As Christians we are adept at looking at the culture around us and seeing how it is violating God’s good standards when it comes to sexuality. Not too long ago, though, I was asked to reflect on the ways in which Christians may compromise God’s standards for sexuality—some of those hidden or sanctified sins in which we allow compromise in our lives, our marriages, our churches. I came up with five ways that Christians may compromise God’s standards for sexuality.

We compromise God's standard for sexuality when we leave the gospel out of the marriage bed

Christians consistently have trouble extending the reach of the gospel from salvation all the way to sex. Yet the gospel isn't just about that one-time commitment; it's about how we live today and every day. It extends through every part of life.

The gospel says, Whatever my marriage is to be and whatever our sexual relationship is to be, it is to be a part of that portrait of Christ and the church. When I am considering sex in this way, I'm first asking, Would this look like an accurate portrait of Christ and the church? What reflects Christ giving up his life for his bride? What reflects the church joyfully submitting to Christ? This completely reorients us away from self, from self-love and self-service, and orients me toward my spouse. This portrait of marriage does not come to an end when we close the bedroom door.

When we compromise this standard we become bound by law instead of freed by the gospel; we have become self-focused instead of other-focused. Law is always focused toward self, gospel is always focused toward the other and, ultimately, toward God. If we allow ourselves to fall back into that age-old temptation of law, we will inevitably harm our relationship with the one we love most.

We compromise when we disobey the clear biblical command that in marriage we are to have sex, and that we are to have it frequently, willingly and joyfully

There is a difference between understanding the Bible and obeying the Bible. There is a difference between believing the gospel and living out the implications of the gospel. This is why so many of Paul's letters fall into two parts; in the first part he talks theology and in the second part he talks application. There is a reason for this: he knows that good theology needs to be worked out in life and he knows that we can’t do this without the right gospel foundation.

There are many couples that fully believe what the Bible teaches about marriage, and they may even believe what the Bible teaches about sex within marriage, but they do not have sex together. One has refused for so long that the other has stopped even asking or trying. One has given up and let himself go and the other has lost interest. Together they have become disobedient and their compromise grieves the Lord. They claim to believe what's true, but they refuse to practice it.

God places stipulations on the sexual relationship. You are allowed to stop having sex, but only for a limited time and only if that limited time will be devoted to prayer. That's it! And yet every marriage goes through seasons of sexlessness and too many marriages just abandon the sexual relationship altogether. There is something in 1 Corinthians 7:3 that has always jumped out at me. Paul talks about "conjugal rights." The Bible says very, very little about our rights. In most cases talk of rights is opposed to gospel. But in the marriage relationship we are told that a husband and wife have the right to one another, the right to one another's bodies. Sex is not a suggestion, it is not just a good idea or a nice gift to give. Sex is a right because in God's economy of marriage, it is a necessity.

What happens when we compromise God's standards here? Well right from 1 Corinthians 7 we see that we allow the possibility of sexual sin in our spouse. A husband who denies his wife is not protecting her from sexual sin. A wife who denies her husband is not protecting him from sexual sin. Abstaining from sex is selfish and unloving and compromising. Yes, it will be your spouses' fault if he or she falls into sexual sin because you have stopped having sex; but you will bear part of the responsibility. Have you ever considered that Satan's great plan for you is that you would have as much sex outside of marriage as possible and as little sex within marriage as possible? God's plan, of course, is just opposite to that--to have no sex outside of marriage and a whole lot of it within marriage.

There is another consequence: we are blatantly disobeying a clear command of the Lord and a command that flows from what is true of the gospel. The sexual relationship is not a little isolated pocket of Christian obedience, but something that flows right out of the gospel. Too many of us isolate sexuality from everything else in life.

And finally, when you compromise in this area you are denying your marriage a great means of grace. It can be helpful to look at sex as something like a marriage sacrament, something deeply symbolic that is far more than the sum of its parts. It's far deeper than the physical, far more than just the act. We trust that in this act God extends grace to our marriage. We obey him and are right to expect his blessing. The marriage that forgets sex is like the church that forgets Lord's Supper--it is weakening itself and denying itself one of the strange and unexpected ways that the Lord blesses it.

