Well, when it comes to temptations to sexual sin, Jesus said, "If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off." He also says that there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs. In reading these texts together, a listener writes in to ask if Jesus is commending surgical or chemical castration as a winning strategy for men in the war against lust.

No question is off limits for the Ask Pastor John podcast, but you all know that by now. Here's the email from an anonymous man. "Hello Pastor John, I'm a man who struggles greatly with pornography use. Even though I've come to know God and try to fight these temptations with Scripture, I cannot seem to win over my sexual immorality." Jesus said, "For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

Let the one who is able to receive this, receive it." Matthew 19, 12. "I want to glorify God and I'm willing to sacrifice everything I have to be with Him." Jesus also said, "If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire." Mark 9, 43.

So my question, Pastor John, for you is this. Is surgical or chemical castration a viable option for me? In Matthew 19, 9, Jesus limits remarriage after divorce so narrowly that in verse 10, the disciples, as it were, throw up their hands and say, "Well, if such is the case of a man with his wife, then it's better not to marry." In other words, if there's no back door to marriage, better not to walk through the front door.

And to this, Jesus responds by saying that not everyone can fulfill his radical view of covenant keeping in marriage. He says in verse 11, "Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given." In other words, marrying and staying married under these conditions of absolute faithfulness is a gift of God and not everybody receives it.

And then he describes three situations in which a man may be sexually pure, sexually continent, while not receiving the gift of marriage. Verse 12, it says, "One, for there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and two, there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and three, there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

Let the one who is able to receive this receive it." In other words, there are four possible paths of faithfulness. First, to receive Jesus' radical teachings and live in a marriage according to those teachings. Second, you can be born with a physical inability that prevents sexual relations. Three, you may be prevented in some way by other people from having the ability for sexual relations.

And four, you may make a choice that would prevent sexual relations outside of marriage. Now, the man who sent us this question is asking whether this fourth option, which Jesus describes as making oneself a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom, is in fact a legitimizing of physical or chemical castration.

And I think we need to respond at several levels, maybe four. First, even if Jesus meant this literally, physically literally, castration literally, there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Even if he meant that literally, that's not the same as saying you may or you should, nor is it a prohibition that you can't use physical means to dampen or remove your sexual drive.

So that's the first observation. It's not a mandate, and it's not a prohibition. Second, Jesus does say in relation to sexual sin, and our questioner pointed this out, if your right hand causes you to sin, I mean, if your right eye, let's use eye, he does say hand, if your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away, for it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell, Matthew 5:29.

But isn't it remarkable that he only refers to the right eye, which would leave the left eye perfectly free to continue with lust? Now, this has led most interpreters to think, and I agree with them, that Jesus is not saying that gouging out your right eye is a good remedy for lust.

A literal taking a screwdriver and poking it in your eye is not a good remedy for lust. It isn't. The left eye will pick up right where the right eye left off. This is a call to the most serious spiritual battle of mortification, but probably not self-mutilation, since that, in this case, wouldn't do any good.

But the seriousness is no less, because he says heaven and hell hang in the balance. That's the second observation. Third, this suggests to me that probably making oneself a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom refers to a radical call to chaste celibacy, like Paul in 1 Corinthians 7, rather than physical castration.

Fourth, finally, however, I don't want to rule out the legitimacy of taking physical steps to dampen one's sexual drive if the aim is spiritual victory over sin. We do this. All of us do this, at least if we're smart and if we're obedient, we do this. We do this with other physical temptations.

We get sleep to dampen the bent toward the sin of irritability. We jog—I jog to dampen my bent toward the sin of despondency. I take walks in the beautiful October weather in Minnesota, and look at these gold and yellow trees to replace inward-oriented moroseness with outward-oriented joy. We drink a cup of coffee in the morning to make us more alert and effective in our working.

So there's a principle here that he's on to that's not wrong, namely taking physical steps to mute the power of lust or of whatever impulse it is that is leading us into sin. But I would beware of procedures that have permanent and unknown personal effects. That's good. And if you've listened to this podcast for some time, you know this twofold attack on personal sin comes up a lot.

We cultivate the inner heart. We feed the spiritual affections. And we also battle and resist in the outer context of life with habits and boundaries and accountability. And this twofold approach emerges all the time in the ethical questions. It's a very important paradigm to live by, and you'll hear it come up in this podcast quite a bit because of how important it is.

Well, thanks for listening and supporting this podcast. Again, you can subscribe to our audio feeds and search our past episodes in our archive and send us an email of your own, even awkward questions that you want to ask anonymously. Do all that through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. Well, in the end times, the Bible tells us that people will be lovers of self, lovers of selfies, lovers of selfie sticks.

I'm reading into that a little bit, but when and how does our social media manifest our corrupt self-love? That's the question on Monday. Until then, I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you on the other side of the weekend. And I hope you have a great one. See you then.