Afterward Jesus found him in the temple, and said to him, “See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.”
John 5:14
One of the reasons I left Celebrate Recovery is that I never faced consequences for my sexual sin. Brothers like me, caught up in the sin of habitual porn use, would attend the meetings week after week, being pure one week, falling into sin the next, but nothing ever happened. Actually, something happened. We received a “First Time Attender” blue chip each time we reset our sobriety clock to one day of sobriety. This was not the biblical model for dealing with a brother who was living in sexual sin, so I left.
What I never heard at Celebrate Recovery meetings were those simple words of Jesus: “Sin no more.” Jesus said them to the woman caught in adultery (John 8:11), and he said them to the man at the Pool of Bethesda (John 5:14). The path of obedience, the route to victory over pornography, is simple—sin no more. Yes, Jesus forgave the woman caught in adultery, but Jesus then commanded her to sin no more. Yes, Jesus healed the man who had an infirmity for 38 years, but Jesus then commanded the man to sin no more. Notice the pattern. Receive healing and forgiveness for sin from Jesus, then obey His command to sin no more.
Jesus doesn’t expect you to continue in your habitual sin of looking at pornography any more than He expected the woman caught in adultery to continue in her adultery. Jesus doesn’t expect you to continue in your sin of masturbating any more than He expected the healed man to continue in his sin. “Sin no more” is not simply a command. It’s an expectation. Jesus expects you to end your porn viewing and your masturbation once and for all. He doesn’t want you to gain sexual purity for a few weeks, fall into sin, and then get a blue chip at your next 12-step recovery meeting and start all over again as though nothing happened. Why not? Because sexual sin has consequences. “Sin no more,” commands Jesus, “lest a worse thing come upon you.”
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