Blood on Your Hands?

Part 1 of 2

Ezekiel 3:16-19

Their physical features are often beautiful. Their sexual appetites are legendary. Their audience is vast.

Their lives are filled with torment. They are sex workers, porn actors, exotic dancers, and prostitutes. Hollow eyes. Soulless gazes. Empty. Hard. Aged. Exploited. Addicted.

A recent news report tells the story. Lexi “Olivia” Nova (20) of Minnesota, a porn actress, recently sought help. She tried to get sober. Her boyfriend died of a heroin overdose last year. Now, she is dead, and no one knows the cause of death.

Lexi is one of many who have lost their souls, their lives, their families, their hopes, their minds, their bodies, and their dreams to the adult entertainment industry.

Do you care? Why should you? She is just a hopeless whore in a junkie hotel, you say. She ought to know better, you say.

But what are you doing to contribute to Lexi’s bondage, addiction, exploitation, endangerment, and death? Do you have blood on your hands?

The pornography industry and its related sex trades are a multi-billion dollar, criminal-infiltrated, underworld of twenty-first century slavery. If you consume these images, you are this industry’s customer. If you visit the websites, buy the content, lust after the fantasies, and gratify yourself to the entertainment, you are the problem. The pornography industry cannot exist without customers. If you are one, you are a twenty-first century slave owner. You are ensuring the bondage, exploitation, disease, addiction, and death of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people.

You say, “Dr. John, why are you so worked up about this?”

I am worked up about this because of the large number of ministers, Christian leaders, and church members who are consuming pornography. Each consumer participates in the enslavement of sex workers.

I am worked up about this because pornography is fornication. Both words share the same Greek root word, porneo. Fornication is the most broadly defined word for sexual immorality used in scripture. It refers to all forms of sexual sin ranging from gazes, to touches, to actions, and includes the entire range of relationships in which such sin might take place. The Bible strictly forbids all fornication.

“Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma. But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not be partakers with them” (Ephesians 5:1-7 NKJV).

Why is fornication such a big deal? Because it exploits people made in the image of God. It exploits people whom Jesus died to save. Fornication always has victims. In the Body of Christ, we are commanded to live in love, not exploitation, with one another and toward outsiders. Holy, self-giving love becomes the defining characteristic of Christ’s church.

“For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also forewarned you and testified. For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness. Therefore he who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who has also given us His Holy Spirit” (I Thessalonians 4:3-8 NKJV).

Self-giving love does not defraud another. Defrauding means cheating. It means taking something for nothing in a way that exploits and disadvantages another. Defrauding leaves another as less than they were before the exchange. In the context of I Thessalonians 4, defrauding means to use someone sexually in an uncommitted way. One takes from another some part of their sexual self that can the taker never will restore or return. To defraud has the tone of cheating in a business deal. Sex is reduced to a transaction. Relationship is stripped away. Commitment is absent. Love is absent. Fornication is defrauding, whether the victim is a girlfriend, a child, a mistress, or a porn actress.

If a professing Christian is living in fornication, that one is living in deception and in danger of eternal judgment. John, the Revelator’s, closing words to the church include a warning against fornication that elevates it to the level of witchcraft, murder, idolatry, and lying.

“Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city. But outside are dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and whoever loves and practices a lie” (Revelation 22:14-15 NKJV).

Ezekiel was called to be a prophet of God to the Hebrews stuck in Babylonian captivity. God called him to be a watchman for their souls. Ezekiel’s call to be a watchman for his people echoes my own call as a follower of Jesus Christ. So, I have to warn you.

“Now it came to pass at the end of seven days that the word of the Lord came to me, saying, ‘Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; therefore hear a word from My mouth, and give them warning from Me: When I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life, that same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at your hand. Yet, if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you have delivered your soul’” (Ezekiel 3:16-19 NKJV).

If you are using pornography, you are in danger of Hell’s fires. The Bible is clear, fornicators go to Hell. Those words are not my words. They come directly from the Word of God.

Part 2 of 2 is It's Not a Victimless Sin