How to Quit Porn Biblically

Contents

Sexual Sin Requires a Biblical Remedy
2 Peter 1:3

Step 1
Abstain from Sexual Immorality
1 Thessalonians 4:3

Step 2
Make No Provision for the Flesh
Romans 13:14

Step 3
Pluck Out Your Right Eye and Cast it Away
Matthew 5:27-30

Step 4
Flee Sexual Immorality
1 Corinthians 6:18

Step 5
Put Lust to Death
Colossians 3:5-7

Step 6
Do Not Be Deceived
1 Corinthians 6:9-10

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Sexual Sin Requires a Biblical Remedy

“His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue.” 2 Peter 1:3

If you are a Christian man who struggles with pornography, and if you long to be free, you should learn how to quit porn biblically. After all, you have many methods to choose from. You can try sheer will power. You can attend a secular self-help group, such as Sexaholics Anonymous. You can attend a Christian 12-step group, such as Celebrate Recovery. You can join a secular online forum, such as No Fap. You can join a men’s small group Bible study. You can seek out a counsellor or therapist (secular or Christian) who specializes in porn addiction.

These days, you are spoiled for choice when it comes to overcoming pornography. There are books, No Fap Challenges, YouTube channels, software, blogs, online and offline ministries, smartphone apps, online courses, workshops, and all manner of other resources that promise to help you quit porn. These resources have their place, and they offer varying levels of success to the Christian man who longs to overcome porn. But if you want to be free of watching porn, you must opt for a biblical solution. Because pornography is a sin issue. And sin issues require biblical remedies.

At its core, pornography is a heart issue. A heart that enjoys looking at porn is a heart set against God. The act of looking at porn and the act of masturbation are simply outward manifestations of an inward rot. After all, adultery and sexual immorality, according to Jesus, start in the heart (Matthew 15:19-20).

If you want to quit porn, you must quit biblically. The Bible has a great deal to say about sexual immorality (its source, its consequences, its remedy, and more). And the Bible also promises that God has given you and me “all things that pertain to life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3). The Bible tells us how to quit porn, when, and why. And God gives us the divine power we need to live godly lives.

Porn blocking software has its place. Recovery groups have their place. Even messages like this have their place. But the guaranteed way to quit porn is to quit God’s way. The sure way to gain, and maintain, victory over sexual sin is to follow God’s instructions on the topic. Every tactic you employ in your battle for sexual purity should have a biblical foundation. God doesn’t want you to struggle alone, and He doesn’t want you to fight without a proven path to victory. He describes that path in His word, the Bible. It’s up to you to follow it.

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Step 1
Abstain from Sexual Immorality

“For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality.” 1 Thessalonians 4:3

The first thing you must do to quit porn biblically is to quit porn. Watching, listening to or reading pornography is sexual immorality. And God says you are to “abstain from sexual immorality.” The phrase sexual immorality in the New Testament comes from the Greek porneia. It means any act that defies God’s commands about sexual relations. Sexual immorality includes sex outside of marriage, sex with animals, sex with children, sex with close family members, consuming pornography, and masturbating.

To abstain means to stay away from, to be distant from, to hold back, to keep off. So, what Paul is saying here is that you are to stay away from, be distant from, hold back from and keep off pornography. This is not only a command, either. This is God’s will for your life. If you have ever struggled to know God’s will for your life (what career you should pursue, which job offer you should accept, who you should marry, where you should live), you don’t have to struggle here. Because God tells you what His will is for you where porn is concerned. You are to abstain from it.

The key thing to remember about this teaching, this command, is that pornography isn’t something you quit as much as it is something you avoid. It isn’t something you conquer as much as it is something you stay away from. This is an encouraging thought, right? After all, if you have been in bondage to pornography and masturbation for longer than you care to calculate, the whole notion of winning the battle against porn, or conquering your sexual sin, seems impossible. You have won and lost the battle so many times that lasting victory seems out of reach.

But the key to this command is that you are only to abstain from pornography. There is no language of battles or conquest or victory here. You are simply commanded to stay away from porn. Not easy to do, I know, but possible. Because abstaining from porn is something you know you can do, isn’t it? You have done it before. You can do it again. So, abstain, starting right now. Why? Because abstaining from pornography is God’s will for you. And if God holds you to this standard, God will help you to reach it.

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Step 2
Make No Provision for the Flesh

“But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.” Romans 13:14

God commands you to abstain from sexual immorality, which includes pornography. But how do you stay away from pornography, exactly? How do you hold back from, and avoid, porn? By following another biblical command. You “make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.”

