Freedom from Porn through Christ: Go and Sin No More

This is my testimony of how Jesus Christ has set me free from pornography. I pray that as you read my words of vulnerability, the Spirit would carry the important parts - the Gospel - into your heart and transform you completely. I would like this to be a word of encouragement for those who struggle with pornography and other forms of sexual immorality. There is hope for you in Jesus Christ alone.

Two weeks ago, I confessed my backslidding into sinful patterns of viewing pornography to my girlfriend by God’s grace. We called one night to talk about it, but this initial call was only the beginning of God’s work of creating deep repentance in my heart.

During this call, I told her what I had done, but there was still a hint of pride and justification in my tone and in what I said. I was peppering my confession with words like, “I have sinned against God”, without really knowing what that meant, but desiring to be theologically correct. I was concerned about how I looked to her and was trying to preserve a good self-image. I was trying to preserve a false-self. In hindsight, this was not true repentance, nor a true confession. Furthermore, in my selfishness and self-justification, I never addressed her hurt or sense of betrayal. This was only a worldly sorrow and there would be more conversations I would have to have with her before I was truly broken, humbled and repentant over my wickedness.

I was distracted. I continued to ask myself, “Why don’t I feel like I’ve hurt anyone? What is wrong with me?” Sure, I knew I had done wrong, but I wasn’t experiencing the inner reality of true godly sorrow. After hanging up, I had more time to think and pray about this more deeply. I went to my room angry at myself and maybe even angry at God as I clenched my fists and cried out to God for answers. “God! Why don’t I feel anything?” He was silent.

Or, I was “hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Heb. 3:13).

Leveraging Brokenness and Pain

I woke up the next morning determined to figure out why I could not ‘feel’ or understand the sin that I had committed. I feared that my heart had truly hardened against God, so I cried out for God to soften me. As the day progressed, my physical body was reacting to my spiritual reality. I suffered a headache, lack of appetite, wanting to vomit, shortness of breath, tightness in my chest. I was sick to my stomach. The wickedness of my sin and the damage it had caused, namely the consequences of it for my relationship with God and my girlfriend, were all beginning to surface and I could not bear it.

I spent my day in prayer, fasting technology and reading Scripture, specifically Romans. I remember reading slowly, taking in every word, and coming to chapter 5. I read the line, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5) and I could not hold back my tears. After reading what seemed like a mirror to my present rebellion in the first few chapters - re-learning that I was a sinner, a wretch, under the wrath of God, condemned under the perfect Law of God - I could not comprehend why God would even decide to pour out his love into my filthy and corrupted heart. I was so unworthy. I read on: “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). This was the beginning of my journey towards complete and true repentance.

I remember after I ended my fast around 4 p.m., I picked up my phone to message my girlfriend to check on her, but she had already made the first move of reconciliation. She sent me a ‘hi’ with a heart emoji, so I took that to mean she still loved me and I wept. In her sadness and hurt, which at this point I had still not addressed, she had taken the initiative to show love toward me in spite of my selfishness and betrayal. She was also the one to initiate the next call so we could finish the conversation and work through the pain and hurt together. I did not feel worthy to approach her, but she, sensing the shame and guilt that I had, decided to move toward me in compassion and love.

I felt like the Apostle Peter. I could relate to his sense of shame and guilt. Peter had disowned Jesus and broke loyalty with him by denying his association with his Lord three times. Then, a few days later, after Jesus had risen from the dead and in the depths of Peter’s shame and guilt, Jesus initiated reconciliation with Peter. Jesus met Peter and the other disciples at the shore near their fishing boats and prepared a meal for them - fish and bread over a fire (John 21:9). What comes next for me, follows closely with the rest of the story in John 21.

Realizing the Relational Damage of My Sin

In this second conversation, my girlfriend started to point out how I had been blinded and selfish. She did it with unwavering boldness and grace, but with much love. Throughout the whole conversation, I never felt condemned. She highlighted areas of my behaviour over the last few days that revealed a deeper selfishness and lack of understanding of the damage I had done to her. I don’t remember her saying very much, but every word she spoke and every question she asked, felt like long, sharp javelins being pressed into my heart.

