“Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.”-Psalm 51:5-6
Our external sins are an expression of our internal condition. God has made humans with the tendency to sexualize their feelings. Intercourse, at its purest form, is the love of a husband and wife sexualized. The love and commitment they have in their hearts towards one another was designed by God to be expressed physically through the joining of one flesh.
Sin corrupts what God originally intended. Sin takes a good thing God made and twists it into something evil. Sexualizing love is good and glorifying to God in its proper context, but sin working through human sexuality uses God’s good design in bad ways.
God ordained that sex be an expression of the marital love inside a man and woman; sin causes sex to be used to express the evil inside of men and women. The problem is not with the mode, median, or means of expressing what’s inside the heart, the problem is with what’s inside a sinful heart.
To Overcome a Hateful Sexual Expression, Like Porn, You Need Real Love Inside of You
When it comes to indulging in porn, masturbation, adultery, lust, and all other sexual sin, at its most foundational levels, all of this is rooted in sexualized hatred.
For example: All pornography always depicts sexual actions that are degrading, dominating, and dark. No one ever looks at porn with the motive of loving God, their spouse, or the pornstars. People are more tempted to look at porn when they are angry at their spouse, just broke up with their boyfriend or girlfriend, got disrespected at work, and when they have feelings of hatred in their hearts.
Pornography, specifically, is one of the most prevalent sexual sins of our day. With a verse by verse comparison with 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, we can see how porn is simply an expression of the lack of love within a human heart. Sexual sin, like porn use, is the opposite of expressing love:
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Hatred is the opposite of love. People look at porn when they are impatient to have their desires fulfilled in a godly way. Porn is cruel, it is full of envy for things those who watch it don’t have, it boast of sexual sin, and there is not one trace of humility in anything pornographic ever made. Porn is very disrespectful, it is completely self-seeking, when porn addicts don’t get what they want they are quickly angered, and those who watch porn have a long record of evil memories they cannot forget. Porn is a delight in evil and those who watch it rejoice not in true sexuality but in a false form that does not really exist in a loving relationship. Porn does not protect people, it exploits them. Porn is not trustworthy, as it depicts reality in a false light. Those who use porn feel hopeless, and those who use it are choosing to give up rather than persevere.
A Lack of Love for God Is the Cause of Porn Addiction
God said in Isaiah 57:8, “Forsaking me, you uncovered your bed, you climbed into it and opened it wide; you made a pact with those whose beds you love, and you looked with lust on their naked bodies.” Notice that the end result of forsaking God was looking “with lust on their naked bodies.” Porn use is the result of forsaking God. The cycle doesn’t start by looking at porn and then becoming less intimate with God. You look at porn because your intimacy with God is already lessening, and then if you don’t repent the porn just makes it worse. Sexual sin, like all sin, is merely the thermometer on our personal relationship with the Lord.
We will never be perfect on this side of eternity because our relationship with God will never be perfect on earth. But when we are with God in eternity, enjoying our perfect relationship with him, sin will be no more. In the meantime, to overcome sexual sin, we must seek God personally. The more he changes us through our intimacy with him, the more our sexual behavior will change as well.
Sexual sin is the opposite of sexualized love as God intended for a husband and wife. Therefore, the cure to sexual sin is to get the hatred out of your heart and fill it with the love of Christ instead. No one who is full of love for God, love for their spouse, love for their future spouse, or even love for those people trapped in the bondage of the lust business, would ever indulge in porn or other sexual sin. The cure to sexual sin is to have a real love, because sexual sin is based in a real hatred brewing in the heart.
C.S. Lewis said, “Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.” No one looks at porn to do what is most pleasing to God. No one looks at porn to help other people. No one looks at porn to do what will most benefit them in the long-run. The only hope to be free from porn and sexual sin is to have a real love in your heart for God, for yourself, and for other people. And the only way you will have this love is if you seek God more than anything else, seeking to be filled with his Spirit on a daily, moment by moment level, because you are born again.
Romans 5:5 explains, “. . . hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” May we embrace this truth deeply. May we spend our days seeking to live from the new heart God has given us, which is filled with his love, that we might express the love of Christ inside of us.
In Psalm 51:5, David was willing to admit the truth, “Not only have I sinned, but apart from God I am a sinner.” It’s not popular to say, but it’s the truth. We are all internally sinful apart from Christ, which we then express externally. Because David is willing to accept his sin, he is willing to admit that he needs a Savior. If we want to overcome sexual sin, we must diagnose the real problem.
The problem is within. Thankfully God desires to give us an inner cure.
God Desires Truth: Psalm 51:7, “Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.”
David repented by being totally honest about his condition. He was so honest, he was willing to trace his sin back to the real issue, to his own heart. He was not blaming his external circumstances. He just finally confessed his own internal brokenness.
Thankfully David also knew what God truly desired. David knew there was a serious disconnect between what was going on inside of David and what God desired to be inside of David. Psalm 51:6 states, “Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.”
Because David was willing to truly admit that his “inward being” and “secret heart” where not what God had desired for him, he was then taking the first step towards redemption. This first step will never be taken until we can humbly see the stark contrast between who we are apart from Christ (Psalm 51:5) and what God desires for us in Christ (Psalm 51:6).