Latest / Intentional Guy / WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT MASTERBATION?
Transcript
- Michael Chestnut: I worked at an adolescent home years ago. I was probably in my mid twenties. And one day one of my coworkers said something to me that stopped me cold. He said he had never masturbated. Not once. Not ever. And I remember thinking, is that even possible? Now, this wasn't some socially awkward guy in the corner. He was a normal, put together, red blooded American man. The kind of guy you never guess. But he told me something else that day. He said, When I gave my life to Christ, I found out my body was a temple of the Lord. So I got intentional. Not perfect. Intentional. I never forgot that. But today we're going to talk about the question almost nobody asks, especially in church. What does the Bible actually say about masturbation? Quick note before we go further. I used the word a couple of times now, just to be straight on what we're going to be covering today. From here on, I'm switching to self-gratification for the rest of the episode. That's partly so the video doesn't get flagged. or filtered on a platform. But let's be clear, we're talking about the exact same thing. Don't let the word change soften what we're actually discussing. Every man who's watching this podcast right now has wondered it. Most men have just never heard a straight answer. So today we're going to talk about it straightforward, no shame, no sugarcoating. Here's why the episode matters to me. I've had this conversation with men more times than I can count. Quietly, after a meeting, over coffee. Guys who are dying to ask this question and have nowhere safe to ask it. Because in a lot of churches this topic gets skipped. It's too private, way too awkward, and too taboo. We're Christians. We don't talk about that stuff. But silence doesn't make a man holy. It just leaves him to figure it out alone, usually badly, usually in shame. Usually with no one checking his thinking against Scripture. If we can't talk about it, we can't disciple a man through it. And if we won't disciple him through it, somebody or something else will. Here's the deeper reason I care about this one specifically. This is about a primal, as private, and as early a battle a man will ever fight. And if a man can learn to hand something that primal over to God, actually surrender it, not just white knuckle it, that teaches him something enormous about what else he can hand over. Self-control here becomes proof of what's possible everywhere else in his walk with Christ. That's why I want you to hear this one. And if you got a son old enough to understand it, Consider sharing this episode with him too, before the world teaches him something else first. Let's start with honesty. The word for self gratification isn't in the scripture. You'll hear people point to Genesis 38, the story of Onan. But that passage isn't about self-gratification. Onan was avoiding his duty to father and heir for his dead brother. That's a different issue entirely. If we're going to build something solid, we don't build it on a verse that doesn't actually say. What people want it to say. We build it on what the Bible does say about lust, about the body, about who gets your desire. Now, Jesus didn't dodge this. He went straight to the heart of it. You have heard it said, you should not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Matthew 5, 27 through 28. Read that again. Jesus doesn't wait for the act. He says the sin happened in the mind, in the moment you chose to entertain the fantasy. And that's the real issue on the table. Because for nearly every man, self-gratification isn't a neutral, disconnected act. It's fueled by an image, a memory, a fantasy, someone who isn't your spouse. That's not technicality, that's the whole argument. Paul gives us the other half. For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God. First Thessalonians 4, 3 through 5. Sex desire your body. None of it was designed to be self-governed by passion. It was designed to be surrendered to holiness inside the covenant of marriage. and Paul is even more direct about the body itself. Flee from sexual immorality. Do not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God. You are not your own. For you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. 1 Corinthians 6, 18 through 20. the exact phrase my coworker used. Word for word. You see, he wasn't quoting a self-help book. He was quoting scripture, and he was living it. Now, one more. Job made a decision before temptation ever showed up. I have made a covenant with my eyes. How then could I gaze at a virgin? Job 31.1. Job didn't wait to see if he'd f failed the test. He removed himself from the test. So here's where I want to land. And I'm not going to soften it. Sex was made for marriage. One man, one woman, one covenant. And self-gratification almost never happens apart. From the lust Jesus already named as sin in Matthew 5. So when I say this is a sin, I'm not talking about biology. I'm talking about where the mind goes to get there. Fornication in your imagination is still fornication. That's not me being extreme. That's just following Jesus' own words to their logical end. So if it is, then why does almost every man reach for it anyways? Well, here's the part nobody wants to say out loud. So I'll say it. Because it's easy. It's easier to