We know that pornography is an ugly
and harmful sin. We know that those who indulge in porn have committed the sin of
lust, but there is so much more to it than that. When you open your browser and
begin to look at those images and videos, you are sinning in ways that go far
beyond lust. Here are 8 sins you commit when you look at porn.
In the moment you begin to look at
porn, you have allowed it to replace God as essential to your happiness.
You commit the sin of idolatry. All sin is idolatry, an attempt to
find joy and satisfaction not in God himself but in what God forbids (Exodus
20:3-6). Matt Papa says it well: “An idol, simply put, is anything that is more
important to you than God. It is anything that has outweighed God in your
life—anything that you love, trust, or obey more than God—anything that has
replaced God as essential to your happiness.” In the moment you begin to look
at porn, you have allowed it to replace God as essential to your happiness.
You’ve committed the sin of idolatry.
You commit the sin of adultery. This is the most obvious sin you
commit when you use porn. In Matthew 5, Jesus draws a clear connection between
lust and adultery. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit
adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful
intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (27-28).
Pornography is lust and exists to foster lust. But lust is simply a form
of the wider sin of adultery, the deed or desire to be sexually involved with
someone other than your spouse.
You commit the sin of deceit. Deceit is the act of concealing or
misrepresenting your actions. Because pornography generates shame, you will
hide it, cover it up, or refuse to confess it. When you erase your browsing
history to keep your parents from finding out, when you use it in secret to
keep your spouse from learning about your addiction, when you refuse to
proactively confess it to an accountability partner, when you participate in
the Lord’s Supper even though you are unrepentantly given over to it, you are
practicing deceit. And the Bible warns of the dire consequences: “No one who practices
deceit shall dwell in my house; no one who utters lies shall continue before my
eyes” (Psalm 101:7).
You commit the sin of theft. The porn industry is being badly
damaged by piracy, by people illegally distributing copyrighted material. Some
estimates say that for every 1 video that is downloaded legally, 5 are
downloaded illegally. Fully 60 percent of all illegal downloads are of
pornographic content. While we can be glad that the industry is in dire
straights, we have no right to participate in such theft, for God says clearly,
“You shall not steal” (Exodus 20:15). When you use porn, you are almost
definitely watching material that has been stolen and, in that way, you are
participating in its theft.
You commit the sin of greed. Sexual sin is greed, a form of
taking advantage of another person to defraud them of something that is rightly
theirs. In 1 Thessalonians 4, Paul insists “that no one transgress and wrong
his brother in this matter [of sexual sin], because the Lord is an avenger in
all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you” (6). The
word translated “wrong” in this context refers to greedily taking something
from someone else. It is to allow greed to motivate fraud, to unfairly and
illegitimately use another person for your ignoble purposes.
You commit the sin of sloth. We are called in all of life to
“redeem the time,” to understand that we live short little lives and are
responsible before God to make the most of every moment (Ephesians 5:16). Sloth
is laziness, an unwillingness to use time well, and reflects a willingness to
use time for destructive instead of constructive purposes. In that way
pornography is slothful, a misuse of time. It is using precious moments, hours,
and days to harm others instead of help them, to foster sin instead of kill
sin, to backslide instead of grow, to pursue an idol instead of the living God.
The person who voluntarily watches
sexual assault for purposes of titillation is rightly guilty of that sexual
assault.
You commit the sin of sexual assault. A person who drives a getaway car
for a band of bank robbers will rightly be charged with murder for anyone who
is killed in committing that crime. The person who voluntarily watches sexual
assault for purposes of titillation is rightly guilty of that sexual assault.
And a nauseating quantity of pornography is violent in nature, displaying men
taking advantage of women. Sometimes these women have volunteered for such
degradation and sometimes they are forced or raped into it. To watch such horrifying
smut is to be a participant in it and to bear the moral blemish of it.
You commit the sin of ignoring the
Holy Spirit. As a Christian, you have the
tremendous honor and advantage of being indwelled by the Holy Spirit. One of
the ways the Spirit ministers to you is in giving you an internal warning
against sin. Paul assures that the Spirit warns against sexual sin in
particular, then provides a stern caution: “Therefore whoever disregards this
[warning], disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you” (1
Thessalonians 4:8). To commit sexual sin is to ignore the Holy Spirit, to
actively suppress his voice as he warns that you need not and should not commit
this sin. He provides everything necessary to resist this temptation (1
Corinthians 10:13). To resist the Spirit and ignore his ministry to you is a
serious offense against a holy God.
It is sinful to lust after another
person and to enable this lust through pornography. Yet the sin bound up in
pornography goes far deeper than mere lust. It extends to idolatry, adultery,
deceit, theft, greed, sloth, sexual violence, and ignoring the Holy Spirit.
Romans 14:12 warns: “So then each of us will give an account of himself to
God.” Thankfully, what God demands God provides, and he does so through the
gospel. Those who have trusted Jesus Christ can have confidence that Christ has
satisfied our account, that he has satisfied God’s wrath against our sin, that
he has provided us with his own righteousness. Yet we must also know that he
has done this not so we can remain in our sin, but that we can “put on the new
self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness”
(Ephesians 4:24).
By Tim Challies, a pastor at Grace Fellowship Church in Toronto, Ontario, blogger, author, book reviewer, co-founder of Cruciform Press
