There are certain topics I return to on a regular
basis and, if you are a regular reader of this site, you know that one
of those topics is pornography. I return to it again and again because I
see the damage it is doing and I see the despair of those who are
caught up in it. My goal for today is simple: I want to give you 7 good
reasons you need to stop looking at porn
right now.
1. The Cost to Your Soul
I want to begin here: With the cost to your soul. If you are consumed
with pornography and unwilling to put this sin to death, you have every
reason to be concerned with the state of your soul. God promises that
if he has saved us we will gain new passions and new affections. We will
have not only the ability but also the desire to replace sin with
holiness, to replace immorality with sexual purity. If you have no
sorrow for sin, if you have no real desire for victory, if time and
again you recklessly choose your sin over your Savior, you need to ask
yourself this: Do I love pornography enough to go to hell for it? If
this sin continues to dominate your life, it may stand as proof that you
do not have a saving, sin-slaying faith. For the sake of your soul,
stop looking at pornography.
2. The Cost to Your Neighbor
Even those who know next-to-nothing about the Christian faith know
this: Christians are commanded to “love your neighbor as yourself.” Just
like Jesus, Christians are to esteem others higher than themselves and
to place the concerns of other people ahead of their own. Of all people,
Christians should know that pornography exacts a high cost of those who
create it—the cost to their bodies, to their souls, to their mental
well-being, to their dignity, to their future. A vast amount of the
pornography you enjoy is created by people against their wills. The
simple fact is, by watching porn, you are watching rape and deriving
pleasure from it. You become a willing participant in sexual violence
and you allow that actor on the screen to suffer for your pleasure. For
the sake of your neighbor, stop looking at pornography.
3. The Cost to Your Church
At a time when the Christian church is crying out for more and better
leaders, an entire generation of young men and women are infantilizing
themselves by their dedication to pornography. They are in perpetual
pornolesence,
that period between the conviction of sin and the determination to do
anything to stop it. In this time they constantly choose sexual
immorality over God and their spiritual growth is stunted. For the sake
of your church, stop looking at pornography.
4. The Cost to Your Family
There is scarcely a pastor ministering today who has not seen a
family crumble and fall under the weight of pornographic addiction. Men
are tearing apart their families for the sake of illicit pleasures;
women are shunning the attention of their husbands in order to read or
to watch what is forbidden and what seems to promise greater and easier
satisfaction. Children are being exposed to pornography through the
trails their parents leave behind. Fathers are inviting Satan into the
home by their commitment to what God forbids and what Satan loves. For
the sake of your family, stop looking at pornography.
5. The Cost to Your Mission
The Lord’s commission is an urgent commission because it is a matter
of eternal life and death. Time is short and hell is forever, which
makes the Christian’s business an urgent business. And yet so many
Christians are distracted by something as evil and as wasteful as
pornography. Their attention is arrested, their energy depleted, their
usefulness undermined. Don Whitney says it well: “If there are any
regrets in Heaven, they will only be that we did not use our earthly
time more for the glory of God and for growth in His grace. If this is
so, this may be Heaven’s only similarity with hell, which will be filled
with agonizing laments over time so foolishly squandered.” For the sake
of your mission, stop looking at pornography.
6. The Cost to Your Witness
Christians are called to be different, to stand out from the rest of
the world by their desires and by their behavior. Christians are to put
sin to death and to display the power of God in removing and destroying
all competitors. And yet so many Christians have had their witness
shattered when the sordid truth comes out and when others learn that
they profess faith in Christ on the one hand, and are consumed with lust
on the other. Parents undermine the gospel they have been telling their
children, pastors undermine the gospel they have been preaching to
their congregations. For the sake of your witness, stop looking
at pornography.
7. The Cost to Your Savior
By making light of pornography you are making light of the
death of Jesus Christ. If you are a Christian, you acknowledge in your
profession of faith that the cost of forgiveness was nothing less than
the death of God’s beloved Son. Jesus suffered and died for your sin.
How can you, as a Christian, then toy with your sin and take it lightly?
How can you cling to it? As Spurgeon says with his customary eloquence,
“Sin has been pardoned at such a price that we cannot henceforth trifle
with it.” For God’s sake, stop looking at pornography.
