Christian Women and the Poison of Porn

According to Covenant Eyes, an esteemed internet accountability and screen-monitoring service, 40 percent of professing Christian women consume pornography. That is astoundingly tragic because “consuming pornography” is consuming poison. If you are reading this and you are one of the 40 percent, you likely feel a compulsive drive to return to this poison, even though you wish you could stop. But if you are a Christian woman, you can stop consuming pornography. How?

Fight the enemy inside you.

Read God’s word and believe it.

Pray.

1. Fight the Enemy Inside You

Sexual sin — in desire or physical action — is contrary to our identity as redeemed women.

When we pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done,” we are praying for God to judge sin, for truth to triumph, and for evil to perish. Arm yourself through repentance. Puritan Thomas Watson says true repentance depends on these six ingredients:

1. See and recognize sin as sin (and not as a psychological problem for which you are not responsible).
2. Feel sorrow for sin. Shedding tears because you have sinned against the God who loves you and ransomed you is a balm to your soul. It softens you to God and his word.
3. Confess your sin. Confessing to God and those you have sinned against gives glory to God and shows your reliance upon him.
4. Have shame for sin. Shame, in its ancient context, means “uncovered.” Having shame for sin means relying upon Christ alone and his covering. It means uncovering your sin so that you can be covered by the blood of Christ.
5. Hate your sin. Hating sin — and learning how to hate your sin without hating yourself — helps you repent of indwelling sin because it helps you externalize it. It helps you understand what Paul meant in Romans 7:15: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”
6. Turn away from sin and cultivate affections opposite of sin. For example, the thief in Ephesians 4:28 does more than stop stealing. He stops stealing, works with his hands, and gives to the poor. Likewise, the woman who consumes porn needs to stop and ask, “How can I cultivate a life that replaces consumption of sexual sin with a life of productive sexual purity?”

You might even read Watson’s whole book, or another that focuses on repentance from sexual sin. I recommend Jared Moore’s 33 Days to Freedom from Lust: A Hope-Filled Devotional. While geared to young people (ages 10–18), it is packed with spiritual disciplines to end the tyranny of sexual lust.

2. Read God’s Word and Believe It

Romans 6:1–14 is God’s plan for liberation from pornography and all other sinful habits, thoughts, and lusts for the believer. The gospel delivers us from the guilt, penalty, and bondage of sin; Romans 6:1–14 shows us how to fight sin. It requires that we focus our minds on three distinct practices. We need to know (verses 3–4), consider (verse 11), and present (verses 13–14). Let’s unpack this.

First, we need to “know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. . . . Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (verses 3–4). Christ’s resurrection living in you brings down the power of God from heaven to fight your sin and win. We die to our particular sins because Christ died for our deliverance from sin.

Next, we need to “consider [ourselves] dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (verse 11). Aware of our new life in Christ, we must never return to the dead women we once were. We need to engage our minds in considering and believing the truth: I have the power to never use pornography again. Act like the woman that you are.

“Christ’s resurrection living in you brings down the power of God from heaven to fight your sin and win.”

Finally, we need to present our bodies and minds, our whole beings, in purity from here on out — not presenting our bodies as “instruments for unrighteousness.” Why? Because we “have been brought from death to life” (verse 13). We were bought at a price, and that price has made us born-again believers. That cataclysmic, supernatural transformation has forever changed us: “Sin will have no dominion over you” (verse 14). Never again. This is your invitation to live porn-free.

3. Pray

Pray against your pornography. Indwelling sin enlists the believer in a war between the (sinful) flesh and the (Holy) Spirit, a war Galatians 5:17 describes as perpetual on earth, “to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” The flesh wars against your desires for purity. But in the power of the Holy Spirit, you can fight your flesh to the death.

And one major way you fight is through prayer. When you pray against your own sin, you confess that sin can never be stewarded for good; you confess that your indwelling sin is not who you are but rather how you feel. Because this evil “dwells within [you]” (Romans 7:20), you can own your sin as yours to repent of, forsake, and kill. And because your Savior loves you, died for you, and gives you day by day the power of the resurrection, you can walk in freedom from slavery to your evil desires and actions. Learning how to hate your sin without hating yourself frees you to pray against your sin and live in the freedom and victory of repentance.

We stop hiding when we pray against our sin. We externalize the conflict before ourselves and God — and ideally before other Christians. We ask people stronger than we are for accountability. We avoid Bible-twisters, sin-coddlers, and others who make their living on the internet asking some version of Satan’s question to Eve: “Did God actually say . . . ?” (Genesis 3:1).

A prayer against our own sin is also serious, committed, ruthless, and definitive. When we pray for God’s will in our lives, we are praying that truth would triumph and evil perish. Our lives are living epistles of God’s grand story.

The Sin of Porn Needs the Word of Truth

Perhaps you noticed that I failed to tell you that you are a victim of Adam’s fall — that your porn problem is normal and that you are merely trying to meet understandable, legitimate needs in the wrong way. Perhaps you noticed the glaring absence of what I didn’t say.

Instead of Bible-twisting lies, you need the bold and clear truth of Scripture. Christ overcame the world by love for his elect and by endurance of suffering. Because of this, and in the power of the Holy Spirit’s grace and Christ’s resurrection, the elect will overcome sin by love for Christ and the endurance of the ongoing battle between the flesh and the Spirit. Being a born-again Christian reverses your whole moral compass.

Know your enemy. Read your Bible and believe it. Pray.