7 Keys to Breaking the Bondage of Pornography

3. Hate the sin, and speak truth with patience and grace to yourself and others with overcoming the struggle. Paul’s words in Romans 7 don’t excuse our sin, but it does explain our sin. 

Romans 7:15-8:1 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. 

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Adam shared his story of his wife’s response to him when he first confessed his use of pornography to her. He waited until late in the evening to tell her. Then he got up off the bed to leave the room in shame. She asked him where he was going, and he told her he figured she didn’t want to be around him right now. She said, “Why would I want that? I love you!” Adam recounted with tears how her words ministered grace to him that kept him walking his struggle with pornography in the light.

In contrast, he knew another man who told him his wife’s response was along the lines that if she ever caught him using pornography again, she would immediately divorce him. This further pushed this man into isolation and shame when he needed to admit his sin and walk in the light with his wife. Adam pointed out how his own wife’s gracious response helped him walk in the light and confess his sin, which has been key to moving forward in his struggle successfully. 

There is a tension here. We need to make sure that in our patience and grace we remember that grace also means to speak truth. Consider Bonhoeffer’s words in Life Together: “Reproof is unavoidable. God’s word demands it when a brother falls into open sin … Nothing can be more cruel than the tenderness that consigns another to their sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe rebuke that calls a brother back from the path of sin.”