To Quit Porn, Change Your Mind | 2 Corinthians 12:20-21

Paul is not concerned about finding sexual sin in the church as much as he is afraid of finding believers who haven’t repented of their sexual sin.

To Quit Porn, Change Your Life | 2 Corinthians 12:20-21

“For I fear lest, when I come, I shall not find you such as I wish, and that I shall be found by you such as you do not wish; lest there be contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, backbitings, whisperings, conceits, tumults; lest, when I come again, my God will humble me among you, and I shall mourn for many who have sinned before and have not repented of the uncleanness, fornication, and lewdness which they have practiced.”
2 Corinthians 12:20-21

Is your challenge pornography? Or is it repentance? Are you struggling against sexual immorality? Or are you struggling against repentance? Is you problem that you can’t quit? Or is it that you won’t quit?

When you read the New Testament letter of 1 Corinthians, you discover that the church at Corinth had all manner of problems. The church members were suing each other in court. Some members were claiming spiritual superiority over others in the congregation. Other members were abusing the communal meal. Some members were engaging in sex before marriage. And one member was committing a form of sexual immorality that wasn’t even named among the unbelieving Gentiles.

Paul addresses all of these concerns in his first letter to the church at Corinth. But then he writes a second letter. And in this letter, Paul tells the church that he fears what he will find when he visits them again. He fears that he will find many of these same sins still in the church. Paul in particular mentions the sexual sins of uncleanness, sexual immorality (fornication) and lewdness.

But notice what Paul is afraid of. He is not afraid of simply finding believers practicing these sins. He is afraid of finding “many who have sinned before and have not repented.” Paul is not concerned about finding sexual sin in the church as much as he is afraid of finding believers who haven’t repented of their sexual sin. Paul is afraid of finding believers in this church who have been warned before but who have still not forsaken their sexual sin.

To repent means to change your mind. It doesn’t mean to feel sorry for your sin, or to feel shame, or regret. In New Testament terms, to repent means to literally “think differently afterwards.” Where pornography is concerned, regret has its place. Shame has its place. Seeking God’s forgiveness has its place. But what God is looking for in your life and mine is a change of mind. God is looking for repentance.

If Paul wrote a letter to your church today, would he tell you that some men in your congregation haven’t repented of their porn viewing, despite having been warned against it repeatedly? Would you count yourself among the guilty men that Paul was addressing? Then Paul would be ready to mourn over you, just as he was ready to mourn over the believers in Corinth all those years ago. What broke Paul’s heart wasn’t so much that believers in Corinth committed sexual immorality. What made him mourn was that sexually immoral believers refused to repent. They refused to change their minds about their sin, and so they kept on sinning.

If you want to prove that porn is behind you, repent. When you think differently, you act differently. When you change your mind and start seeing your viewing of pornography as sexual immorality, when you repent and start seeing your porn use as a wicked sin that God hates, and that is under God’s judgment (the sexually immoral will not inherit the kingdom of God), you live differently. Victory over pornography takes place in your mind. If you struggle with porn, change your mind. If you long to quit, change your mind. When you change your mind, you change your life.


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