Because of all I’ve written about pornography over the past few years, I was interested to see a recent prayer that Scotty Smith posted at his blog. He titled it “A Prayer for Friends Struggling with Pornography.” Here it is:

Jesus, my heart goes out today for friends and their spouses whose lives are being assaulted by the ravaging and enslaving grip of pornography.  I know of no other power sufficient for the task but the gospel. This is why I run to you today with grave concern, but also with great hope.

O Lord of resurrection and redemption, bring your mercy and might to bear in stunning fashion. Things impossible for us are more than possible for you. You have come to set captives free and to heal the brokenhearted. Pornography is creating an over abundance of both.

Jesus, for friends somewhere in the pornography continuum of titillation to addiction, we ask you to reveal yourself in the deepest place of their hearts. We ask for the holy gift of godly sorrow, not the short-lived remorse of worldly sorrow. For your non-condemning love has great power to deliver those who cry, "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body which is subject to death?"

Lead them to that cry, Jesus. They need a lot more than embarrassment and fear, they need contrition and hope. Where pornography has desensitized our friends, re-sensitize them so they can see and feel the horror of their entrapment, and more so... much more so, the wonder of your deliverance.

For our friends who are married to someone in the talons of pornography, dear Jesus, theirs may be the greater pain and struggle. No one but you can help them with the anger, the disgust, the wound, the shame, and the mistrust that goes with this story. Help us walk with our friends who are right in the middle of this dark vortex. Show us how to validate their feelings without confirming hurt-driven conclusions. Bring patience and perspective, forbearance and faith.

Only you can rebuild the trust. Only you, Jesus, can bring a willingness to hope again. Only you can heal the places in our hearts which have suffered the greatest violation and harm. Absolutely no one understands all this like you, Jesus, and absolutely no one redeem these messes but you. So very Amen, we pray, in your great and glorious name.

Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. Romans 7:21-8:2

A short time ago, while posting a poem titled “I Looked for Love in Your Eyes,” I lamented that while there are many, many books written to help men overcome an addiction to pornography, there is very little written to help the women who have been victims of a husband’s addiction. Shortly after I received an email from Vicki Tiede who has written just such a title. Her book, titled Mosaic Heart: Spiritual Healing in the Midst of a Husband's Addiction to Pornography (Update: The book has been released as When Your Husband Is Addicted to Pornography) will be published by New Growth Press, probably about a year from now.

I asked Vicki if, in the meanwhile, she’d be willing to do an interview to offer some words of help to women who are struggling with the effects of their husband’s sin. She was kind enough to do so. Here is what I asked her:

What is the scope of this problem? How many women are struggling with the effects of a husband’s addiction to pornography?

For nearly every man who regularly views pornography, there is likely a wife or girlfriend experiencing the fallout resulting from his choices. According to TopTenReviews.com, 28.8 million U.S. men regularly visit pornography websites. 50-60% of Christian men struggle with addiction.

From a wife’s perspective, is there a difference between an addict and a more casual user? Should there be?

This is a great question. First let me give you a technical response and then I'll give you a heart response. The term "addiction" implies that there is a progression, tolerance, and an inability to stop the behavior even when there is a desire to stop. A single act of viewing pornography would not be an addiction. However, a "casual user," indicates more than a single act and I would suggest that a "casual user" is already on the slippery slope of addiction. Pornography has a snowball effect; what may begin as seemingly "innocent," occasional visits to a porn site often slowly increases to greater frequency of visits and for larger amounts of time.

Sadly, this increased exposure to porn results in desensitization and tolerance, so when free internet pornography no longer satisfies their supposed needs, some men expand their repertoire to include subscription pornography, massage parlors, strip clubs, prostitutes, hotel rooms, and travel expenses for clandestine affairs. So to answer your initial question - Is there a difference between a one-time exploration and an addiction? Yes. Is there a difference between an addict and a more casual user? No, there is not enough difference to suggest that we can dismiss casual use as harmless.

