Last updated on August 31, 2020
Question:
I know the Lord is forgiving, I know that, but this chain of masturbation has a strong hold on me. I used the power of the Lord, everything I read, and I follow love and its way. It helps, but this chain has a hold. Please reply because I love the holy Lord. I don’t like to sin. It’s a feeling that can come over me and haunt me. I pray and pray. I try to show God I’m trying to make a difference.
Please help me!
Answer:
The one who defines sin is God, so would you mind telling me where in God’s Word He declared masturbation, by itself, to be a sin? After you think about that for a while, I would like you to read: I’m still confused about masturbation. Is it right or wrong? What are your thoughts about it?
Since sin’s lure is in pleasure, it is easy to make the mistake of thinking everything pleasurable is sinful. But it is pleasurable for a man to kiss his wife and that is not a sin. It is pleasurable to eat when you are hungry, and that need not be a sin.
There are dangers because the lure of pleasure can turn masturbation to a reason to commit sin through lust and pornography, but it doesn’t have to be that way. It is not a sin that your body needs to release semen every few days, nor is it a sin that that release feels really good. It becomes a sin when you want the feeling so badly that you are willing to thinking about committing sin or look at pornography so that you can ejaculate.
What has happened is that Satan has got you convinced that you are sinning coming and going. Your body has to release semen once in a while, but since you are convinced ejaculating is sinful, you condemn yourself. Thus Satan has convinced you that you have no self-control and is trying to talk you into just giving up. In this way you are like the girl who is convinced eating is bad, so she refuses to eat, but eventually, her body’s demands forces her to give in, so she ends up overeating and condemning herself that she was right that she should not eat. The result is endless self-condemnation over a matter that is not sinful in and of itself. “Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations– “Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle,” which all concern things which perish with the using–according to the commandments and doctrines of men? These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh” (Colossians 2:20-23).
The battle is over unbridled sex, lust, and pornography. Fight the right battle and you will see that God isn’t giving you something you can’t handle. “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it” (I Corinthians 10:13).