What Should a Pastor’s Perspective Be on Sexual Sin in the Church?

Pastors and other church leadership play a crucial role in their flock’s growth and sanctification, especially regarding their sexual sanctification. By that, we mean helping their church members align their inner lives to correspond with their profession of faith and the lordship of Christ in matters of sexual sin and sanctification.

What are some of the crucial steps that pastors can take to better care for their flock when it comes to sexual sin in the church?

1. Realize and admit that there are many people in the church who struggle with sexual sin of some sort.

Few people grow up in today’s culture, or that of the past twenty years, who escape having their souls scarred by their own struggles with sexual sin or others’ sins against them. We live in a highly sexualized culture where sex sells everything. Entertainment, movies, and music reinforce this. For most people, it’s difficult to escape the enticements we see all around us.

A pastor recently confided in me, “John, I believe pornography use is at an epidemic level among men and women in my church. But I don’t know how—and, frankly, I’m afraid—to take the lid off it all.”

We can’t deny that sexuality and gender issues increasingly impact our churched youth.  Today’s world gives the message that, while you may not know what you want to be when you grow up in terms of work or career, you’d better know where you fall on the LGBTQ+ spectrum by the time you’re ten years old. Our church kids feel that pressure, too. In fact, Gender-Wiki now lists over 800 different sexuality and gender identity labels that encompass that “+” in LGBTQ+. One of the teens in my church recently told me that he thought this list of gender identities was where you go to find out who you want to be.

The fact that our people are impacted by and wrestling with these issues shouldn’t surprise pastors. Nothing is new under the sun. Most of the Bible’s pastoral epistles address temptations and sexual sins that believers can fall into. These were real issues in the first churches that began in the middle of the first century, and sexual sin in the church is still an issue today.

Over thirty years ago, in an article from the Fall, 1992 issue of The Harvest News (our old newsletter), Tim Keller wrote,

Every effective and growing church will have sexual strugglers in it. To go further, every church already has liars, gossips, adulterers, homosexuals and cross-dressers . . . those who have been abused, and many others who have long-standing patterns of life-dominating sins or have been impacted by others’ sins against them.

2. Grasp the fact that most live in despair and loneliness in their struggles against sexual sin. They’ve often given up hope. 

The nature of sexual sin and temptation invites people to give up hope and live secret and despairing lives. That’s what years upon years of hidden and unproductive struggle will do. Sometimes, people who’ve spent years with unaddressed and hidden struggles get to the point where they almost don’t even try any longer to walk in truth and obedience. It’s easy for people to throw in the towel, give up, and live lives of defeat when they don’t see how the gospel applies to their struggles. Some in this category simply change their theology to cope with this and live as if it’s all okay.

In 1950, more than seventy-five years ago, C. S. Lewis said, “Our warped natures, the devils who tempt us, and all the contemporary propaganda for lust combine to make us feel that the desires we are resisting are so natural, so healthy, and so reasonable, that it is almost perverse and abnormal to try to resist them.”^[1]

Unfortunately, we find an increasing number of those in the church with this mentality. Many have decided that this is just how life is; nothing will ever change. The best they can hope for is sexual sin-and-temptation management.

3. Seek to become a permission-giving, sexually faithful church that presents gospel hope.

“Permission-giving” means that church members have permission to be honest about their sexual sin. This is not the same as being a “permissive” church, where sin struggles are not addressed and people are not shepherded toward godliness. A permission-giving church upholds biblical standards while acknowledging both the depth of human fallenness and the real, transforming power of Christ in believers. But a permission-giving ethos does not just happen; it must be intentionally cultivated. Churches must purposefully and in a variety of ways say, “Hey, we know you may be struggling with pornography or sexuality; we know that LGBTQ+ issues may have impacted your family.” Those messages don’t happen by accident. They call for calculated creativity.

A sexually faithful church intentionally provides venues for sexual sanctification for all age groups within the church. It will help its people see that sexual sanctification is never a ‘once-and-done’ thing. Sexual stewardship is a life-long endeavor that calls for others to help.

Recognizing Sexual Sin in the Church and Prioritizing Sanctification

What kind of church acknowledges sexual sin and shepherds its flock toward whole-life sanctification? This is a church that helps people grasp a gospel worldview of sex, sexuality, and gender and seeks to assist every member to grow up into joyful, sexually faithful lives.

A community like this is marked by four characteristics:

1. It’s a community grounded in God’s design for sex, sexuality, and gender as revealed in God’s authoritative Word.
2. It’s a community where leadership proactively leads the church in education about biblical sexuality.
3. It’s a community that invites everyone to live in honesty and transparency as growing believers.
4. It’s a community where every member, not just the pastor, helps and encourages one another in godly living.

Again, none of this happens by accident. Addressing sexual sin in the church must be intentional, planned, and on-going. It’s an atmosphere that becomes woven into the fabric of the church and must be spearheaded by church leadership. It can’t exist as a side-ministry: “that thing over there, for those who need it.” Instead, pursuing biblically-driven sexual sanctification becomes integral to the work of the church because most people today are impacted by these struggles, personally or in their families, and because everyone is a work in process.

Keller writes,

We’re all in various stages of dealing with our problems. Some are in denial. Some know their sin is against God and, in rebellion, are living lives of hypocrisy and deceit. Others struggle with various degrees of success and failure—trying to make the changes God requires. Some are regularly and effectively accessing the grace in the gospel to live changed lives. The challenge of the church is to assist sinners at each and all of these stages. The church must invite-in and hold the attention of those who otherwise might never look to the church for hope or help.

Harvest USA wants to assist you as a pastor or church leader. We have many free resources, including small group curricula and video courses. Visit our website at www.harvestusa.org and hit “resources” and “courses” to see all the helpful material we offer. We believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ offers hope for changed hearts and lives, to the glory of God—and that the local church is God’s primary, ordained vehicle for this kind of heart revival!

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^[1] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 100