This word provision is the Greek word that means forethought or foresight, which is to say, advance knowledge of something. It carries the idea of knowing about something in advance in order to enable or allow something to happen. In practical terms, this verse teaches that you are to avoid the people, places and things in your life that cause you to fulfil the lusts of your flesh. You know ahead of time what causes you to sin, so you avoid these triggers by making no provision for them.

Let me give you an example of how this works by showing you what not to do. A brother in the Lord who was struggling to quit pornography once shared with me that he would use his video cassette recorder to tape X-rated TV shows when he was asleep or out of the house. “I have no intention of watching these shows,” he said, “and I know I shouldn’t watch them. But I feel compelled to record them all the same, even though I don’t intend to watch them.” This is an example of making provision for the flesh.

If you are trying to lose weight, you don’t visit All-You-Can-Eat for $9.99 buffets. If you are trying to quit booze, you don’t visit your old haunts during happy hour. If you are trying to quit drugs, you don’t carry dope in your pocket. If you are trying to avoid sex before marriage, you don’t climb into the back seat of your car with your girlfriend on a hot and humid summer evening.

“Making no provision for the flesh” is all about putting distance between you and the people, places and things that tempt you to sin. This is a conscious decision you make in advance of being tempted. You catalog all of the ways that you know you fall into sin by looking at pornography, and you then remove these sources of temptation from your life. Here’s what this looks like:

• Your wife leaves her women’s magazines scattered around the house. They contain images of women in their underwear or swimsuits. You are tempted to look at these images. So your wife cancels her subscriptions and clears your house of every last issue.
• A new movie comes out starring your favorite actor. Before you watch it, you check the IMDB Parents’ Guide. The movie is rated R for strong sexuality. So you skip it.
• Your cellphone gives you easy, free and anonymous access to every possible form of pornography. It is the primary way that Satan tempts you to sin. So you install a porn filter that blocks all pornographic websites and apps.

Remember, to make provision for the flesh means to anticipate sin in order to make it happen or to allow it to happen. This means that, to make no provision for the flesh, you must decide what fulfills your lusts, or what is likely to fulfill your lusts, and you then avoid it. The easiest way to see how to do this is to remember the days when you made provision for the flesh. Contrast those days with how you want to live now, and you will have your plan of action before you.

To make provision for the flesh, do this:	To make no provision for the flesh, do this:
Watch any kind of movie regardless of rating.	Skip all movies rated higher than G or PG.
Lie on the bed in your hotel room during a business trip, late at night and alone, and flip mindlessly through the TV channels looking for entertainment.	Unplug the TV. Put the remote in the bedside drawer where the Gideon Bible is. Read it instead.
Visit your local swimming pool in summer.	Visit the museum.
Scroll though your Instagram feed hoping to happen upon images of sexy women completely by accident.	Delete your Instagram account.
Keep photos of former girlfriends.	Delete photos of former girlfriends.
Keep old DVDs even though you know they contain sex scenes.	Throw all sketchy DVDs into the dumpster.
Stay up late on your laptop, hoping not to fall into sin.	Install porn-blocking software on your laptop so that you can’t watch porn no matter how lonely, tired or horny you feel.
Visit websites that you know contain images that fire you up sexually.	Install accountability software that takes screenshots of places you visit online, and sends them to someone who holds you accountable for your sin.
Carry a smartphone with you at all times, even though it causes you to look at porn.	Replace your smartphone with a dumbphone that is good for calls and texts only (no internet access).

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Step 3
Pluck Out Your Right Eye and Cast it Away

“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. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off 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 5:27-30

Winning the battle against pornography is going to cost you something—perhaps plenty. You can’t leave the world of habitual sexual sin behind and enter the land of sexual purity without paying a price. That price varies for every man. But pay it you must. Achieving sexual purity requires drastic actions that cost you something.

This is the fundamental truth that Jesus communicates in His Sermon on the Mount, when He says you must pluck out your right eye and cast it away if it causes you to sin. To understand the full weight of what Jesus commands, parse His teaching. Here are 10 lessons from Jesus about avoiding sexual sin.