Now, here's the heart response of a wife ... I would ask the question, "Is the betrayal any less heartbreaking if a husband only has an extra-marital sexual affair 'once in a while,' and he insists he can 'stop having affairs anytime he chooses to do so,' than if he seeks sexual fulfillment from someone other than his wife several times a week and can't stop himself?" It seems ridiculous to even answer such a question, doesn't it? Whether a man claims to be a casual user of porn or is addicted, his wife still experiences the same feelings of rejection and loss.

To be honest, in my book I tell women that they should thank God if their husband is struggling with his addiction to pornography. That struggle is an indication that the Holy Spirit is at work. It's when a husband feels no conviction for his sexual sin that hope seems harder to hold onto.

What is the struggle of women whose husbands are battling (or perhaps given over to) pornography? What do men need to know about the way a husband’s use of pornography tends to affect his wife?

A few days ago I received an email from a reader of this site, a woman who was responding to some of the articles I’ve written on the subject of pornography. She shared a poem, a bit of free verse she had written in the midst of her husband’s addiction. I wish I could say it was the only email I’ve received from such a woman. Sadly it’s not; not by a long shot. That same day I received another email from another woman looking for resources for dealing with the wife’s response to a husband’s sin (rather a gap in the available literature right now, I think).

Anyway, I thought I would share this poem. It’s a little bit graphic, but only so far as it needs to be. I think it’s particularly heartbreaking in drawing out the clear connection between pornography and violence. And it’s just a realistic look at how so many men are damaging and destroying their wives and families. It’s reality.

So here it is, “I Looked For Love in Your Eyes.”

I saved my best for you.
Other girls may have given themselves away,
But I believed in the dream.
A husband, a wife, united as one forever.

Nervous, first time, needing assurance of your love,
I looked for it in your eyes
Mere inches from mine.
But what I saw made my soul run and hide.

Gone was the tenderness I’d come to know
I saw a stranger, cold and hard
Distant, evil, revolting.
I looked for love in your eyes
And my soul wept.

Who am I that you cannot make love to me?
Why do I feel as if I’m not even here?
I don’t matter.
I’m a prop in a filthy play.
Not an object of tender devotion.

Where are you?

Years pass
But the hardness in your eyes does not.
You think I’m cold
But how can I warm to eyes that are making hate to someone else
Instead of making love to me?

I know where you are.
I’ve seen the pictures.
I know now what it takes to turn you on.
Women…people like me
Tortured, humiliated, hated, used
Discarded.
Images burned into your brain.
How could you think they would not show in your eyes?

Did you ever imagine,
The first time you picked up a dirty picture
That you were dooming all intimacy between us
Shipwrecking your marriage
Breaking the heart of a wife you wouldn’t meet for many years?

If it stopped here, I could bear it.
But you brought the evil into our home
And our little boys found it.
Six and eight years old.
I heard them laughing, I found them ogling.

Hands bound, mouth gagged.
Fisheye photo, contorting reality
Distorting the woman into exaggerated breasts.
The haunted eyes, windows of a tormented soul
Warped by the lens into the background,
Because souls don’t matter, only bodies do
To men who consume them.

Little boys
My little boys
Laughing and ogling the sexual torture
Of a woman, a woman like me.
Someone like me.

An image burned into their brains.

Will their wives’ souls have to run and hide like mine does?
When does it end?

I can tell you this. It has not ended in your soul.
It has eaten you up. It is cancer.
Do you think you can feed on a diet of hatred
And come out of your locked room to love?

You say the words, but love has no meaning in your mouth
When hatred rules in your heart.
Your cruelty has eaten up every vestige of the man
I thought I was marrying.
Did you ever dream it would so consume you
That your wife and children would live in fear of your rage?

That is what you have become
Feeding your soul on poison.

I’ve never used porn.
But it has devastated my marriage, my family, my world.

Was it worth it?

