Sexual Sin

“How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” – Genesis 39:9b

It is a common fallacy to think as singles that our struggles with sexual sin—pornography, masturbation, erotic literature, mental fantasies—will evaporate once we get married and actually have sex. For one thing, those inescapably addictive and progressive things train us to desire and expect something completely different from what the realities of sex in marriage is like. Whether we realize it or not, we are internalizing a cultural view of sex that is about self-gratification, performance, objectification, and idealized as being the ultimate source of fulfillment and an end unto itself (Keller uses the term “apocalyptic sex” in his book Counterfeit Gods). Whereas sex as God created it to be in marriage is about giving of yourself, being vulnerable in an unconditional atmosphere of trust, and ultimately points back to God. Sex in our culture is about consumerism; sex in marriage is about relating, and takes work and time to grow in.

For another thing, I am increasingly convinced that our ultimate struggle in this area is a spiritual one. It is not a matter of biology, or willpower, or understanding how much it hurts your spouse, hurts every area of your life—though those things are a part of it, as we see in Joseph’s story. In the “day after day” struggle, Joseph “would not listen to her… He left… and fled” (verses 10, 13): there is an element of willpower, choice and preparation as we safeguard against the ways and times we are prone to listen, as we find others to help, as we flee. 

But if we go back before those verbs and look at what Joseph says during the only time he speaks in this entire episode, we find something unexpected. In verse 8, he responds to an invitation to sexual sin by talking about his master. One would expect him to conclude, “how then can I sin against my master?” That would be logical. Instead, he makes a total pivot. He says, “How then can I… sin against God?”—and this in a place where no one, least of all the person he was addressing, believed in God. It’s almost as if he was speaking to himself, revealing the inner workings of his own heart.

Ultimately, we must look at God, grow in seeing his face, until in the moment of temptation this too rises up in us: how can I do this, this sin against God? Too often, we confess to ourselves rather than God; we don’t see the degree and depth of wickedness as God sees it; we don’t truly repent or plead for the Holy Spirit to help us. We don’t flee but we linger. We listen just a little bit. But when we encounter the holiness of God, and our love for Him, we become truly willing to fight the battles, whatever it takes. 

It is a battle, and there is suffering. Despite it all, Joseph ends up in prison for years. Hebrews 2:18 speaks of Jesus this way: “For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.” Have you thought of temptation as suffering? Those who give in the least suffer the most. C.S. Lewis writes: “A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness — they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means — the only complete realist.”

Jesus is able to help. He intercedes for us (Romans 8:34), as does the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:27). God can reveal himself to us in this area. We are not alone. We can identify with and become like Jesus even in the very midst of the struggle.