How Can I Avoid Sexual Sin?

Question from a Site Viewer

It seems impossible to avoid sexual sin . . .

I struggle with lust and pornography. But I take my spiritual life and my belief in Jesus very seriously. I’m constantly conscious of all the sinful things I do and I am in an ongoing state of remorse. I spend hours in the Bible every day. I listen to sermons when I drive and when I work. I pray all throughout the day.

However, I struggle with sexual sin–all the time. Everything I see reminds me of a beautiful female body. It drives me crazy. So I give in to temptation. Then I cry and ask for forgiveness, and feel ashamed that I couldn’t resist. Every day is the same.

Television, magazines, newspapers, the Internet, emails . . . every form of media brings sexuality to the forefront. I cannot avoid seeing beautiful female bodies everywhere I look. And every time I see a beautiful female body, temptation overwhelms me and I give in to sin.

Now that seems bad but there is another layer. I go to Christians and ask for help. They tell me there is something wrong with me. They say this is not normal. They tell me this is evidence that I’m not saved. They tell me I don’t read the Bible enough, or I’m not in prayer enough, or that I’m too evil and God will never forgive me. I’ve been told that I’m an adulterer at heart. I’ve also been told that looking at pornography is intentional sin and that I can never be saved now.

I’m so lost and desperate for help. Nobody will help me. Nobody has good advice. I feel there is NO HOPE for me at all. I’m doomed to burn in Hell.

How can I avoid sexual sin?

Tim’s Answer

Thanks for the email. I have one question for you? Who is Jesus to you? How do you see Him?

Who Jesus is to us has everything to do with whether we win or lose the battle with sinful thoughts. All suggestions for help in this area only work if we have a right focus on Christ. Reading the Bible, praying, memorizing Scripture, worshiping, praising, and serving help us avoid sexual sin only if we think rightly of Jesus.

If to you Jesus is the one to whom you owe your life, your best friend, the one whom you love more than anything, then your love for sexual pleasure will be conquered. But if your love for sexual pleasure is the love of your life, then no matter how hard you try to win the battle, you will lose. We always ultimately follow our loves.

I read in your plea a sense that you are a victim of something outside your control. I can assure you that such is not the case. External images and pictures sent by others are not the source of the problem. The source of the problem is that your own inward desires for sexual pleasure trumps everything else. You have not yet died to self.

One must work on changing the desires of the heart and by doing so thus transform the mind. Who or what we love is who or what we will serve. Jesus makes this very clear in the Sermon on the Mount. Accordingly, I come back to my question: Who is Jesus to you? Is He so valuable to you that you would sell all that you have to purchase Him? Is He your pearl of great price, your treasure in the field, your great focus and desire?

Your problem does not have a technique that will fix it, but there is a Savior who will fix it if you are willing to die to your own desires and make desiring Him the supreme desire of your life. Techniques can help when our great desires are rightly towards our God, but they are of little use when our desires are not so aligned. I encourage you to focus your eyes on Him; instead of seeing women’s body parts, look for crosses; instead of seeking sexual pleasure, seek the eternal.

I realize this will be a battle, but it becomes immeasurably easier with the right view of Christ. There is no victory without first dealing with the inward desire issue. If Christ is our greatest love and desire, then sex will once again have its proper, subordinate role in our lives, and will not be our master.

There is hope, but we all must make the choice every day and every moment of the day to desire Him above everything.

Let me give you a little illustration. Suppose there was someone you greatly loved. Suppose you saw that person hit by a car. Do you think at that moment your first thought would be: “I want to have a sexual experience”? I can almost guarantee that it would be an agonizing ache for the person who was hurt. You would run to that person and your mind would be consumed with grief and concern for that person as you tried to help the one you love.

Our loves will drive our thoughts and actions, even as Jesus taught. If Jesus is our supreme love and desire, then we will find it quite natural to say with Joseph: “How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” If sexual pleasure is our great love, then we will not win in our efforts to suppress it.

I am not saying that the flesh will cease desiring sexual pleasure. What I am saying is that when Christ is our greatest desire, sexual desires lose their ability to control us. We are, after all, more than mere animals controlled by our own passions and lusts and instincts. We are humans, created in the image of God, with a will and an ability when we think rightly about God to bring our passions and desires into obedience for Christ’s sake.

I am encouraged by a couple of things in your email. First, I am encouraged that you have a desire to overcome this addiction. Second, I am encouraged that your desire has driven you to pray and read the Bible. Please, do not stop doing these things. Prayer is critical in overcoming temptation, as Jesus told His disciples. And the time to pray is before we fall into temptation. It is good to pray when we are in temptation, but Jesus taught us to pray for deliverance from temptation before we are tempted. At His throne we will find grace and mercy in our times of need, as Hebrews 4:16 tells us. So we should come to Jesus and the Father early and often in our prayers.

I also am encouraged that you are not looking at pornography every day or fulfilling your sexual desires every day. Every day that you do not give in to your sinful desires is a day of triumph. Every day that your desire for Christ trumps your desire for sex is a day of victory. Every moment you spend with Him is a moment of righteousness. Your desire for sex will not go away simply by making a choice to follow Christ, but each time you die to your fleshly desires you are exercising yourself to godliness. And by making Jesus the supreme desire of your heart, you will gain the resources to walk in the Spirit and not walk according to your fleshly desires.

My heart goes out to you, as the enemy has controlled your mind for too long. Such patterns of thought are hard to break, but the battle always begins in the thought life and the winner of that battle is the greater love. Scripture tells us that Jesus loved righteousness and hated iniquity. He did not sin. We want our loves to mirror His.

I pray that you will not give up the battle, but that you will learn the truth about dying to your own fleshly desires and living in light of your supreme love for Christ. And if you do sin, we have an advocate with the Father, as John tells us (1 John 2:2). Always come right back to Him.

I can tell you that there is far more to life than sex. We are first and foremost thinking beings, not sexual ones. We are on this planet to be a blessing to people, to be witnesses of Christ, to show forth the praises of Him who called us out of darkness. Anyone who steps back and contemplates life realizes how unfulfilling life is if sexual satisfaction becomes our reason for existence. We make humanity to be something much different than the reflection of God Himself, whose image we bear. There is no sense of satisfaction of rightness in sex outside of the sexual intimacy that deepens a marriage relationship. Living life for sexual pleasure is bondage, not freedom.

I am not saying this as someone who is perfect in sexual matters. But early in life I knew that life had a higher calling than sex. I am perhaps one of the rare people who never married and never had a sexual relationship with another person. Living as a single person was not my plan and I fought against it, but I found the pursuit of Christ and service for Him left me without the time that would be necessary to commit to a relationship. But I am a man with the same passions and desires of other men. I say this only to let you know that life can be rich and fulfilling apart from sex, even when our flesh desires that sexual intimacy. God has been very good to me in giving me a plethora of good friends and His own dear presence. We, as people, can live without sex. But there is no life apart from Christ.

With my prayers,