilt and shame. Habitual use of porn increases depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts. Men who view pornography for long enough often develop erectile dysfunction with their partners. Viewing pornography also sins against your mind by causing you to become sexually out of control, compulsive and controlled by porn. It sears your conscience.
This is what the path of sexual immorality looks like. Habitual viewing of porn eventually changes your brain chemistry, makes you feel wretched, harms you physically, and sins against your body. But the good news is that today is a new day, right? You can go through the next 24 hours without looking at anything inappropriate. You can walk with the Lord for the next 24 hours without touching yourself. Just as the men and women in Corinth could obey Paul’s command and flee fornication, you can obey this biblical command and flee pornography and masturbation. Why not do this today? Your body will thank you for it.
When You Lust After Porn Actresses, You Sin Against Them
“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.”
Matthew 5:27-28
How many times did you commit adultery last week? And with how many women? Jesus tells you that, when you look at a woman to lust after her, you commit adultery. Yes, this adultery takes place in your heart and not in a hotel room, but it’s still adultery. The sin you commit isn’t similar to adultery, or sort of adultery, or a diminished form of adultery—it’s actual adultery.
The second thing Jesus tells you is that, when you lust after a woman with your eyes, you commit adultery with her. You don’t commit adultery with an abstraction, or with a hypothetical person, or merely with a concept. You commit adultery with the woman you are lusting after. But you not only sin with her. You also sin against her.
A whopping 70% of female trafficking victims are trafficked into the commercial sex industry, including porn, stripping and brothels. “According to many survivors of sex trafficking, there is often no way to know whether a girl in a pornographic video is appearing on camera under coercive, nonconsensual, or threatening circumstances. Viewers can’t know whether they are viewing a child or whether the ‘performer’ is being raped on camera (The Porn Industry and Human Trafficking Reinforce Each Other).”
You may think you are viewing a porn star, an adult actress, a performer in the commercial sex industry. But you are just as likely viewing a girl or woman who is performing for you under duress. She is being forced to perform sex acts for your pleasure. She is engaging in degrading, often violent, and dangerous sex acts for you against her will. This makes you a willing participant in her misery. When you lust after her, you sin with her, and you sin against her.
I was guilty of this when I looked at pornography. I never gave any thought to the woman on the other end of the camera, the woman who was likely being forced to perform sexual immorality for me. I never considered that many of the so-called “porn stars” that I watched were likely dead and buried by the time I saw them on video, either from suicide, drug overdose, or murder at the hands of their traffickers. My demand for their services killed them.
When you watch porn, you sin against someone’s daughter, someone’s granddaughter, someone’s sister, someone’s aunt. For her sake, please don’t.
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