She felt devalued, saddened, and betrayed. She also felt forgotten because I failed to address her feelings. With every firm and honest utterance, I could not help but hear the underlying question, “Do you love me?”

“Do you love me?”

In Jesus’ beautiful act of reconciliation towards a shame-filled and broken Peter, Jesus asks him this same powerful question: “Do you love me?” (John 21:15). Jesus asked Peter this three times! Why was this question an antidote for Peter’s guilt and shame? Because the questions challenged his intentions, desires and actions. As Peter verbalized “I love you”, he was verbalizing a reality that he had come to terms with. Peter’s earlier confession of Jesus as the Christ and the Son of the living God had moved from his head into his heart (Matt. 16:15-16). He realized that his Lord and Friend had never left him, even though he had left his Lord. He realized that Jesus was the only one who could give him purpose and meaning, not his fishing career. He realized that his Rabbi still loved him despite his selfish and prideful actions in the past. In other words, the gospel clicked for Peter. In that moment, he compared the three years he had walked with Jesus to the many other years that he did not and saw a striking difference. Those three years were the closest he’d ever been to experiencing fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore (Ps. 16:11). He knew he wanted nothing but Jesus Christ himself.

Dallas Willard writes, “If one but fully dwells in imagination upon this sequence of events [the betrayal to the conversation between Jesus and Peter in John 21], one begins to sense what an impact it would have had on the total personality of Peter and that of others. Think of how a comparable process would affect your life or mine even now!” (Willard, The Spirit of Disciplines). I know my comparable experience has deeply affected me.

Look at what Peter becomes: In Acts, we see him preaching the most coherent, beautiful and convicting sermon the library of Scripture has ever seen (Acts 2:14-36)! We see him healing people and embodying a bold and confident character that lies not in his own ability but in the resurrected Christ. Peter was no longer this big ego, self-confident child, but rather a gospel-breathing, mature, selfless and bold preacher of Jesus Christ. Peter was changed forever.

Actualizing my New Identity in Christ

Finally, I would like to address some doubts that have crept into my mind. Indeed, the battle is not against flesh and blood (Eph. 6:12). I could not help but think, “What would happen to me if I fell back into sexual immorality?” I was a slave to fear and a slave to sin’s power. I thought I was still under its strength.

But God spoke and his Word transformed my heart forever. I watched clips of an incredible sermon by Paul Washer titled “1 Thessalonians 4:1-3 | Abstain from Sexual Immorality”. Pastor Washer pushed hard on the areas of my insecurity and fear. He identified sexual immorality for what it was and didn’t shy away from speaking harshly and firmly against it. He encouraged me that I could abstain from sexual immorality forever in and through faith in the work of Christ on the cross. Jesus Christ died to set me free and he did not want me to “submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal. 5:1). How freeing this was and is!

If I am a Christian, I am a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). I was bought by the blood of Christ to use my freedom to serve and love others (Gal. 5:13). I have no business swimming around in the filth and deceitfulness of sin because that is the pattern of the old person - unregenerate in Christ. More than that, I am saved by grace through faith in Christ and the Spirit of God dwells in me. How could I defile myself, the temple of God, in which he dwells! How could I go back to the very thing that put Jesus on the cross! How could I take pleasure in the lethal weapon of my Lord Jesus Christ! My sin was the hammering of the nails into Jesus’ hands and feet and the pressing of the crown of thorns on Jesus' head. If I had come to know God, how could I turn back again to the “weak and worthless elementary principles of the world” (Gal. 4:9)?

It would be like Batimaeus gouging out his eyes after receiving the supernatural ability to see his Lord. After being healed of his blindness through a beautiful and personal encounter with the Messiah, he would never do that. And far be it from me to do a comparably foolish thing.

