Audio Transcript

Alex writes in to ask this: “Pastor John, is premarital sex worse than an addiction to pornography? Why or why not?”

Yes, it is. And, no, it isn’t. Is that helpful?

No. Well, so here I have to explain. Both premarital sex — called fornication in the Bible, at least in the old translations — and pornography are sinful. Both are expressions of the God-opposing sinful soul. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 6:18, “Flee from sexual immorality.” And then he gives reasons. It also says in Matthew 5:27, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” The cultivation of sexual arousal with someone not your wife is a corruption of a good gift that God has given of sexuality.

So yes, porn is sinful, and fornication is sinful. Both displease the Lord. Both reveal a heart of rebellion against God and a heart willing to belittle God, because in our sin we say he is insufficient for our satisfaction. We have to have these other sinful avenues. So, what do I mean when I say, “Yes, premarital sex is worse than porn, and no, it is not worse than porn”?

Yes, It Is

Well, here is the yes. Fornication is worse in the sense that a real woman is violated physically. Yes, a woman who is not your wife is violated when you use her body sinfully online in a picture or in video to gratify your desires simply in those pictures or videos. But the violation goes far deeper, to another level, when her actual, physical self is compromised. Just like anger is like murder — Jesus said, if you are angry you are like the murderer (Matthew 5:21–22) — yet no one is killed. So killing is worse than anger in the outward sense that the heart’s sinfulness doesn’t go all the way in bringing another person to ruin.

And I should say here that it doesn’t lessen the man’s sinfulness that she may be willing in this sin and that she may be initiating. God holds men uniquely responsible for protecting her from this violation, and he is guilty of violation even if she would never call it that.

Paul treats the sin of sexual union outside the marriage as uniquely evil. I was pondering this again just yesterday trying to figure it out. He says in 1 Corinthians 6:18, “Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person [the fornicator] sins against [or into] his own body.” What is that?

“Don’t seek minimal sins. Seek maximal holiness and purity.”

There is something unique about this sin in Paul’s mind. He sins into — that is the literal translation — he sins into his own body. He had just referred to sex with a prostitute as making the two one flesh. So, it seems that sinning into the body is a taking of a person sinfully into union with your body that is utterly forbidden. It is a way of sinning, in Paul’s mind, that is uniquely damaging. There is something that happens when two unite who are not married. It goes into the body in a way that other sins do not. So don’t do that. There is a worseness about it in the violation of the woman and in the violation of your own body.

No, It Might Not Be

Yes, it is worse than looking at naked women in pictures in that sense. But, no, it may not be worse. For example, I can imagine a one-night failure of moral restraint leading to the most profound remorse, and contrition, and repentance, and forgiveness followed by a life of chastity that never falls again.

Compare this to year after year after year of increasingly crude and violent pornography, resisting all calls to repentance, and being indifferent to the women in your life — even your wife — and hardening yourself more and more to the calls of purity and repentance. And when I compare that, those two things, then I would say, “No, no, that pattern of sinning, that ugliness, that unrepentance is worse than that one-night fall followed by profound contrition, repentance, and forgiveness.” No, that is worse. Pornography is worse than that.

But I would say, finally, don’t seek minimal sins. Seek maximal holiness and purity. Don’t ask, “Which sin is worse?” Ask, “What new levels of godliness can I attain?” Listen to 1 Timothy 6:11: “O man of God, flee these things.” And then he adds — and this is the most important — “Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.”