Last updated on September 24, 2020
Question:
It might be a weird question, but I’m 14 and I’m trying to stay close to God, but I was wondering is it a sin to do a testicle self-exam or a penis self-exam to look for anything that could be a problem, like cancer and dangerous stuff like that. I know lust is a sin and all. I was doing a penis self-exam and I accidental pre-ejaculated. Is this a sin?
Also, I accidentally ejaculated while laying down nude a couple days ago. Is this a sin? I don’t masturbate.
What is the unpardonable sin?
Answer:
Sin is when a person breaks a law of God. “Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness” (I John 3:4).
Nothing in the Bible says it is wrong to touch your penis. It would be hard to use the toilet or bathe it was wrong. Checking yourself for signs of a disease it not wrong either.
God designed the human body to respond to touch. The fact that your body followed that design may be new to you, but it is how the body is designed to work. Concerns about cancer tend to be overblown in teenagers. Yes, the risk is there; yes, you should check every few months or so; but the odds of you actually getting cancer is extremely low.
Ejaculating is not a sin. Your body has two seminal vesicles, which are located just below and behind the bladder. These vesicles constantly produce semen and eventually, they get full. As they get full, your body gets more sensitive to sexual touch. Your mind also tends to move to sexual ideas and that is where you start feeling like you are going crazy.
The design of the male body is to get rid of older semen to make room for fresh material. To get rid of the excess, you have to ejaculate.
One way that excess is taken care of is an instinctive response by the body when your seminal vesicles get full. During the dream stage of sleep (also known as the REM or Rapid Eye Movement stage), your body automatically gets an erection. You have four to six erections every night, but you only notice the last one when you wake up in the morning. Since your penis and glans are hypersensitive because the seminal vesicles are full, your body responds by rubbing your penis. Eventually, you reach orgasm and ejaculate. For some men, they sleep so soundly that don’t realize it happened until they wake up in the morning. Others semi-wake while it is going on, but fall right back to sleep when it is over. Others come fully awake just before reaching the point of ejaculating.
Almost 100% of men discover at some point how to masturbate and trigger an ejaculation. The feeling of pleasure that comes with orgasm and the relief of ejaculating is so intense that it is common for young men to pursue it. But again, the design of the body is that it is easiest to ejaculate when the seminal vesicles are full, but harder when they get close to empty.
Many boys, in a desire to ejaculate more often, pursue sexual images (pornography) to get their bodies aroused sufficiently even when their seminal vesicles aren’t full. Pornography is wrong because it is pursuing lust and lewdness. “Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts” (Romans 13:13-14). However, needing to ejaculate isn’t lust. It is a physical need of the body that can’t be ignored.
If you try hard not to ejaculate, eventually the seminal vesicles will get too full and you will experience a spontaneous ejaculation. This is likely what happened to you.
God doesn’t talk about an unpardonable or unforgivable sin in the Bible. He does talk about sins that won’t be forgiven because the person refuses to repent of his sins, but the problem is man’s stubbornness and not God’s willingness to forgive. “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (II Peter 3:9).