If you are a Christian, I doubt that you bow before a golden calf for your morning devotions. But if you are a fornicator, you are an idolator. You just worship a different kind of idol. You find this truth in the New Testament book of Ephesians, the letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus. Here is what Paul writes:
“For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.”
Ephesians 5:5
A fornicator is someone who practices fornication, that is, sexual immorality, such as sex outside of marriage, sex with animals, incest, and masturbating to pornography. Fornicator comes from the Greek pornos, a man who prostitutes himself. Notice that Paul does not group the fornicator, the unclean person and the covetous man with the idolater. He does not name four types of sinner. No, Paul says that the fornicator is an idolater, the unclean person is an idolater, the covetous man is an idolater. Fornication is idolatry.
Idolatry consists of “divine honor paid to a created object” (Easton’s Bible Dictionary). Idolatry is also excessive attachment to or veneration for any thing, or that which borders on adoration (KJV Dictionary). “Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God, your functional savior,” says Martin Luther. Idolatry, of course, is a sin. To commit idolatry is to break the second of the Ten Commandments. God forbids you to create idols, to bow down to them, and to serve them.
If you watch pornography habitually, if you masturbate to images of women week in and week out, month in and month out, God’s Word says you are an idolater. You worship something other than God. Something other than God has first place in your affections and devotion. Your heart clings to an idol. And you are headed for the lake of fire, because, “No idolater has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.“
You don’t have to kneel before a totem pole to be an idolater. Visiting porn sites will do. If you want to inherit the kingdom of Christ and God, repent of your idolatry by forsaking your sexual immorality.
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