It is to the battle against the dark spiritual forces of this present darkness that I now turn. Satan has been placing many thoughts in my mind to discourage me and to tempt me to fall into unbelief. “Are you sure you can forsake sexually immorality and its pleasures from now on? You have many years ahead. You know how tough it is and will be when temptations come your way.” His question lies on two false assumptions that I will attack below. The first assumption is that I have many years ahead. The second assumption is that I am alone in the battle against sexual immorality.

At Satan: Get behind me! How foolish of you to say that I have many years ahead! Only God knows for he has ordained it (Ps. 139:16). And if I do have many years, God will keep me and preserve me for His glory. And to his initial question I say, Yes! I am sure that I can forsake sexually immoral pleasures for as long as I live.

Then, Satan would respond, “How prideful of you to say such things”. And I would respond: I boast in nothing except the cross of Jesus through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world (Gal. 6:14). My confidence lies not in my flesh for I know it is wholly weak to keep the Law of God. Rather, my confidence lies completely in the saving work and power of Jesus Christ. Jesus himself suffered when tempted, yet did not sin, and so he can help me when I am tempted (Heb. 2:18, 4:15). I am a conqueror through him who loved me and I am sure that nothing will be able to separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. 8:37-38). Along with the Apostle Paul, I declare “We are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh” (Phil. 3:3). The power at work in the raising of Jesus from the dead lives within me and it is a disproportionately greater power than the power of sin.

Practice #7

“How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word” (Psalm 119:9).

“Jesus said to Peter a third time, ‘Do you love me?’ and he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep’ … ‘Follow me’” (John 21: 17, 19).

True repentance does not end at the words “I love you” to those you’ve hurt. Nor does it end in feeling bad for what you’ve done. True repentance will always lead to surrender and willing obedience to your Lord Jesus. Here are some points that you should pray through as God gives you grace to say, “No” to sin and, “Yes” to Jesus:

1. Recognize that you are weak. You are weak and you need help. Let us not fool ourselves into thinking we can deny temptations alone. Jesus says, “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matt. 26:41). You must watch and pray. Jesus will strengthen you. God’s grace is sufficient for you. His power is made perfect in your weakness (2 Cor. 12:9). Are you weak in the flesh or confident in it?

2. Recognize your identity in Christ Jesus and that He gives you strength. You were made alive in Christ, and are now dead to sin (Rom. 6:11). You were bought at a price (1 Cor. 6:20). You are now a temple in which the Spirit of God dwells (1 Cor. 6:19). You are not your own (1 Cor. 6:19). You have God-ordained tasks and good works to do (Eph. 2:10). You are seated in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:6). In Christ, you are a conqueror (Rom. 8:37). In Christ, sin is defeated and has “no dominion over you” (Rom 6:14). How can you, who have died to sin, who are one with Christ, who are seated in the heavenly realms with Christ, be living in sin? Surely, this cannot be. Allow the Word of God to dwell in you so that you may not sin against Him (Ps. 119:11).

3. Recognize and believe in the goodness of God. God is good! We say this a lot, but do we know why? “Every good and perfect gift comes from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (Jas. 1:17). God and the tempter are at odds with one another. God himself “tempts no one” (Jas. 1:13). If every good gift comes from God, then the tempter with his temptations cannot possibly be offering anything good. They are twisted things and they lead to death (Jas. 1:15). Sin is evil. It is vile. It is wicked and destructive. Do not fall into the trap of the devil who will twist our holy and God-given definitions of goodness. Flee! Flee from temptation! Stop playing with it. Stop pushing your limits. Flee and believe in God's goodness. The Gospel is from heaven and it is good.

Brothers and sisters, “Today if you heard His voice, do not harden your hearts” (Hebrews 3:15). We need to take sin more seriously. Our culture has dampened our understanding of what sin is and we need to turn to Scripture and allow it to rewrite our understandings of sin. I pray that those who read this will look deeply within themselves, examine their hearts, confess their sin, ask for forgiveness and sin no more (John 8:11). May we see how much better choosing Christ is over anything and everything else. Jesus Christ is the Only Way and He is good.