If you search the Bible to see what it says about pornography, you are going to come across a problem: the word ‘pornography’ doesn’t appear anywhere in the Bible.
That’s actually not surprising, since the word only appears in Greek writing from the third-century AD onwards (and only from the mid-19th century in English). However, the practice of pornographic images has existed for thousands of years, and wouldn’t have been unknown in the time of the Bible.
Even though it never uses the word itself, the Bible still has a great deal to say about the ideas and attitudes that lie behind the use of pornography.
Pornography can be tricky to define. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said in 1964, “I know it when I see it.” The word ‘pornography’ was originally used to describe writing about prostitution, and later its meaning was expanded to talk about any material designed for sexual arousal. Today the media used for pornography is wide ranging: from books and writing to photography, video and online content.
The New Testament talks about issues such as porn using the broad term of ‘sexual immorality’ (porneia in Greek). Originally used to describe sexual acts such as sleeping with a prostitute (from which the word derives) the Bible broadens the scope of the word to include sexual acts and actions which are outside of God’s purposes for sexual expression. Pornography, with its focus on sexual gratification outside of marriage and physical sexual intimacy, also falls into this category of porneia.
Looking lustfully
Any discussion about the Bible’s view about pornography has to begin with Jesus’ words on the Sermon on the Mount. There Jesus takes a number of commandments from the Old Testament Law and reveals their deeper spiritual purpose, one of which is the command against adultery:
You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
An obedient Jew of Jesus’ day would have upheld the command not to commit adultery. But Jesus deepens the command to an attitude of the heart. Committing adultery is found not only in the action of sleeping with someone who is not your wife or husband. It is also found in the lustful look which comes from a lustful desire.
The heart, says Jesus, is the most important thing. The heart directs our eyes, our minds and our actions. Later on in Matthew’s gospel Jesus says that “out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality” (Matthew 15:19).
Pornography depends on heart-based lust directing lustful eyes. The Bible repeatedly warns about the lust in our hearts and the lust in our looking. The book of Proverbs tells us that:
correction and instruction are the way to life, keeping you from your neighbour’s wife, from the smooth talk of a wayward woman. Do not lust in your heart after her beauty or let her captivate you with her eyes.
In the book of Job, the friends of Job try to argue that his suffering must come from some sin he has committed. In response Job argues for his innocence, and one of the things he says is:
I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman.
The Hebrew word Job uses for ‘lustfully’ means to give focused attention toward something. A lustful look means giving focused attention toward another person for sexual arousal. Whether that person is physically present, or on a screen or a magazine, the principle is the same. To be innocent of sexual immorality is to direct our eyes away from looking lustfully.
The apostle John goes on to warn in his first letter:
For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.
Porn works on the outside: our looking and our arousal, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes. Combatting pornographic content, therefore, must work from the inside out, redirecting our hearts to new desires and redirecting our eyes onto different things.
Greed and idolatry
Using pornography is a sign of a misdirected heart. To help us see that more clearly, we need to look at the connection that the Bible makes with sexual immorality, greed, and idolatry. Paul tells the church in Ephesus:
But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people.
Paul names things that should not even be hinted at in the life of a Christian: porneia, ‘filth’ and greed. These three seem to be very closely connected in Paul’s mind. To pursue sexual impurity in any of its forms implies that you are also pursuing greed.
Pornography and greed are related because they both have to do with feeding our appetites and desires. A greedy person with regards to food is not greedy because food is bad, but because their desire for food is misdirected. Similarly greed for money does not stem from money being essentially evil, but from the evil nature of love for money above all else.
So too, pornography is wrong not because sex and sexual desire is bad, but because it is feeding that desire in a misdirected and destructive fashion. As C. S. Lewis notes:
There is nothing to be ashamed of in enjoying your food: there would be everything to be ashamed of if half the world made food the main interest of their lives and spent their time looking at pictures of food and dribbling and smacking their lips.
God has given us a good gift of sexual activity. He has designed this gift to be enjoyed within the boundary and commitment of exclusive, lifelong marriage. It is in this framework that sexual intimacy can be safely expressed.
Pornography takes a good, God-given desire for sex and turns it into a commodity. It makes it something we consume, as much as we want, whenever we want, and however we want.
This idea of disordered and misdirected desire has another name in Scripture: idolatry.
Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.
An idol is anything that we desire more than we desire the God who created us. As pastor Tim Keller puts it: An idol “is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give.”
