Why does God care about sex and porn?

All of us have a natural appetite for deep relationships, and a natural appetite for that to be expressed physically. God made you this way because he loves you.

All of us are curved in on ourselves in self-trust and self-love, and so all of us experience our natural appetite as inappropriate lust in some way or another. Jesus died to take the punishment you deserve for this because he loves you.

God cares about you—that’s why God made you. He cares about your body. He cares about your relationships. He cares about your future.

God cares about you and he’s in a good mood with you. How do I know? You see that when you look at Jesus.

Last week we heard two ways that our sin refuses to believe that:

Religious sin, self-righteous sin, believes he’s in a bad mood with me, I need to do something or believe something, to persuade him to be in a good mood with me.

Pagan sin, self-fulfilment sin, believes he doesn’t care about me, I need to do something to secure for myself the good things I think he’s hiding from me.

So why does God care about sex and porn? As with everything: because he cares about you.

And Paul unpacks that in three ways in 1 Thessalonians 4:1-7:

1) Because God is good and he knows what harms us
2) Because the Lord avenges all who are harmed
3) Because you know the avenger has forgiven you and he wants you to live free from fear of his return

So, first, Because God is good and he knows what harms us.

If God is in a good mood with everyone, then what difference does faith make?

Well, faith is simply knowing—being assured—that he’s in a good mood with you.

And that makes all the difference. Paul begins to explain that in vv. 1-2:

¹ Additionally then, brothers and sisters, we ask and encourage you in the Lord Jesus, that as you have received instruction from us on how you should live and please God—as you are doing—do this even more. ² For you know what commands we gave you through the Lord Jesus.

This is the difference between someone who is a Christian and someone who is not a Christian.

A Christian knows how to live and please God, not simply because they “know what God’s commands are” but because they know he is already positive toward them. So they can please him freely, because they’re not earning anything.

Here’s how Luther explains this in the Large Catechism:

These three articles of the Creed, therefore, separate and distinguish us Christians from all other people on earth. All who are outside this Christian people, whether heathen, Muslims, Jews, or false Christians and hypocrites—even if they believe in and worship only the one, true God—nevertheless do not know what his attitude is toward them. They cannot be confident of his love and blessing, and therefore they remain in eternal wrath and condemnation.

This week Levi said to m “So many of my friends are fasting for Ramadan, why are they doing that dad? Are we supposed to fast too?”

I said to him “You can fast! And this is the time of year we traditionally do. But we do it for completely different reasons, and this is important. Your Muslim friends fast to try and make God please with them. But we know God is already pleased with us because of Jesus, so I can fast to build discipline, but if I do it to try and make God pleased with me I’m rejecting what he’s already given me in Jesus.”

And he said “Yeah, God’s already in a good mood with me.” He gets it. He’s a little Lutheran.

Paul explicitly says exactly this: that the thing that distinguishes us Christians from people who aren’t Christians is not that we are morally superior—because we aren’t, is not that we have greater understanding—we often don’t is not that we are less sinful—we have the same desires it’s that we know God and his goodness toward us, but despite his universally good attitude to them, the people around us don’t know him. Vv. 3-5:

³ For this is God’s will, your sanctification: that you keep away from sexual immorality, ⁴ that each of you knows how to control his own body in holiness and honour, ⁵ not with lustful passions, like the Gentiles, who don’t know God.

Why does God care about sex and porn? Why does God command that marriage be between one man and one woman? that it be a public leaving and cleaving and we don’t cohabit? that we live in sexual purity as single people and sexual faithfulness as married people?

Because God is good and he knows what harms us.

Cohabitation, flirting, inappropriate dating, porn, … …in your head you can justify all of them with all sorts of logical arguments.

And we could list all sorts of logical arguments back about why God’s command is holy and righteous and good.

But, ultimately, we’ll go round and round in circles until we get back to this question: Do you know God is good to you, and do you trust what he says?

Because if God is good, and he tells you not to do something, it must be for your good that he says it.

A dear friend said to me this week: “I agree with everything you’ve said about Lutheranism, except that you disagree with gay marriage.”

And I said: “It’s about whether you think God is in a good mood with you: If he is, then he gives us his commands about marriage for our good—even when we don’t understand them. Do you trust him?”

God loves all gay people, he loves you and me, that’s why he sometimes says hard things to all of us.