take care of yourself in a few minutes than to build the kind of deep, passionate relationship marriage actually requires. It's easier to type in a web address than it is to pursue intimacy with your wife. It's the easy road. Self fulfillment with zero expectation of self giving. Sacrificial love. And here's the part that should stop you cold. When you're alone, you're in total control. No rejection, no timing to navigate, no, not tonight, no need, but your own. But marriage was never built on control. It was built on surrender to a real person with her own needs, her own moods, her own voice. So here's what's actually happening in that pattern. You're not just sinning in the moment, you're training yourself to expect submission from a screen instead of learning how to serve a wife. And that's my point from the start. A man who already takes care of himself alone has no reason left to pursue her. He is recalibrating what enough looks like. And she's on the outside of that, wondering. Why he stopped chasing her? She usually can't prove what's changed, but she feels it. Hidden habits don't stay hidden in a marriage. They just stop looking like what they are and start looking like distance. Now let's talk about what chronic use does to a man. Because I've sat across the table from guys living that out. I've talked with men caught in years of compulsive pornography and self-gratification who can't tell you the last time they felt real desire for their own wife. Here's what we know: when pornography becomes the daily fuel, constant novelty, constant escalation. The brain starts requiring more and more just to respond at all. That's not opinion. That's a documented pattern behind what research calls porn induced erectile dysfunction, showing up in men who are young, healthy, and should have zero reason for it. But it's bigger than the body. Multiple studies now link pornography use to lower sexual satisfaction overall. Not more, less. Married men who use it report less attraction to their wife, less interest in intimacy with them, and more likely to stray from them. And on the other side of the bed, wives of men who use pornography report feeling worse about their body than they have before. And having less sex in the marriage. it's not the intimacy God designed. It's a counterfeit. And counterfeits always cost you the real thing eventually. So this isn't about scaring you with a stat. It's about telling you the truth. The thing you think is relief is quietly rewiring what your body expects intimacy to look like and quietly starving the marriage. You actually want the Now, I'm not saying any of this from a distance. I didn't have what my coworker had. I know what it's like to let lust run the show instead of the Holy Spirit. I know the shame cycle. You do it, hate yourself, promise never again, and then you do it again. I spent years hiding what I told myself was harmless. It wasn't harmless. It was training my mind to treat women and eventually my own wife. As objects instead of image bearers. What changed wasn't willpower, it was getting honest with God and with other men who wouldn't let me hide anymore. That's the whole reason this podcast exists. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. First Corinthians six, nineteen through twenty. So before we close, I want to leave you with three things. Write them down if you have to. Number one, your desire has an address, and it's her. Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth. Let her breast fill you at all times with delight. Be intoxicated always in her love. Proverbs 5, 18 through 19. God didn't design your desire to be satisfied alone. He pointed it somewhere specifically at your wife. Self-pleasure isn't a harmless substitute. It's desire rerouted away from where God aimed it. Number two, your body isn't your own anymore. The husband should give to his wife with her conjugal rights. And likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. First Corinthians 7, 3 through 5. If you're married, your body belongs to the marriage. I'm just taking care of my own needs isn't a private, victimless choice. Biblically, it isn't only yours to make alone. Number three, one flesh can't happen alone. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. Genesis two twenty four. God's design was always two becoming one, not one man satisfying himself in isolation. Self pleasure keeps you fundamentally alone in the exact place God designed for union. It's not a lesser version of intimacy. It's the opposite of it. Now let me finish the story I open with. You know that co-worker I told you about? The one who told me. He'd never done this. He's not just a regular merry guy today. He's a pastor. He planted a church from nothing. And today it's a huge, thriving body of believers. I don't think that's coincidence. If a man can take something this primal, this private, this early, and hand it fully over to God, imagine what else he becomes capable of surrendering. Imagine what God can build through a man like that. Here's your challenge this week. Stop asking, How far is too far? Start asking, what is this doing to my heart? And who does my desire actually belong to? Make the same covenant Job made, not with your willpower, with your eyes. Before the moment ever comes. You don't have to have this figured out alone. Let's get coffee. Let me be your brother. Let me walk beside you.