The man who commits adultery with another man’s wife, he who commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress, shall surely be put to death.
Leviticus 20:10
If the penalty for looking at pornography was stoning, would you still be “addicted?” This isn’t an academic exercise because there was a time when the divine penalty for multiple sexual sins was death. In those days, you didn’t sit in a circle with a bunch of other men to discuss your sexual addiction. Instead, a circle of people formed around you and threw stones at you until you were dead.
I am referring, of course, to what is known as the Mosaic Law, that is, the law handed down to Moses by God. You discover this law in the books of Exodus and Leviticus. In Leviticus 20:10-15, in particular, you read the record of what God commands Moses to tell the children of Israel concerning various sexual acts. These include adultery, incest, homosexual sex and sex with animals. The penalty in each case is death.
God commands the children of Israel to abstain from adultery (Leviticus 20:10). He explains that the man who commits adultery with another man’s wife shall be put to death. And not just put to death, but “surely be put to death.” The adulterous wife is also to be put to death. The death penalty is non-negotiable for adultery. If you do the act, you are executed along with your adulterous partner.
Pornography as we know it didn’t exist in those days, of course. It wasn’t as depraved, or as widespread, or as freely available in so many places, as it is today. Men in Moses’ day didn’t have a problem with looking at porn because there wasn’t any. But since looking at a woman to lust after her is adultery according to Jesus, then surely the penalty in Old Testament times for looking at people committing adultery, and enjoying the view, would have been death as well, don’t you think?
If a man in those days was put to death for doing the act, surely he would also have been put to death for masturbating to others doing the act. Which naturally raises a question. If the penalty today for looking at porn was stoning, or being burned by fire (the penalty for marrying a woman and her mother, Leviticus 20:14), would you still be “addicted?” Would you still profess to being “powerless over your addictions and compulsive behaviors,” and that “your life had become unmanageable,” to paraphrase the first step of Celebrate Recovery?
This is one of the challenges of pornography. No matter how prevalent it becomes, and no matter how many Christian men fall victim to its snare, porn rarely brings divine punishment in this life. If you get caught, you aren’t executed by the church or the state. If you confess to regularly looking at other people having sex, no one stones you to death. Today you are under grace. If you confess your sin, Jesus is faithful and just to forgive your sin and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). Praise God.
But what happens if you don’t confess? What if you don’t repent? What if you continue watching porn compulsively, habitually until the day you die, or until the day that the Lord Jesus returns? Well, the penalty in that day will be far worse than stoning. You will be cast into the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.
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