1. Adultery starts with the eyes: You look, you lust, you commit adultery, in that order. To avoid the adultery, avoid the second look.
2. Sexual sin is a lust issue: At its root, adultery is covetousness. You lust after a woman other than your wife. You lust after someone you are not allowed to have. This applies to porn as well.
3. Adultery needn’t involve the act: You commit adultery merely by lusting with your eyes. Yes, you do it in your heart, not in a bed. But that’s besides the point. Jesus says that, in merely lusting after a woman with your eyes, you have “already committed adultery.”
4. Adultery takes two: When you lust after a woman with your eyes, you commit adultery with her. Not with an abstraction, not with an image—but with a person.
5. You must identify your triggers: This command is conditional upon how you are tempted. For you, it might be your right eye. For another man, it might be his right hand. It might be your smartphone. Or your laptop. You must identify the people, places and things that trigger you to look at porn.
6. Victory requires sacrifice: To avoid sexual sin, you must remove anything that is valuable or useful from your life (your “right eye”) if it causes you to sin. No exceptions. Plucking out your right eye is a sacrifice. Installing a porn filter on all your devices is a sacrifice. Cancelling your Netflix subscription will hurt. Deleting your social accounts won’t be easy.
7. Victory requires no going back: You not only pluck out your right eye. You cast it away from you as well. This way, you have no possible way of ever allowing that source of sexual temptation into your life again.
8. Maiming yourself is profitable: Gaining victory over adultery, pornography, sex before marriage and other forms of sexual immorality is costly but profitable. You pay a price, but it’s a price worth paying.
9. Sexual purity requires drastic action: Literally plucking out your right eye is a drastic step to take to avoid committing adultery with your eyes. But that’s the point. Jesus commands you to take drastic action to eliminate sources of sexual temptation from your life, and to avoid them in future. Expect this action to be one that people notice. Expect it to set you apart.
10. The consequences are eternal: If you as a Christian take drastic actions to remove sexual temptations from your life, you walk through life with only one eye or only one hand, but you inherit the kingdom of God. If you don’t pay the required price to attain and maintain sexual purity, God casts you into hell.

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Step 4
Flee Sexual Immorality

“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

One thing to understand about quitting pornography is that you don’t quit—you flee. Porn isn’t something you leave behind in your life. You can’t quit porn the way you quit grade 12, or quit your job. Porn isn’t something that ends up in your rear-view mirror one day, a distant memory. You don’t quit porn, or conquer porn. You flee porn.

Pornography is a type of sexual immorality. And the Bible says sexual immorality is something you are to flee. In this text from Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth, the word flee is the Greek pheugó. It means to escape, to run away. In other words, escape pornography, run away from pornography, flee pornography. “Flee” is an imperative verb. Flee is something you must do. It is a command.

Paul tells you and me to flee sexual immorality for three reasons, one of them stated earlier in this passage, and the other two reasons implied:

1. When you masturbate to pornography, you sin against your own body. You join yourself (the temple of the Holy Spirit) with a harlot.
2. Pornography is something you must protect yourself against today. It’s not so much a vice that you conquer once and for all and leave behind as it is a temptation that you avoid daily. You must be prepared to flee pornography today.
3. Pornography is something you must act against with your body. You can’t escape sexual temptation by staying still. To avoid pornography, you must run away, escape, flee. This might literally involve running away on occasion. More often, though, it means switching TV channels, turning off the TV set, walking out of a movie, crossing the street, hitting the back button on your browser, closing the lid on your laptop, deleting an app on your phone, bouncing your eyes in the mall, or walking out of a room.

The key to defeating pornography in your life today is flight, not fight. If you see pornographic images or videos, or hear inappropriate conversations, or read sexually explicit thoughts today, run away. Flee as though your life depends on it. Because it does.

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Step 5
Put Lust to Death

“Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them.” Colossians 3:5-7

The cure for pornography in your life is execution. You defeat porn by putting lust to death. You conquer sexual immorality by killing it. You eliminate evil sexual desires by exterminating them. The pathway to sexual purity is capital punishment.

When you put something to death in your life, you render it weak and impotent. You view it as a corpse, without life. You deprive that thing of its energizing power. You cut off that source of sexual temptation.

In this passage from Paul’s letter to the church at Colosse, the first sin that Paul mentions is sexual immorality (fornication). But he is speaking of the thought, not the act. Just as uncleanness, passion, evil desire and covetousness take place in the mind, so, too, does sexual immorality. That’s where it starts. Fornication always begins as a thought, an urge, a desire. Left unchecked, or encouraged, that sexually immoral thought leads to an act of sexual immorality. The act of premarital sex begins in the mind. The act of incest begins in the mind. The act of pedophilia begins in the mind. And the acts of looking at pornography and masturbating to pornography always start in the mind. If you want to avoid the sexually immoral acts, you must put the sexually immoral thoughts to death.

