Lindsay writes in to ask, "As I have considered men who desire to marry me, pornography and lust continue to resurface as strongholds in the lives of my suitors. I'm seeking to view men with eyes of grace and to use wisdom at the same time. I understand that every sin including lust is a turning away from delight in Jesus to a broken cistern.

In light of this, do you believe it is possible for a man to be strong in faith, finding genuine joy in Jesus and enjoying an overall satisfying experience of simultaneously indulging frequently in lust? I believe that every sin can be defeated through the power of the Holy Spirit, but I do not want to be naive either since I know this issue is wide and pervasive.

I suppose another way to word my question would be this. Pastor John, should the present presence of pornography in a man's life be a marriage deal breaker for a single woman like me?" Wow. I hear at least two questions there and I can't answer the last one. Is it a deal breaker until I answer a couple of others?

So let me give you, when I think about this, here are the four questions I'm going to have to tackle. One is the very question she asked, "Can a man get victory over this?" I mean, shouldn't a man be able to live a life of more or less regular triumph instead of recurring over and over again to pornography?

That's one. Number two, "If he can't, is it a deal breaker for her marrying him?" Number three, "What is pornography?" That she didn't ask. I've got to ask it. And even more important, "Why is it wrong?" So let me tackle those real quick. Here's my definition. I'm going to omit homosexual issues.

I'm going to omit sex in movies. Those are huge issues, but more or less what men are usually dealing with today is involvement with pornography is looking at sexually, say, or fantasizing about nude women other than your wife. I'm just going to, that's what I'm talking about. Okay, looking at or fantasizing about nude women.

They might be doing all kinds of stuff or just standing there other than your wife. That's my definition. Now here's why I think it's wrong, and I have to say this Tony, because until the guy feels these things that I'm going to say right now about why it's wrong, it won't make any sense to him why she would say, "I can't marry you." These are so big, I'm going to wind up saying, "Woman, you are so right.

Don't lower your standards." So here's why I think it's wrong. Number one, porn is unloving. It's unloving to the women involved because it endorses their behaviors and their desires, which are going to destroy them if they don't repent. It's unloving to their future husbands, and when they are confirming in these women a lifestyle of nudity that is going to be destructive to the future relationships those women are going to try to have someday.

It's unloving to the parents of those women. I would just ask men, put yourself in the position of the dad or the mom. That's your daughter. How do you feel about that? And here's this Christian guy who's endorsing, approving, helping that happen, and confirming that as if he doesn't give a rip about those parents and their broken heart.

Their hearts are broken because of this girl's behavior, and this guy doesn't give a rip about whether their hearts are broken. He's enjoying her breaking their heart. So that's number one. It's unloving. The second thing is that porn is adulterous. In other words, it cultivates and pursues mental and physical pleasures that are made by God to flourish in marriage, but they're pursued through women other than our wives.

So Jesus had very strong words to say about that. Here's the third thing. Porn is destructive to a man's capacity to love a woman purely for herself. He's training himself. When he does pornography, he's training his body to need increasingly different, strange, erotic situations and bodies, and he's making it, therefore, harder to be content with the real body of this woman that's going to be offered to him as his wife.

And her body, at its best, is not going to be the hairbrushed body of these pornographic sights. And when she's 50, it isn't going to be that either. And if he hasn't cultivated a kind of pure love for his wife, for herself, as she is, then his eyes are going to be cruising continually beyond what she has to offer him at 40 and 50 and 60.

And a woman needs a man, needs to be able to trust a man. I am what you have. I am what you need. You don't have eyes for another woman. A woman feels profoundly compromised when a man says to her, "No, I really need more than you can offer me." That's tragic for a man to say that to a woman.

So porn is destructive to his capacities to love her for who she is. And here's the fourth, and then the last thing I'll say about why it's so wrong for a man to do this. Porn is destructive to a man's soul. His capacity to see God in the purity and the greatness of his glory is shriveled, it's compromised.

The soul tends to shrink to the size and the quality of its pleasures. If a man constantly says to his soul, "Adapt yourself now to this low, brief, unclean, selfish pleasure. Adapt yourself to this soul. Get yourself around this soul. Form yourself around this soul." It will become that small, and a soul that shrinks like that won't be able to make much of God, won't be able to see God, won't be able to delight in God anywhere near like God should be delighted in, in the glorious pleasures that he offers us in his word and in his world.

So those are my reasons I would say to this woman, and to all the men who may be listening, why it is so wrong for him to pursue pornography. Now back to her question. She wanted to know, "Isn't it possible for a man to be strong enough in faith and to have enough joy in Jesus and have an overall satisfying relationship to him that he could conquer this?

Isn't his indulging frequently in lust an undermining?" And my answer is, "She's right. An overall satisfying relationship with Jesus means that Jesus is precious enough so that we value him above those four reasons. Those four reasons that I gave why porn is wrong become compelling. If Jesus is our treasure, not just a doctrine, but his Lord and friend and Savior and supreme treasure of our lives the way he should be, then we won't be continually hating women with our choices to demean them and confirm their destruction.

We won't be continually committing adultery in our heart with those women. We won't be continually defiling our capacity to love our present or future wives. We won't be continually shrinking our soul's ability to savor the glories of God. We won't because Jesus is so utterly different than that. A man who continually says, "I embrace all that destruction.

I embrace all that evil. I embrace all that uncleanness. I embrace all that idolatry and that hatred for women," is saying something that a woman who's about to marry him better hear loud and clear. So my answer to her last question, Tony, is should it be a deal-breaker if this man can't get victory over this?

If he is regularly tuning in? I would say, "Yeah, that's a deal-breaker. I'm not a woman, and so I can't make this, you know, call for myself." I would just say, "If I were her, I would say, 'You strike me as a woman of remarkable grace, not legalism. You strike me as a woman who is striving for biblical standards, not artificial and unrealistic and perfectionistic standards.

I hear grace in your question. I don't hear brittleness, and I would say, 'Don't lower the bar.'" I think we've lowered the bar too much. We've treated men like dogs in heat, rather than men who are created in the image of God, who have the Holy Spirit, whose fruit is love, joy, and self-control.

And that last one, anchortia, self-control, is usually used in relationship to sexuality. Men are not victims, and these women have a right to expect more from us, and so I would say to her and to the other women, "Don't lower your standards. God is in the process, I believe, right now, purifying a man's soul and a man's body for you." Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast.

Please email your questions to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. At desiringgod.org you'll find thousands of other free books, articles, sermons, and other resources from John Piper. I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening. you