There’s a reason why the phone in your pocket has unlimited access to every kind of porn imaginable. Tyrants hate virtuous men. Virtuous men are difficult to shackle and chain. What tyrants love are weak and invertebrate men and the easiest way to weaken and chain such men is through public entertainments and private vices.
As G.K Chesterton once said,
Free love is the first and most obvious bribe to be offered to a slave.
Being a slave is not contingent on the amount or frequency of the porn you consume. Whether it’s daily, weekly or once in a blue moon, enslavement comes when, as often as you are presented with the temptation, you fall.
One of the reasons we fall so readily is that we fail to see sexual immorality as an act of war.
Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. (1 Peter 2:11)
In Numbers 22 we meet a man named Balaam. Balaam was a prophet of God working for the other side.
When Balak, the king of Moab, saw what the Israelites had done to the Amorites in the wilderness, he called upon Balaam to curse the Israelites lest Moab be destroyed also.
But Balaam, being a prophet in the service of the Lord, could not curse those whom God had blessed (Numbers 22:12).
After several failed attempts to curse the Israelites (Numbers 23:11-12), and knowing that Moab could not defeat them militarily, Balaam came up with a better idea. Send in some Moabite broads.
As a tactic of war against the people of God this proved very effective (Numbers 25:1-3). Without a shot being fired the people of Israel fell into disarray; defeated and destroyed by their own lusts.
It was effective in causing the people of God to go astray then and has proved equally destructive for the people of God in our own day. And so the Lord, speaking to the early church in Pergamum warned,
But I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality. (Revelation 2:14)
God then warns the church that if they will not make war against those passions that war against our soul, He will go to war against us.
Therefore repent. If not, I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth. (Revelation 2:16)
Porn is warfare. It’s a weapon wielded by the kings of the earth to emasculate, demoralise and enervate the sons of God.
It’s the politics of tyrants who hate virtuous and courageous men and women and want a docile and enslaved citizenry.
The remedy now, as in the days of Balaam, is atonement and repentance (Numbers 25:10-13).
Jesus has made atonement. The man in Christ is a clean man who can wash his hands and face and go out into the world as a new man.
Just as Phinehas put to death the sexual immorality and passion that defeated Israel (Numbers 25:6-8), Jesus calls us to live as new men by putting to death the remaining lusts within us (Colossians 3:5).
How do we defeat such a powerful enemy?
We begin by labelling the things of this world the way our Lord has labelled them. What we once labelled as pleasure we now label as poison.
Next, having labelled the thing for what it really is, we flee; just as Joseph fled Potiphar’s wife. We literally get up and run from whatever it is that tempts us to sexual slavery and self-destruction.
Finally, as we go about our lives, label maker in hand, redefining the world and renaming the world according to the truth, we cry out in our weakness, “Son of David have mercy on me.”
And He who is faithful and just will do it. He who knows our every weakness will defeat in us what we could never have defeated ourselves.
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