What do we look to pornography to give us? Sexual arousal certainly motivates people to use porn, but that is driven by deeper desires: for validation, acceptance, comfort, satisfaction, love. All these things can only truly be given to us by God. To look to pornography – or anything else – to provide them is idolatry.
Something to flee from
It follows that if sexual immorality, including pornography, is a symptom of a misdirected heart, then it is something to be avoided.
The apostle Paul frames the call to avoid sexual immorality in strong terms to the Colossians: “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature…” (Colossians 3:5).
Jesus’ solution to the issue of looking lustfully at another person is equally drastic:
If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.
Some have taken Jesus’ words very literally – the second century church leader Origen famously castrated himself to avoid sexual temptation. I don’t believe that what Jesus is saying needs to be taken quite that literally! Nevertheless, we must not remove the sting from Jesus’ words.
Temptation, whether sexual or not, is worthy of a serious battle for a Christian believer, and that battle will mean making serious sacrifices. Sexual immorality, including pornography, is to be fled from, cut out and put to death. Like a tumour, it needs to be excised before it causes any more damage.
The words of Jesus and Paul call Christians to a lifestyle of radical holiness. When we turn to Christ, we no longer belong to ourselves, but to God. Therefore, we do not live for ourselves, or our own desires and pleasures, but to please the Lord.
Paul tells the church in Corinth:
Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your bodies.
We are not free to do whatever we want with our bodies. God has redeemed both our bodies and our souls, and they belong to him. What we do with our bodies, and what we feed into our eyes and minds, matters to God. He calls us to honour him with what we see and do, and to flee from all that tempts us away from a life of holiness.
Love your neighbour
Pornography is bad for us because it breaks God’s commandments, warps God’s purpose for sexual activity, and directs our hearts and minds away from God. But pornography does more than harm the one who views it; it causes harm to those who produce it as well.
Jesus’ summary of the Old Testament Law was comprised of two parts: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37–40). As we have seen, using pornography fails to love God with all of our heart, mind and being.
We cannot love our neighbour if we don’t think of them as a person, let alone a neighbour. Pornography treats the performer as an object instead of a human being. We can refer to a lustful male gaze on a female body as ‘objectification’ for exactly this reason. Pornography dehumanises those involved in the production of pornographic content, making them nothing more than a commodity to be bought.
Pope John Paul II once said that “there is no dignity when the human dimension is eliminated from the person. In short, the problem with pornography is not that it shows too much of the person, but that it shows far too little.”
Pornography also promotes violence, especially violence toward women. Many of the acts depicted are violent themselves, and many men who start looking at milder forms of pornography are drawn to more violent and degrading material.
What people see in porn also influences their actions with other people. Various studies have linked sexual violence in media and pornography to an increase in violence toward women. What is seen on the page, screen or website very rarely stays there. Pornography is seen as a way for young people to learn about sex, and what is learnt is often a violence and degrading attitude toward women.
To love our neighbour means to care what happens to them. Does someone viewing porn care about what is happening to the person they are watching? Do we think about what occurs once we close the computer or when the camera stops rolling?
Sadly many people involved in pornography are being exploited in one form or another. A 2024 report by CEASE found that “Regardless of the method of pornography production, exploitation and human trafficking are inherent. Women are often forced or coerced into this industry and once in it, even the most famous pornography ‘performers’ are exploited.” OnlyFans, which is marketed as a harmless subscription platform operates as the largest pimping operation in the world, generating $6.6 billion in revenue in 2024.
For those in porn, performing sexual acts for other people’s pleasure is not a choice they are making for themselves. Even more tragically, many performers are underage, and exploitation for the purpose of pornography can lead to other forms of exploitation such as prostitution. On the other side of the screen, use of porn can lead to men paying for sex, furthering the cycle of exploitation.
As Paul says to the Thessalonians:
It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honourable, not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister.
Pornography wrongs and takes advantage of those we should view as brothers and sisters. Those who argue that porn is just a bit of ‘harmless fun’ shut their eyes to the harm that is caused to those in front of the camera. As Christians, we should flee from pornography for our own good, and for the good of those who are drawn into this industry. We should love our neighbour as well as ourselves.
Conclusion
The Bible doesn’t mention pornography by name. But it speaks often and powerfully about the sinful desires that fuel pornography and the effect that it has on everyone involved.
Paul tells us that sexual sins are sins against God and against our own bodies. Instead of loving God, neighbour and ourselves, using pornography hurts God, hurts our neighbour and hurts ourselves. No wonder the Bible tells us to flee from sexual immorality. The proper response to porn is not to peek and indulge, but to turn around and run.