This is why evangelism is not arguing with people and telling them they’re sinners.

It is telling people God cares about them and loves them. And everything flows from there.

Not just evangelism with people outside of church. But evangelism with that part of yourself that still doesn’t trust him. That part of yourself that still exists in you and in me.

Do you trust God? Do you know he is in a good mood with you? Because even as we do, part of yourself does not. Part of yourself still doubts his goodness.

And that is what leads us to Paul’s second reason God cares about sex and porn:

2) Because the Lord avenges all who are harmed

God tells us that all sin, including all sexual sin and so things like porn harms ourselves and others… …even if we don’t see how.

But he understands how, and he will fix it. V. 6:

⁶ This means one must not transgress against and take advantage of a brother or sister in this manner, because the Lord is an avenger of all these offenses, as we also previously told and warned you.

Paul opens up the conversation here from just sexual sin to every kind of sin.

He specifically mentions taking advantage of others, which would include things like fraud, lying, ganging up to serve yourself rather than them.

God avenges “all these offenses” not just sexual sin.

And he’s warning people who are Christians: don’t transgress against, or take advantage of, a brother or sister.

And it sounds like he’s threatening us with judgement according to our works!

He says to us, to Christians: “the Lord is an avenger of all these offences.”

Well, back in chapter 1 verse 10 Paul assured the Thessalonians:

Jesus… delivers us from the wrath to come.

So, Paul’s not denying that here: He’s assuming it. He’s just told us that Gentiles do not know God.

People who trust themselves for security on the last day, are actively rejecting the good mood God freely has for them in Jesus.

God declares to everyone in Jesus: “Look you’re forgiven!”

To say “No, no, no, this isn’t right, I’ll sort myself out” is a rejection of what God has already done for you.

Part of you and of me still clings to that active rejection of God’s goodness.

Part of us still thinks he’s bad toward us, so:
—either I need to obey to calm him down;
—or he’s hiding true good from me, I need to take it.

This is what drives sexual sin in our lives—it drives all sin in our lives.

How does this disbelieving part of ourselves get silenced?

Paul uses God’s Law in v 6:

the Lord is an avenger of all these offenses, as we also previously told and warned you.

So, ask yourself this:

Do I really want my security to depend on myself? Do I really want my satisfaction in life to depend on myself? Because if I rely on myself God tells me I do harm, and he avenges these things.

Just imagine, for a moment, if everything truly depended on you. No-one is coming to look after you. No-one will argue your case. You will have to defend yourself.

Doesn’t that sound scary?

Doesn’t that sound dreadful?

Don’t you want to avoid living that way: depending on yourself?

But, Paul gives a third reason God cares about sex and porn:

3) Because you know the avenger has forgiven you and he wants you to live free from fear of his return

Just look at v. 7:

⁷ For God has not called us to impurity but to live in holiness.

The problem with those outside the church is not that God hasn’t forgiven them, nor that they are morally inferior to us… …it’s that they don’t know who God is: they don’t know he’s forgiven them, they don’t know his attitude toward them.

And so they live as though he either hates them and needs to be appeased or as though he doesn’t care about them.

But you are not those who do not know God. You do know him.

So, you are not meant to live: hiding in shame, splitting your life, bracing for exposure.

God calls you to live as a one who knows they are forgiven. Paul says this all over 1 Thessalonians.

1:4—you’re loved and chosen

1:10—you’ll won’t face final punishment for your mistakes

1:6—even in suffering, you know that everything that happens comes from God’s hand because he loves you, never because he’s punishing you

And this is why, 5:5, we are children of the light, children of the day …walking in the light and comfort of free forgiveness …not in the darkness and shame of trying to hide things. Scared of nothing. Not fearing exposure.

So 5:9 you’re destined to meet a God who has loved you to the end and who wants to pour out his love on you for all eternity to come.

All you have to look forward to is his love. Never his anger.

This is the Gospel, Paul says: Called to live in holiness. Because God has already made you holy in Jesus. So now walk in that holiness you already have in him. You don’t need to live in dread. You don’t need to hide. You don’t need to secure happiness for yourself. You are free to live openly.

Why does God care about sex and porn?

Because harm matters and he cares about you.
Because justice matters and he cares about victims.
Because forgiveness settles justice and he cares about all sinners.

Therefore you can live without dread with full assurance of his goodness.