Most men who are my age or older remember a day when pornography was rare and taboo. Pornography has existed as long as the camera has existed (and before that in more rudimentary forms, I’m sure) but has always been difficult to find and has always carried some kind of stigma. Today the tables have turned and porn has gone mainstream. Instead of being a shameful addiction it is now the punch line in jokes, the subject of sitcom episodes. Porn stars are admired. It’s probably significant that we don’t speak of “porn actors” but “porn stars” as if there is something inherently glamorous in their line of work. Books and magazines encourage us all to enjoy porn, to allow it to add a little spice to our relationships. It’s a lot harder to avoid porn than it is to find it.

And then there are the scary statistics, the scary reality, that men and boys are consuming porn like never before. Women and girls are now being introduced to it and even being encouraged to regard it as normal. An email that haunts me is one I received a short time ago from a girl of 14 who found herself battling addiction to pornography. It’s becoming a part of our culture, a part of our lives.

Amidst all of this, it can be difficult to avoid despair, to truly believe that anyone or anything can curtail the problem. We can look to the future and see a time marked by people who are utterly broken, whose sexuality has been undermined and destroyed by their consumption of never-ending amounts of pornography. We can see our sons and our sons’ sons growing up surrounded by it, giving themselves to it.

And, of course, we can see Christians increasingly viewed as being anti-sex for being anti-porn; in suggesting that the mainstreaming of pornography is harming individuals, families, and all of society, we are already regarded as repressed and repressors. This will only continue and grow.

Yet amidst this kind of despair, I’ve found great reasons for hope and I want to share two of those with you.

I announced last week that Cruciform Press, the publishing company I have co-founded is now officially in business. Our first two books are available right now.

The first of these books is my own: Sexual Detox: A Guide for Guys Who Are Sick of Porn. If you have been following this site over the past year you know that Detox first made its appearance as a series of blog posts and, subsequent to that, as a free e-book. And now, at long last, it’s a real book.

This new book is much improved from the free version I gave away. It has been professionally edited, it has been expanded and it has been reorganized. It is, in every way, a better book.

Here is a brief introduction to it:

Sick of porn? Time to detox. A huge percentage of men need a porn detox, a moral and psychological reset. Do you? If so, whether you know it or not, pornography has corrupted your thinking, weakened your conscience, warped your sense of right and wrong, and twisted your understanding and expectations of sexuality. You need a reset by the One who created sex.

In this book, I hope to help you reorient your understanding of sex, both in the big picture and in the act itself, according to God's plan for this great gift. I want to help you detox from all the junk you've seen, all the lies you've believed. This is not an easy process. It is rarely a quick process. It involves a letting go of old realities and an embrace of a new normal. To be willing to go through it you need to see how bad your current situation really is, and how the path you are on leads no place good. You need to see that the path of porn leads only to more isolation, guilt, alienation, and pain. Whether single or married, such a reset to normal is the only thing that can ever equip you to become a pure, loving, attentive, sacrificial husband. But you already know you need to change.

Few Christian men indulge in porn without realizing they need to quit. Every Christian guy who looks at porn wants to stop, but many of us want to stop just a little bit less than we want to keep going. The problem isn't knowledge-it's desire and ability. So sin prevails. Here's a promise. You'll never stop until you begin to see the monstrous nature of the sin you're committing. You'll never stop until the sin is more horrifying to you than the commission of the sin is enjoyable. You'll need to hate that sin before you can find freedom from it. That means you need more grace. You need to cry out to be changed and to see the monstrous nature of this sin. And then you need to behave in faith that God will meet you with grace as you act to cut off the porn and begin the reset.

This is a book specifically geared to young men, though older guys have been benefitting from it as well.

