Is It Sinful to Watch Porn with My Spouse?
00:00:00.000 | Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast with John Piper, and once again
00:00:04.760 | we're going to address a sensitive subject today that is not suitable for
00:00:07.520 | younger listeners, and sadly this is a question that we get a lot, a lot
00:00:12.660 | more than you might think. Pastor John, somewhere around 30 times over the years
00:00:16.920 | this question has come in. We haven't addressed it yet. It comes sometimes from
00:00:20.400 | men, but mostly from perplexed women, and most recently the question came from an
00:00:25.960 | anonymous listener who simply asks this, "Pastor John, is it sinful to watch
00:00:31.280 | pornography with my spouse before sex?" Yes, it is. It is sin, and it is a
00:00:42.720 | revolting sin, and what makes it so revolting is that in that sacred moment,
00:00:54.720 | very sacred moment, I wonder if our questioner even has a concept of sacred
00:01:02.920 | or sacred sexuality. In that sacred moment, corruption is abounding in three
00:01:13.920 | directions, toward Christ, toward the spouse, which I assume is a wife here
00:01:21.320 | being asked to do this, and the marriage, and toward people, so the spouse and
00:01:29.840 | marriage and toward people in the pornography. In other words, in so many
00:01:35.040 | directions, defilement is happening in the mind that carries those sinful
00:01:42.960 | images all the way through life, day and night. This act, sexual union of husband
00:01:50.480 | and wife, is the apex of marital pleasures that represent the pure and
00:01:59.520 | holy pleasures between Christ and his church. That's the meaning of sexual
00:02:07.040 | intercourse. When the Bible says, "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the
00:02:15.200 | church," it is inconceivable that the pleasures Christ has in the church would
00:02:23.280 | be awakened and stimulated by his imaging a prostitute to get his juices
00:02:30.640 | flowing. This act of marital sexual union is one of the most intense expressions
00:02:37.840 | of the very meaning of marriage, namely, the truth of the words, and I mean words
00:02:44.840 | spoken, I pray, in the sexual embrace with your eyes six inches from hers, "You have
00:02:57.480 | I chosen above all others. You alone are the one where I feast with pure and
00:03:08.040 | unsullied pleasure. I have eyes for no one but you. I do not run after other
00:03:19.040 | women in my mind or in my body. I am utterly devoted to you with my mind, with
00:03:29.000 | my eyes, with my body. You alone are my pleasure." That's marriage. That's how the
00:03:40.200 | Lord Jesus relates to his bride. That's what you vow at the altar. He has eyes.
00:03:49.800 | Jesus has eyes for no other. What does it say about Christ and his love to his
00:04:01.200 | church if you feed the moment of sweetest, purest union with the poison of
00:04:11.680 | putrid food from pornographic sexual sin? And make no mistake, the performing and
00:04:21.720 | filming of pornographic acts is sin. What they are doing is sin. They're not acting
00:04:32.440 | for the glory of God as you watch them. They're not acting in step with the
00:04:38.680 | gospel. They're not pursuing holiness without which no one will see the Lord.
00:04:44.400 | They're not acting from faith in Christ, and whatever is not from faith is sin.
00:04:50.560 | They're not putting to death what is earthly and setting their minds on
00:04:55.360 | Christ and the things above. They're not inspiring righteousness and purity and
00:05:02.520 | self-sacrificing love in anybody. They are modeling selfish indulgence, bondage
00:05:10.680 | to the flesh, rebellion against God, and the desire to suck as many people into
00:05:16.440 | their sin as they can. And this is the wine you would drink to assist in the
00:05:23.300 | sacred enactment of the purest Christ-exalting marital pleasures. I do
00:05:30.560 | not know if you're a husband or a wife who asked this question. It is difficult
00:05:37.040 | to imagine a wife urging this on her husband. So let me say to the man, "This is
00:05:43.960 | a great insult to your wife. If you have tempted her, cajoled her, lured her,
00:05:51.400 | persuaded her, seduced her into this pornographic delusion of marital love,
00:05:57.040 | you should be ashamed. You should repent now to God, and you should tell her how
00:06:04.960 | sorry you are for contaminating something so pure, so tender, so deep, so
00:06:11.960 | holy with something so vile. And yes, you should say "vile." You need to have a word
00:06:20.440 | like "vile" in your vocabulary. She is not honored by this practice. She is debased.
00:06:28.880 | And a husband who insists on this is acting like an animal, not a husband. So
00:06:37.880 | yes, this is a sin, a revolting sin. Revolting because it blasphemes Christ
00:06:46.320 | as if he needed sin to help him love his bride, because it celebrates the sickness
00:06:54.240 | and sin of the pornography industry, and because it insults the preciousness of a
00:07:02.920 | wife's heart and body by the one above all others who should cherish and
00:07:10.960 | nourish her soul. Deeply sobering words, Pastor John. Thank you for tackling this
00:07:17.800 | question, and thank you to the listeners who have over the years sent in questions
00:07:22.520 | on sensitive topics like this one. It's hard to talk about, but it's necessary
00:07:27.000 | that we do. Well, let's end this episode on a happier note of celebration. This is
00:07:32.760 | the anniversary of the Reformation. It's coming up next week. 499 years ago on
00:07:37.200 | Monday, Martin Luther wrote his 95 Theses, and he sent them to the Archbishop.
00:07:41.960 | And about a month later, legend says he nailed them to the door of All Saints
00:07:45.760 | Church in Wittenberg. And we celebrate the date of the letter when Luther
00:07:50.280 | wrote these things down and sent them to the Archbishop. It was a shot across the
00:07:54.300 | bow for sure, and it was a moment that we celebrate in Reformation Day, as we now
00:07:59.000 | call it, which is celebrated on the same day as Halloween in the States. And we
00:08:03.440 | have a couple of questions on the lingering importance of the Reformation,
00:08:06.600 | and I'll serve those up to John Piper on Friday, and then on Monday. I'm your host
00:08:10.520 | Tony Reinke. We'll see you then.
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