Find Your Motive Behind “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery” | Exodus 20:2

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage . . . You shall not commit adultery.

Exodus 20:2,14

If you want to conquer pornography, you need to get your motivation from the right source. After all, you can find all manner of reasons to quit. You can quit to save your marriage, quit to avoid scandal, quit to avoid jail time. Or you can quit because of who God is and of what He has done for you.

Consider the 10 Commandments, for example. Moses received them directly from the hand of God, live and in person. God gave the commandments to Moses one by one, and then God inscribed them on tablets of stone. But before God handed down His 10 commandments, He prefaced his remarks by reminding Moses of who He is and of what He had done.

“I am the Lord your God,” He told Moses. This is your first motivation for giving up pornography—God is Lord. God is not simply your creator and sustainer. He is Jehovah, “the existing One,” the One whom you must obey. You are to obey God because He is your Lord.

Then God gives your second motivation. God reminds Moses that it was He, not Moses, not fortuitous circumstances, who delivered Moses and the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. If you are a Christian, you have been delivered from your sin. You have been translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. You have been redeemed.

You can avoid adultery because God commands you to. But behind that prohibition in the 10 Commandments is your motivation for obeying. You should gladly forsake pornography because God is Lord, and because God has delivered you from your house of bondage. Your motivation for quitting pornography and not committing adultery should be gratitude to your loving God, who delivered you from slavery.

When God commands you to flee fornication (1 Corinthians 6:18) and to abstain from sexual immorality (1 Thessalonians 4:3), He does so because He loves you and has your best interests at heart. God is your Deliverer. He has delivered you from your house of sin and bondage. Now he wants you to never go back. And He’s put that in writing.