Here are a few of the endorsements:

"In an age when sex is worshiped as a god, a little book like this can go a long way to helping men overcome sexual addiction." (Mark Driscoll)

"Tim Challies strikes just the right balance in this brief but necessary work. His assessment of the sexual epidemic in our culture is sober but not without hope. His advice is practical but avoids a checklist mentality. His discussion of sexual sin is frank without being inappropriate. In a day when it can almost be assumed that every young male struggles with pornography, lust, and masturbation, this book will be a valuable resource. I'm grateful for Tim's wisdom, candor, and grace." (Kevin DeYoung)

"In an era in which every man is online, pornography is not just a problem for Christian men; it is THE problem. All men face the temptation of this mind polluting, heart-hardening, soul-deadening sin. Many men, young and old, in our churches need Sexual Detox. This is a welcomed book. In a short, compressed format Challies identifies the toxic nature of this sin and offers practical, doable and, above all, gospel-centered hope for men. I want every man I serve and all the guys on our staff to read this book." (Tedd Tripp)

I believe this is the kind of book that you can buy to keep on-hand and give away. I plan on keeping a few copies around to give out to young men because, trust me, just about all of them need some manner of detox. So why don’t you consider doing that?

The best place to buy it is directly from Cruciform Press. There you can buy it in Print or PDF with ePub available very soon. You can visit ChristianAudio to purchase the Audio book if you prefer to listen.

Several months ago, rather on a whim, I subscribed to Canadian Business magazine. It was one of those deals where I’d only pay a couple of bucks for the first 6 months and then the price would increase to normal levels. And for the first time ever, I actually went for it. But it’s worked out well; it’s quite a good magazine and I’ve been enjoying it. The very first article of the very first issue I received gave me a great starting point for a chapter in my book. That alone made it worth it to me.

This month’s issue features an article titled “Sex Isn’t Selling.” Of course it’s long been one of the truisms of marketing—sex sells. But this article contends that, for the first time in recent memory, sex is no longer selling. Sex no longer accomplishes what it once did; sex no longer piles up the profits.

The focus of the article is pornography and its coming decline. It seems that pornography has been unable to adapt to the realities of Web 2.0, realities that dictate that everything must be free. Or nearly everything. Porn producers are saying that they have seen revenue fall 80% over the past three years; Playboy is bleeding money and laying off staff; actors who were once paid $2000 a scene are now being paid just half of that; revenue for major distributors has fallen 30% in just the last year.

Yesterday I received an email from a reader of this site and today I’d like to answer it (with the permission of the person who sent it). Here is what he wrote:

Thank you so much for your booklet, “Sexual Detox.” I have read it over and over, and am still very much challenged by it. I was recently married and was under the illusion that marriage would solve all of my lust problems… Even though I had been told numerous times that it would not. Now I feel that everything has come to head, I know what I must do, and I want so very badly to do it, but I feel that the devil knows this is THE deciding point in my life on this issue, and he is working hard against me. I feel more captivated and strangled by my sin than ever before, and I need you to pray for me. If you have any advice or encouragement to offer, please tell me.

Thanks for sending this note. It sounds to me like you are absolutely right when say that this is a deciding point in your life on the issue of lust and the acting out of that lust. Satan will be working hard against you and, in many ways, you will be working hard against yourself. You gave yourself over to your sin and no doubt you’ve become captivated by it. As sin always seeks to do, it has ensnared you. But take heart. There is hope.

To reiterate what I wrote in Sexual Detox, the fact that you feel sexual desire is a good and noble thing. God has given you that desire so you will pursue your bride. But, like all good gifts, the gift of sex is one that we are prone to pervert, turning it into a means of selfish self-fulfillment. God wants you to pursue your wife, to win her heart not just once but day-by-day; and he wants you to enjoy sex with her. But, of course, you have grown used to indulging the flesh, to giving it its desires, those desires that are perversions of the true gift. And sin rarely just goes away; it is usually a long and difficult process to put it to death.

I read recently of a researcher who wanted to study the effects of pornography on young adult males. He carefully built the structure for the study, determining how he would compare young men who had experienced pornography with a control group comprised of those who had never come into contact it. Tragically this researcher had to cancel his study. He found that he was unable to put together a control group; he could not find young men who had not discovered pornography. The experiment was impossible to conduct.

That is the kind of society we live in today, a society that is absolutely overwhelmed with pornography. The lure of porn is almost irresistible, particularly to young men. If the devil wanted to find a way of destroying young men, of impacting the ability for men to relate properly to women, of disrupting families and hardening hearts, he could hardly do better than this.