“And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers.” Romans 1:28-29
When God gives up on an individual, He gives them over to sexual immorality. Habitual sexual sin is one symptom of a heart hardened towards God, of a mind that no longer likes to retain a knowledge of God. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18).
If you are a Christian man who habitually masturbates to pornography, and if you desire to quit, reverse-engineer this text to uncover the cause of your bondage—and the remedy. Don’t look to your childhood. Don’t listen to Celebrate Recovery and other 12-step recovery programs that tell you that you use pornography to self-medicate. “You were spiritually wounded as a child,” these groups tell you, meeting after meeting, “and you masturbate to porn as an adult to dull the pain.” Ignore this misdiagnosis. Reverse-engineer the text instead.
As a class of people, those who practice habitual, compulsive, sexual sin are filled with unrighteousness. They practice those things that are not fitting because God has given them over to a debased mind. And God has given them over to a debased mind because they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. I realize, of course, that this passage from Romans is describing the ungodly and reprobate, that class of hardened sinners that God will one day punish with everlasting fire. These are the people that God has given up on. This passage is not written about the redeemed, those who have been born again through faith in the atoning work of Christ, and His resurrection, for them. But this trajectory still holds true in your life and mine.
We can’t watch porn and masturbate month in, month out, year after year, and think that our minds are sanctified. We can’t practice habitual sexual sin and think that we have a correct knowledge of God. The sign of a reprobate mind is that it first chooses to no longer retain a knowledge of God, then it becomes debased, then it enjoys practicing sexual immorality, and then it eventually approves of others who do the same (Romans 1:32). Sounds like the porn industry.
Romans chapter 1 does not teach that you, as an individual, today, are on your way to the lake of fire because of your sexual sin. But it does teach you how unrepentant, sexually immoral people get that way. They start by choosing to no longer retain God in their knowledge. They turn their backs on God, so He does the same with them. The way back for you and me is to get back to God. When we start retaining God in our knowledge again, when we start acknowledging God as our creator, law-giver and redeemer, the porn and masturbation stop.
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