26 Jul 2012
Sexual Sin Emasculates
Our culture teaches us that the strength of our masculinity is directly connected to our sexual activity. It celebrates sexual conquest, mocking monogamy in marriage and chastity in singleness. We are told “real” men have sex multiple times a week, have had many sexual partners, use porn personally and to “spice up” their sex lives, etc. The culture is trying to tell us that these chains are a sign of strength. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Sexual sin does not make us more of a man; it emasculates us! You need to know that your sexual sin makes you complicit in injustice, oppressing those who are weaker, those we are called, as men, to cover and protect. It profoundly impacts our view of others.
As a single man, it affects your ability to selflessly engage others. Rather than considering how to serve others and lay down your life, lust programs you to view others as a commodity, as objects that exist for your pleasure. Even if your sin is limited to fantasy and masturbation, you are training yourself in broken, selfish sexuality. Your experience of self-centered sex shapes your expectations for the marriage bed, radically undermining God’s design that spouses are to serve each other sexually, focused on the other’s pleasure, not their own. Should God provide a spouse, you will expect sex to be primarily about your pleasure.
For married men, it robs you of the ability to love your wife and children. You brought selfish expectations of sex into marriage and have taken matters into your own hands when it failed to satisfy. Because sexual sin is such a source of “life” for you, those you are called to love and cherish, shepherd and protect, become an annoyance. They are reduced to obstacles, keeping you from the pleasure you crave.
In the end, sexual sin sucks life and vitality from us. This is part of what is in view when 1 Corinthians 6:18 describes sexual sin as against our own bodies. Perhaps more than any other form of sin, it leaves us utterly drained spiritually. Far from demonstrating our power, sexual sin is a profound revelation of our weakness as we are enslaved to our behaviors and desires. As my colleague, Dan, says, “A real man can stare down his erection.” In other words, he is not a slave to his desires. A real man is stronger than his lust.
Further, in tragic irony, our pursuit of sexual sin ultimately robs us of our ability to experience sexual satisfaction. Ephesians 4:19 describes the reality this way: “Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more” (NIV). The Greek word pleonexia literally means a “desire to have more.” It refers to utter insatiability. When we abandon ourselves to indulge in sexual pleasure outside of God’s design, the result is slavery. Like a donkey chasing a carrot on a stick, the harder we strive to experience sexual satisfaction, the more it eludes us—even as our reckless pursuit of sexual contentment takes us into ever-deeper perversions. Indulging “every kind of impurity” means that what once satisfied us does so no longer, and we need to go deeper into the mess to find the same thrill.
Jesus’ mission is to “set captives free” (Isaiah 61:1-3). He doesn’t want us to be emasculated, but to be men who are “strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy” (Colossians 1:11). The hope of the gospel is freedom from the things that enslave us, as his power works in us through his Spirit.
Do you believe that sexual sin is emasculating? How does the man you are in your fantasy life compare to the reality of your experience of slavery?
This excerpt was taken from Harvest USA’s workbook for men, Sexual Sanity for Men, Recreating Your Mind in a Crazy Culture, published by New Growth Press. This workbook is excellent for small groups and one-on-one mentoring.
You can also visit the Harvest USA bookstore to browse our other resources, which we hope you will find helpful.
Updated 5.8.2017
21 Feb 2011
Masturbation: What’s going on?
Why didn’t God bring up masturbation in the Bible?
I came to Christ in 1971. I came to Christ as a teen as I was struggling with a constant habit of masturbating. Nobody knew that, because nobody would talk about it in those days, so I kept it to myself.
But as a young Christian I was told there was such a thing as a “concordance,” and you could look up all the words that were in the Bible! I got all excited and when no one was around, I looked under the letter “M.” As I found not a single reference to the act, I thought, “Looks like God’s not going to talk about it, either!”
That experience left a big question mark in my heart. Is masturbation right or wrong? All I knew was that I couldn’t stop. I tell people that before I came to Christ, I thought a man ought to be able to go to bed and go to sleep without having to masturbate first. The first time I acted out after I became a Christian, I thought, “It’s back! It didn’t go away like you were hoping.” That reality was devastating. But God’s silence on the subject made it more of an inward battle than it really had to be. Even if it was only a habit I couldn’t stop doing, I needed to be able with talk to people about it.
Around fifteen years ago, I went to a “Promise Keepers” meeting where the theme was worship. God spoke to my heart that weekend and said, “Bob, you are not worshiping me, and you know it.” Worship had become a mere formality in my life. I had a checklist in my mind and as long as we read the Scriptures, prayed, sang good old hymns, and had a theologically sound sermon, I assumed worship happened. But I was just going through the motions. It was far from what God had in mind about worshipping him.
A few months after the conference, I started dealing seriously with my sexual struggle. It was then that God reminded me about what true worship really was. Worship is about giving all of you, all of your heart, to something. Worship has to do with what you are living for. It was then that I realized that even though I was not truly worshipping God, I was worshipping something. I learned that my continual movement toward masturbation and pornography was an act of idolatry (false worship).
This discovery helped crystallize what repentance should be about. Now I knew what I had to turn from—and where I had to turn to. I had to be honest with what was going on in my heart. When life became confusing or boring or scary or whatever, masturbation and pornography was a place of escape, adventure, pleasure, and, in a word, life for me. I needed it, like an addict needs his addiction. I had to be honest about my fantasies and my preference for these things, rather than waiting on God.
It hit me: I didn’t have to know whether masturbation was right or wrong. All I had to know was that this activity was shutting God out of my thoughts and inviting in a substitute which seemed to calm me down and give me a break in life that I desperately needed.
God didn’t bring up masturbation in the Scriptures, but he did say we were supposed to bring every thought captive to Christ Jesus. And bringing my thoughts captive to the idea that my heart truly is an idol factory helps me be honest with the thoughts that go through my head. There is still a desperation in my heart to try and make things work out my way and I do need to repent from that.
Where are your inner thoughts leading you? Do you find that in times of stress, confusion, boredom, loneliness, or fear that you turn to find relief in pornography, masturbation, or other sexual temptations? If so, see your behavior as flowing from your heart, a heart that is living for and consumed by a need for comfort and relief, and not a life that is growing in dependence upon God and the things in which he delights. Repentance is very practical and relevant when we see it from this angle.
