Pornography

I will walk within my house in the integrity of my heart. I will set no worthless thing before my eyes.

— Psalm 101:2-3

Pornography is sexually explicit images or writing produced mainly to arouse the viewer or reader sexually.¹ Scripture does not name the medium, but it already governs the act pornography supplies: Jesus locates the sin of adultery in the lustful look itself, before any further act (Matt. 5:27-28), and David resolves to “set no worthless thing” before his own eyes (Ps. 101:3). Reformed writers apply both texts directly to pornography: the look it supplies is the very sin Jesus names, and the images themselves are the “worthless thing” the psalm warns against.¹

Confessional Witness

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession, like the Westminster Confession before it, names no specific medium such as pornography, and, unlike the Westminster Standards, includes no commandment-by- commandment exposition of the moral law at all.² The fullest confessional-family statement comes from the Westminster Larger Catechism’s exposition of the seventh commandment, which lists among the sins it forbids “wanton looks… lascivious songs, books, pictures, dancings, stage plays; and all other provocations to, or acts of uncleanness, either in ourselves or others.”³ Thomas Ridgley’s contemporary exposition of the same question locates the commandment’s whole concern in “the government of the affections, and the keeping our minds and bodies in such an holy frame, that nothing impure, immodest, or contrary to the strictest chastity, may defile, or be a reproach to us.”⁴ The catechism names “pictures” specifically, alongside songs, books, and stage plays, among the media it treats as occasions of uncleanness.

Biblical Basis

Jesus teaches, “everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:27-28), the doctrine Lust treats at length: adultery’s sin lies in the lustful look itself, prior to any further act. Themelios contributor Greg Palys reports Grant Osborne’s application of this text to pornography by name: “if lusting after a woman is adultery, then certainly Jesus means to also implicate pornography.”⁵ On this reading, a pornographic image supplies the same lustful looking Jesus already names as adultery, whether or not any further act follows it.

David’s own resolution, “I will set no worthless thing before my eyes” (Ps. 101:3, NASB), states the same principle in terms of sight. J. Alan Branch applies it directly: pornography “fits the description of the ‘worthless thing’ in Psalm 101:3, which a virtuous person avoids.”¹ Branch grounds a further argument in the doctrine that “men and women share equally in the image of God” (Gen. 1:27): pornography “defiles this image and cheapens the people depicted in it.”¹ Paul’s call to sexual holiness, that believers “know how to control [their] own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God” (1 Thess. 4:3-5), and his warning that “the sexually immoral person sins against his own body” (1 Cor. 6:18-20), apply to pornography’s viewers the same standard Masturbation applies to solitary acts.

Objections and Responses

Doesn’t guilt for pornography fall on the industry that produces it rather than on the Christian who merely views it? Branch answers that viewing itself supports “an industry that takes advantage of women and objectifies them as being of worth based only on external appearance and the ability to perform sexually.”¹ Matthew 5:27-28 locates the sin of adultery in the lustful look itself, prior to any further act, so a viewer who produces nothing still commits the sin the text names.

Can pornography strengthen a marriage if a husband and wife view it together? Branch reports that some therapists recommend mutual viewing as “a way to spice up their love life,” supposedly increasing intimacy between spouses.¹ He answers that a marriage “is a precious covenant that allows only one man and one woman,” and that watching pornography together invites the film’s performers into the marriage as “sexual co-conspirators”: “adultery is still adultery even if it is by mutual consent.”¹ “Viewing pornography as a couple does not help your marriage,” he concludes; “it cheapens and destroys your marriage.”¹

Doesn’t Scripture’s silence about a specific modern medium like photography or film mean pornography escapes any direct biblical judgment? A technology Scripture never names is not thereby exempt from principles Scripture does state; Matthew 5:27-28 and Psalm 101:3 already govern the lustful use of images, whatever produces them. Branch adds a further consideration specific to habitual pornography use: “for many porn users harder and more explicit forms of pornography are needed to achieve stimulation” over time, a pattern that moves “not toward moral restraint but rejection of God’s safe boundaries.”¹

Related Doctrines

References

J. Alan Branch, 50 Ethical Questions: Biblical Wisdom for Confusing Times (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2021), chap. 29, “Is It Permissible for Christians to Look at Pornography?,” 135-137. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹
Alex Charles Scheiderer, “An Eternal Covenant” (PhD diss., 2022), chap. 3, “Benjamin Keach: Baptist Expositor of Puritan Doctrine,” discussing Keach’s reliance on the Westminster Confession and Larger Catechism as sources of some authority for Particular Baptists. ↩
The Westminster Larger Catechism (1647), Q. 139. ↩
Thomas Ridgley, A Body of Divinity, vol. 4, ed. James P. Wilson (Philadelphia: William W. Woodward, 1814), 9-10. ↩
Greg Palys, “Cut Off Your Hand, Save Your Soul: How the Outer Self Affects the Inner Self in the Fight against Lust,” Themelios 50, no. 1 (2025): 149, reporting Grant Osborne, Matthew, ZECNT (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 196. ↩