The first way to kill sexual immorality in your life is to avoid it. Remove every book, DVD, magazine, game, TV show, website, mobile app and every other source of sexual temptation from your house, office, car and everywhere else. This is your primary battleground. The sooner you remove all sources of sexual temptation, the sooner you will no longer be tempted in those ways.

The second way to put porn to death in your life is to change the subject. As soon as a sinful thought enters your mind, as soon as the memory of a sexually immoral act comes to mind, think of something else. Kill the thought before it has time to develop. Some men get victory in this area by changing their position. If they are sitting in the living room watching a show when the wicked thought arrives uninvited, they get up, walk out to the garage (for example), and start tinkering on their car. An immediate change of location and activity quickly puts sexual temptation to death. When you move to a new location, when you start doing something different, you change the subject in your mind. You replace the wicked thought with a healthier one.

A third and proven way to put lustful thoughts to death is to recite scripture. When a thought enters your mind that you know will lead you to look at pornography or masturbate, kill that thought with God’s Word. Recite a Bible verse or passage from memory, one that is likely to kill the earthly temptation and make you think instead of heavenly things. Here are some verses to memorize:

• “I have made a covenant with my eyes. Why then should I look upon a young woman?” Job 31:1
• “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 5:29
• “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Philippians 4:13
• “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality.” 1 Thessalonians 4:3

One thing to remember about putting sexual immorality to death is that you must do it repeatedly. A prisoner executed by the state never sins again. But sexually immoral thoughts, memories, and desires—you must put them to death until your death. You must kill lust, execute porn and exterminate sexual immorality every time they enter your mind. You will be encouraged to learn that this gets easier with time. Once you stop looking at porn, the memories of the pornographic images and videos that you watched in the past fade away with each passing week. They become harder to remember, more difficult to visualize, harder to re-create in your mind, and so they gradually lose their power to entice.

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Step 6
Do Not Be Deceived

“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 ESV

I looked at pornography for 30 years as a professing Christian because I was deceived. I believed that, no matter what I looked at, God would forgive me because I was saved, born again, and on my way to heaven. My sins, past, present and future, were all taken care of, and so I could commit sexual immorality but still enter heaven by and by. All I had to do was confess my sin and I was OK. I was deceived.

I was deceived because the Bible clearly teaches that the sexually immoral will not inherit the kingdom of God. We’re not talking about the sin here. We’re talking the sinner. Paul lists a bunch of people who will not inherit the kingdom of God. Swindlers make the list. Drunkards make the list. Adulterers make the list. And the sexually immoral make the list.

Paul isn’t saying that a man who gets drunk a few times in his lifetime won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Because a man who gets drunk a few times isn’t a drunkard. He is not teaching that a man who commits a sexually immoral act on a few occasions will not enter heaven. Because that man is not sexually immoral. He is teaching that drunkards won’t inherit the kingdom. The sexually immoral won’t inherit the kingdom.

How often do you have to get drunk per week before you are a drunkard? I don’t know. How many times do you have to look at pornography each week before you are sexually immoral? I don’t care to find out. What we’re talking about here is a class of person who stays in their sin despite professing Christ. They may confess their sin repeatedly, but they won’t forsake it. What Paul has in view is the man who claims that Jesus Christ is his Savior and Lord but who persists in getting drunk, week in, week out. Or the man who claims to be a follower of Jesus but stays in an adulterous relationship month after month. Or the man who claims to be saved but continues to masturbate to porn for 30 years. They are all deceived.

The point here is that, no matter what you profess, no matter how saved you believe yourself to be, and no matter how many times you confess your sins, there is clearly a time when you can be labeled a drunkard, or an adulterer, or a sexually immoral man if you fail to forsake your sin. These men—the drunkard, the adulterer and the sexually immoral man—can think they are Christians all they want, but they will never inherit the kingdom of God. If they think they will, they are deceived. And this is why Paul warns them. This is why Paul warns you and me today. Because it’s possible to profess Christ, be baptized, attend church, think you are saved, and yet be cast into hell when you die.

This deception is one of the primary reasons we have such a problem with pornography in the church today. Professing Christian men look at porn repeatedly, habitually, compulsively, and yet think they will inherit the kingdom of God. In other words, they engage in habitual sin that makes them sexually immoral, but still believe they will inherit the kingdom of God.

This passage teaches you a few ways to spot the heirs of the kingdom of God. They are washed, and they don’t commit adultery. They are sanctified, and they don’t practice homosexuality. They are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God, and they don’t watch porn. If you are a professing Christian man who is in bondage to pornography, this might be your problem—you are deceived. You believe that you can be sexually immoral and inherit the kingdom of God. You can’t. That’s impossible. Don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise.