Rome has repented nothing since 1517 and has only changed tactics in attempting to bring us under her tyranny. As with the Anglicans in 1977, so with many evangelicals today. These men have forgotten that false teachers come in sheep’s clothing (Matt. 7:15); that bad company ruins good morals (1 Cor. 15:33); that Rome and the East have buried the gospel in human tradition (Matt. 15:1-6) and idolatry; that God curses those that alter the gospel (Gal. 1:6-9); and so many other things that we might say unto them: “about this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing” (Heb. 5:12).

I have before me a recently recovered sermon by Martyn Lloyd Jones from 1977, titled “The Sword and the Song.” Speaking before the British Evangelical Council, he addressed then recent developments among evangelicals in Britain. Regrettably, they sound remarkably like trends among some professing evangelicals today, albeit ones that are by no means limited to Britain. I recommend you listen to the entire sermon at the MLJ Trust and ponder its similarity to present circumstances.
He says, for example, that at the Evangelical Anglican Congress in April, 1977, there was a man who declared that the Reformation was the greatest tragedy in the history of the church (32:40). Similar things have been said recently. In 2018 Regent College, which describes itself as “both evangelical and orthodox,” saw its then J.I. Packer Professor of Theology, Hans Boersma,[1] state, “I think the Reformation is not something to celebrate but is primarily something that we should lament—that it is primarily a tragedy.”
Elsewhere Lloyd Jones quotes the then bishop of Leicester saying that “throughout the first 40 or 50 years of my life, one was accustomed to a fairly sharp divide between the evangelical and the catholic movements in our church,” but that “during these recent years these lines of demarcation have become blurred” (34:20). That also sounds familiar. In the Center for Classical Theology’s magazine Credo, one can read things like the following.
In a book review of Piercing the Clouds: Lectio Divina and Preparation for Ministry (which book is part of a Romanist press’s “Catholic Theological Formation Series”), the reviewer says:
The contributors argue not only that historical-grammatical and devotional readings of Scripture can happen together but that they should happen. Especially in the spiritual formation of budding Catholic priests. Drawing on the writings of the early church, medieval monks, and Pope Benedict XVI, they offer six essays building their case. . . there is plenty within these pages to be relevant for seminarians across ecclesial boundaries. (emphasis mine)
The reviewer, a member of a non-denominational church in Tennessee, sees no problem with Protestants using a book that is explicitly meant for training Roman priests to train their own seminarians. He later links the two explicitly, saying “what the church needs today are Catholic priests—and Protestant clergy—who are molded by exegetically-informed lectio.”[2] Err, no, we don’t need any Roman priests, so-called, and every man who serves in that capacity should promptly repent and begin to serve God in truth, laying aside the falsehoods of that communion to unite with God’s people as they are gathered in the churches of the Reformation.
But to my point here, that which was the case in the 1970s Anglican church is also the case more generally now. Credo is primarily run by Baptists associated with Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Yet they have no qualms commending books that draw on writings by monks or the pope, nor in giving a platform to people like Boersma – whom they awarded with their “best theological retrieval” book award for 2023 – or members of Roman orders like the Dominicans (as here), nor, for that matter, women who are ordained in Protestant denominations renowned rather for their apostasy and decline than for any virtue, such as Jennifer McNutt of the Presbyterian Church in the USA. McNutt is also a professor at Wheaton College’s School of Biblical and Theological Studies, whose self-profession of evangelical faith needs no elaboration, but which is similarly suspect, not least since they employ two women professors who are also ordained in the Anglican Church in North America, one of whom seems to harbor some Romish sentiments about Mary (see my article here for an elaboration). Again, as in Lloyd Jones’s day, the “lines of demarcation seem to have become blurred.”
Or again, Lloyd Jones says that there was a difference in notions of scripture’s nature and authority in 1977 in comparison to the past, that people were arguing:
It’s not enough to have a translation in English, they say, of the Hebrew and the Greek. Oh no, you must have much more. You must know the cultural milieu, the cultural setting in which the scriptures were written. And they actually go so far as to say this, that you cannot understand the scriptures unless you know something about this cultural setting. Indeed, one of the leaders of this school on the continent of Europe has actually said this, that it is virtually impossible for any men to understand even the New Testament today, because we can never put ourselves into the cultural position and the thought forms of the people of the first century. (40:18)
That sounds like the need to ‘contextualize’ everything some people among us espouse, and reminds me of N.T. Wright’s argument that our previous perspective on Paul (esp. viz. justification) is wrong because we fail to understand the framework of his thought. Lloyd Jones helpfully contrasts this with “what the reformers called the perspicuity of the scriptures” (41:52), and notes that its logical outcome is a complete reliance on the perspective of scholars. In that vein he elsewhere notes the shift in notions about authority:
There has been this great change in the attitude of evangelicals. Towards what? Well, towards tradition. Not only scripture, but tradition. The old position of the Roman Catholic Church that you don’t merely assert the supremacy of the scriptures only, not sola scriptura, [but] tradition also as defined by them. (25:29)
These days it seems that every time one turns about he is being assailed with talk of “The Great Tradition.” There is a contemporary movement of what is called theological retrieval or ressourcement, and outlets like Credo and its associated contributors are at the center of it in the evangelical world. This movement says that this “Great Tradition” (which they always capitalize) that we ought to retrieve includes the ancient creeds and confessions, the catholic doctrine which the church has always believed, and that it provides the necessary framework to properly understand said creeds and confessions, and to be faithful adherents to the faith.
I have written about this elsewhere, including how the thing has its origin with Rome and her contemporary ecumenism, of how it includes Platonism, and of how it leads people to make some bizarre claims (regarding the aforementioned, Rome-sympathizing Boersma as Reformed; arguing that the Eastern communions’ notion of ‘deification’ is native to Reformed theology). It has also led to the present obsession with Aquinas, an idolater, whose fanatical partisans have portrayed him and the scholastics more generally in glowing terms as essential to reviving contemporary theology. Boersma actually has a chapter called “No Plato, No Scripture” in his book Five Things Theologians Wish Biblical Scholars Knew, and Credo used the same formula to say “no Plato, no Augustine” in the introduction to its issue on Platonism:
Perceiving the philosophical truth within Platonism, the Great Tradition believed Platonism’s metaphysical commitments could serve Christianity. Consider Augustine, for example, whose conversion to Christianity may have been an impossibility apart from Platonism.
Their broad argument is that the “Great Tradition” is necessary to understand both scripture and the confessions and to escape the stifling intellectual climate of ‘modernity’ that skews our understanding of everything. Enter Craig Carter, whose Substack is called “The Great Tradition” and who is producing a trilogy of “Great Tradition” books, the second of which won the best “Theological Studies” book award from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s Journal in 2021. At Creedo he has an article, “The Metaphysics Behind the Reformed Confessions,” that argues this way, speaking of “recovering the riches of seventeenth-century continental and English pastors and theologians who utilized the metaphysics of the Great Tradition to do theology and write and expound the great confessions of Protestantism.”
Compare Lloyd Jones again: “tradition, as defined by them.” Yet this is what leading contemporary Protestant theologians are enamored of just now. Just the other day Credo posted a video titled “Why we love the Bible (and read it with the Great Tradition).” They say that to read scripture for oneself apart from this tradition is to be a ‘biblicist,’ their favorite bogeyman. They say that to be a biblicist is to become a sectarian separated from the church, to risk becoming anti-intellectual and falling into all manner of heresy like anti-Trinitarian and Socinian errors. And so the guardrail to prevent that, on their view, is this “Great Tradition.”
Now I do not consider myself a biblicist, nor propose to enter fully into that debate, but I do say that this bears a frightful similarity to what Lloyd Jones observed in his own day. Leading Protestant theologians are taking their intellectual cues from Rome and falling all over themselves to hobnob with her scholars. Look at what he said of some of the evangelical Anglicans in 1977 on this point:
They’re actually proclaiming and boasting of the fact that their attitude to the Roman church and the Greek Orthodox church and the Russian Orthodox church has undergone an entire change. (32:20)
And:
We are not prepared to recognize all who call themselves Christians as being Christians. This is what these people are doing. They assume that if a man says, I am a Christian and he belongs to a church, it doesn’t matter what he believes, doesn’t matter what he denies. (45:05)
And again, reading what was said by one of its leaders at the birth of the United Reformed Church:[3]
This is a congregationalist speaking, a successor of the men ejected in 1662.[4] “No one,” he says, “who was present at the inauguration of the United Reformed Church in Westminster Abbey is likely to forget the moment when the archbishop of Canterbury, the [Roman] cardinal archbishop of Westminster, and the moderator of the Free Church Federal Council pledged themselves to pursue together that fuller unity of which the URC was a small foretaste.” (17:20)
Union among Protestants was just the first step in a larger movement for union among all professing believers, hence why the leaders of the Anglicans and English Romanists were present.
A similar ecumenical strain marks certain corners of the contemporary Protestant theological academy. They frequently commend members of Rome and the East and give them platforms and awards. Lewis Ayres, professor of Catholic and Historical Theology at Durham University in England, has lectured at Reformed Theological Seminary Orlando. Credo editor Matthew Barrett’s The Reformation as Renewal: Retrieving the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church bears on its jacket the good words of the Roman professor Matthew Levering, a central figure in the ressourcement movement, who says Barrett’s “argument may offer promising ecumenical potential.” Imagine that, a book on the Reformation, and the Romans themselves laud it and say it offers “ecumenical potential”![5] In closing, we might well ask with Lloyd Jones:
What has produced this change? Is there something new? Has there been some new discovery? The answer is, there is nothing new at all. There has been no new discovery.
So it is with us. Rome has repented nothing since 1517 and has only changed tactics in attempting to bring us under her tyranny. As with the Anglicans in 1977, so with many evangelicals today. These men have forgotten that false teachers come in sheep’s clothing (Matt. 7:15); that bad company ruins good morals (1 Cor. 15:33); that Rome and the East have buried the gospel in human tradition (Matt. 15:1-6) and idolatry; that God curses those that alter the gospel (Gal. 1:6-9);[6] and so many other things that we might say unto them: “about this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing” (Heb. 5:12). Heartbreaking, all of it, and we should pray God will grant repentance (2 Tim. 2:25) and raise up witnesses (Matt. 9:35-38), lest he remove the church from our lands (Rev. 2:5) and give us over to unbelief and falsehood (2 Thess 2:11) in punishment for such compromise with the false teaching of Rome and the East (Rev. 2:14-16; 20-23).
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks/Simpsonville (Greenville Co.), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation. 
[1] Boersma is ordained in the Anglican Church in North America
[2] This is a slight reworking of what I have written elsewhere on this topic: https://tomhervey.substack.com/p/across-the-tiber-and-into-the-cloister#_ftn1
[3] Not to be mistaken with the more recent United Reformed Churches in North America, which bears a more consistently Reformed character, having largely formed out of the Christian Reformed Church in response to scripturally unfaithful developments in her midst in the 1990s.
[4] A reference to the Great Ejection of 1662, in which 2,000 Puritans were cast from their pulpits by the English government.
[5] Boersma similarly honored J.I. Packer as “a great Puritan,” not because, like the original Puritans, he worked for a pure doctrine, worship, and church that was purified of Romish and other errors, but because of his “ecumenical conviction” that “drove him to irenic dialogue with Catholics and Orthodox in the 1990s” and  recognized such as  “fellow Christians who upheld the church’s Great Tradition.”
[6] As many do when they say things like “the gospel is indispensable for addressing the complex social, cultural, and political challenges facing the nation,” thus contradicting Jesus’ claim that his “kingdom is not of this world” (Jn. 18:36). If his kingdom is not of this world, how could the gospel of that kingdom be concerned with worldly cares like political and social challenges? Only if one distorts the meaning of that gospel and the nature of that kingdom can it be so.

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Written by Jonathan D. Holmes and Deepak Reju |
Monday, December 6, 2021
Limiting open access and anonymity starves the appetite of our sinful nature. But this takes time. Change doesn’t happen overnight. Addictions start early, are cultivated for years, and become ingrained as personal choices begin to rewrite our embodied existence. The longer the addiction has been cultivated, the longer it will take to get rid of it. Ingrained patterns take time to unwind. So be patient. Take a long-term view of starving the appetites of your friend’s sinful nature.

AN ADDICT’S FOUR FOES
Our problem is that we walk in unbelief. We fail to believe that God cares or that he desires to enter into our struggles with the sins of lust, pornography, and sexual temptation. —John Freeman, Hide or Seek
Those entrenched in porn tend to live suffocatingly small lives, constantly looking for their next fix. Those who begin to find freedom begin inhabiting a larger, more colorful existence. —Matt Fradd, The Porn Myth
Manuel is sitting in his room, all alone, at 10:32 p.m. The door is shut, and his phone and laptop are on his desk directly across from him. He could go to bed, but he’s feeling the pressure of fierce temptations. He feels aroused. His thoughts have been on an attractive woman he saw at the gym this afternoon. There is a war raging in his heart, and he wants to make a godly choice. His flesh pitches him lies, all of which attempt to justify his sin: “Just one more time, and then you’ll stop.” “You deserve it.”
What will lead Manuel to act out? Four ingredients enable a fall—access, anonymity, appetite, and atheism.1 Remove any one of these four As, and you make acting out much less likely.
In our effort to rescue prisoners of pornography, we’re getting to know the enemy. These four As are formidable foes. The goal of this chapter is to understand them and figure out how to disrupt them so their power is broken. What does a discipler need to know to help his struggling friend?
In the age of the Internet, access to an online world is available virtually everywhere. That creates a huge problem for porn addicts because the Internet is littered with sexually explicit material of every description. Thus, open access is dangerous for any struggler’s soul. Though the Internet can be used for great good, it also causes extraordinary harm.
A common strategy for fighting porn addiction is to restrict strugglers’ access. We take away their freedom in order to protect them from themselves. Their pride makes them think, “I can handle this,” but they are wrong. Until they grow in maturity in Christ, the desires of their flesh are too strong, and their self-control is too weak.
You Need to Be Radical
Our approach to limiting access is shaped by Jesus’s words in Matthew 5:
You have heard that it was said, “You shall 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. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. (vv. 27–30)
He reminds us of the seventh commandment: do not commit adultery. But he takes the command one step further. He’s not just talking about the physical act of adultery. Christ expands the definition—if a person looks at another with lustful intent in his heart, it is as if he too has committed adultery. An addict doesn’t need to touch a woman to commit sin. He merely needs to look at her lustfully—and he does that every time he looks at porn.
Jesus goes on: “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. . . . If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away” (Matt. 5:29–30). He’s using exaggeration for effect. The point is not that a sinner should actually do physical harm to herself but that she should understand how serious sexual sin is. Christ uses graphic imagery to say, “Be radical. Don’t take a soft approach to fighting sexual sin. Brutally cut it out of your life.”
Pause and think for a moment. As a discipler, start with your own approach to sin. Are you radical in cutting it out of your life? Think about your last bout with sin—what did you do? If you are not ruthless with your own sin, how do you expect others to follow suit?
On their own, addicts typically aren’t radical in cutting off their sin. That’s the case with Preston. He looks at porn because he’s held on to access points, and he’s grown too comfortable with his sin to cut it out. Rationalizations, excuses, and a love for his sin encourage him to hold on. Preston often thinks, “This will be the last time,” or he lets himself off the hook by saying, “Everyone’s doing it, not just me.” He yearns for the naked photos and spends a lot of his time scheming how and when to look at them again.
Christ said to be radical. When you talk to an addict, do you plead and exhort him to take a more radical approach? We often say to strugglers, “Be brutal in cutting off access points.” Get the person you are discipling to measure her last few months against Jesus’s words. Has she taken drastic measures, or has she made excuses, delayed making adjustments, or continued to hide? Has she tolerated her sin, coddled it, maybe even welcomed it, and, in so doing, continued to give it a chance to ruin her life?
Many porn strugglers don’t like losing access to the Internet, and so they fight against restrictions. You’ve heard the complaints: “How do I live without the Internet? I need it to do my job. . . . I’ve got to check my email. . . . I need it to connect with my friends. . . . I must have it for X, Y, and Z.” Our response? There are consequences for sexual sin. The person should have thought about these consequences before he or she acted out. What is better—for your friend to lose an eye or hand but walk toward heaven or for her to run toward hell? If she chooses to indulge her sin, to ignore God’s commands, to disobey and shake her fist at God, then her rebellion and foolishness will lead to death.2 If she wants to grow in holiness, it will require sacrifice.
Fighting sin is serious business. Don’t let your friend indulge her sin. What drastic steps can she take today to cut off her access to pornography? If she confesses looking at porn the previous week, your conversation should revolve around her access point and how to cut it out. Show zero tolerance for her sexual sin. Graciously and lovingly exhort your friend to get rid of access points!
Strategies for Closing Off Access Points
Here are some practical steps to consider as you help an addict to get rid of his access points.

Ask the porn addict about every e-device he owns.
Encourage him to get a software monitoring program, such as Covenant Eyes, and to put it on all his devices.
Get rid of standard web browsers and rely on a browser that is carefully monitored.
Get rid of the applications store. If he needs to download a new app onto a tablet or phone, provide him with access only temporarily.
Use special restrictions to cut out the web browser and app store, set time limits, and so on. Make sure the restrictions code is known only to an accountability partner. If the addict knows it, he will remove the restrictions in a moment of weak- ness and act out.
Get rid of all apps that have an embedded browser.

What’s the principle behind these six points? We’re removing control from the addict and giving it to others because the addict can’t steward the freedom of open access.
The nuclear option is to get rid of televisions, tablets, phones, and laptops for a period of time. In our Internet age, that’s hard to do, but it is viable, especially if the Internet is available in safe settings, such as a workplace that monitors its own computers.
If an addict does need access for some legitimate reason, such as to download an application for work, then the addict should notify his accountability when an access point is opened and follow up when the access point is closed. If the accountability doesn’t hear back soon, he should get in touch with the addict directly. Maturity is demonstrated when the addict takes initiative on these matters and is open and honest about what’s going on.
ANONYMITY
Because of his guilt and shame, a struggler typically hides his pornography use. He may sit in a bedroom by himself or in an office with the door closed. If he is around others, he may orient his screen so that no one can see what he is doing. It’s rare for strugglers to view porn in coffee shops or in the middle of open areas where people are going back and forth. Rather, they pursue isolation and anonymity.
Solomon writes, “Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment” (Prov. 18:1). The one who deliberately isolates himself is focused on his own desires. As he feeds his sexual urges, his selfishness grows, and his corrupt desires become the centerpiece of his life. His selfishness separates him from community and, even worse, makes him unfriendly to those who should matter the most.
Pornography pulls an addict away from the very thing he or she needs—God’s wisdom available through God’s people. The one who isolates himself because of his desires “breaks out” against wisdom. The sound judgment that leads him down safe paths is abandoned or, even worse, mocked. He ignores or discards the wisdom that is available from a few choice godly friends or in his local church com- munity. In this way, isolation can kill a person’s soul.
Isolation allows addicts like Manuel and Preston to keep a safe distance from accountability relationships and community. And, in some cases, a consequence of isolation is that the addict remains unknown to others. We can’t press into Manuel and Preston’s lives if they hide, avoid accountability, put up protective walls, and refuse to be vulnerable about their sin struggles.
Why does a struggler act in this way? Sin likes to hide, and sexual sin in particular has a field day when it is kept secretive and hidden. It prefers darkness, which, in the Bible, is associated with an immoral, sinful life apart from God. The apostle John warns us, “If we claim to have fellowship with him [God] and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth” (1 John 1:6 NIV). We are hypocrites if we claim to love God and, at the same time, coddle sexual sin.
One of the antidotes to sexual sin is to yank it into the light. God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all (see 1 John 1:5). As a struggler steps into his light, he repents (see Mark 1:15), confesses (see Prov. 28:13; 1 John 1:9), and exposes his sexual sin (see Eph. 5:11–14).
Strategize to get rid of anonymity in an addict’s life. For example, an addict will watch pornography and masturbate late at night, alone in a room, with the door closed. That’s what Preston does. He isolates himself so that he can sin. Lily, a graduate student, studies for long days and nights at home by herself, where no one will know if she chooses to view porn.

If Preston and Lily are not talking to anyone about their sin, the first step is for them to open up and get others involved in their lives. They need to take a step out of darkness and toward godly relationships.
Since Preston struggles late at night, we ask him to give his laptop to his roommate at 9 p.m., to hang out in more trafficked parts of his living situation, such as the living room, and not to shut his door until he’s ready to go to sleep.
We also ask Preston to always keep his office door open. When he’s overwhelmed, he’s not allowed to shut the door and plunge into porn. He should turn his desk so the screen is visible to employees who walk by his office.
We ask Lily to study in public places, such as the local library or coffee shop. Long periods of study alone at home often lead her to act out.
We encourage Lily to tell her friends to hold her accountable to not be home alone for extended periods of time.

APPETITE
Men and women have passions, desires, and motivations that drive what they think and do (see Gal. 5:16–17). We all have cravings or appetites. Sex. Coffee. Good food. Fun. Comfort. Power. Success. You name it, someone wants it. But imagine a desire that takes over a person’s life and becomes a ruling desire. That’s what your addicted friend is fighting—a desire that he or she has fed, nursed, and cultivated until it’s grown big and strong. We saw this in detail in the last chapter.
You could think of this desire as a dragon: a tall, ugly, scaly, fire- breathing, beady-eyed beast generated by a struggler’s sinful nature. Whenever a struggler looks at pornography, he throws the beast a thick, juicy steak. He is making provisions for the sinful nature, satisfying its desires (see Rom. 13:14). The more he feeds it, the more it grows, and grows, and grows. It always wants more. It’s never satisfied. Eventually, it takes over.
To fight the dragon is to ally with the Holy Spirit in the war with the sin nature. The apostle Paul proclaims, “The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do” (Gal. 5:17). The dragon’s power is destroyed when the struggler starves her sinful nature’s desires and puts them to death. Some days, those desires get the best of a struggler, and the dragon wins as she gives in to temptation.
Adelynn felt that way most days. She’d been losing her battle with a porn addiction for over a year. There were dozens of moments every week in which she felt as though her selfish cravings for porn had overtaken her life. Other days, she found victory as she walked in the power of the Spirit who dwelled in her. A year later, with a lot of help, prayer, adjustments to her life, and brutal honesty with God and friends, she saw tangible changes in her addiction.
Although we teach addicts how to handle temptation and how to restrict access, it’s the desires that rage within them that are the ultimate problem. As a discipler, are you focused only on fighting off temptations, or are you also working to curb the struggler’s corrupt desires? Are you paying attention to the war within? Practically speaking, you can’t focus only on eliminating access and anonymity. You should talk to an addict not just about his external circumstances but also about his appetites. Ask him,

What do you love and hate right now?
How is selfishness or pride ruling your heart?
What do your actions show you that you want?
Lust energizes, but that’s not the only thing that causes you to act out. What else motivates you?
Are you angry at God?

Dig deep into his heart to expose the corrupt desires that have taken root there. As you pull out the roots, you expose what motivates him to seek out porn.
Our chief strategy as disciplers is to grow holy appetites in a sinner. Holy appetites expel unholy desires. As the addict grows in greater love for Christ, his affections drive out the weaker sexual desires.
That means we want to spend a significant portion of our time with sexual strugglers talking about Christ. We demonstrate that Christ really is the addict’s hope by thinking about who he is and what he done for us. As much as we can, we marinate them in gospel truth. Because we come to know Christ through his Word, we spend time in the Word with the people we are discipling. And we make sure that strugglers are engaging the common means of grace (God’s Word, prayer, fellowship with believers, consistent attendance at church, participation in the Lord’s Supper).
Is most of your time focused on dealing with the addict’s sin, or are you actively cultivating the addict’s love for Christ? Do you point the addict to the common means of grace to grow her relationship with Christ? There is no better way to help a porn addict than to repeatedly set her eyes on the cross.
ATHEISM
Every believer wrestles with momentary atheism—she has occasions when she gives herself over to her unbelief. When Adelynn looks at porn, she chooses her sin over God. In that moment, she is embracing sin’s lies, rebelling against God, and disbelieving the promises of the gospel. Viewing pornography is Adelynn’s functional way of denying the existence of an all-loving God who has provided for her every need. It reveals her doubt regarding God’s character— in terms of not just his love but also his mercy, goodness, and sovereignty over her life. In the moment that she acts out and looks at porn, she is declaring, “I believe the promises of my sin will satisfy me” and “I doubt the promises of God right now.”
The struggler’s momentary atheism leads to dangerous spiritual consequences. It’s unlikely an addict will say, “I’m don’t believe God’s character or promises right now.” He won’t be that blunt. Rather, you’ll witness firsthand the consequences of the atheism and porn struggles—a lack of assurance, a hard heart, and self-deceit. We’ve highlighted them for you below so you can look for them.
Lack of Assurance
Each time Adelynn views pornography, unbelief acts like a swarm of termites, eating away at the foundation of her faith. Questions plague her: “How can I profess to be a believer and doubt like this? How can I call myself a Christian and continue to look at porn and masturbate?” When Adelynn doubts, the apostle James tells us she’s like “a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind” and is “double-minded . . . unstable in all [her] ways” (James 1:6, 8). This double-mindedness leaves her feeling unstable, even somewhat crazy. Doubt undermines her assurance as a believer. This doubt may be accompanied by a lack of engagement with the common means of grace. If an addict is not reading the Word (see Ps. 1:2), not pursuing regular fellowship with other believers or regularly attending church (see Heb. 10:25), not partaking in communion (see 1 Cor. 11:23–31), or not finding ways to love and serve others (see Mark 12:31; Gal. 5:13–14), her heart will grow cold to the Lord.
A Hard Heart
To embrace sin is to turn your back on the living God in unbelief. If tolerated and coddled, unbelief leads to a hardened heart. The author of Hebrews warns Christians, “Take care, brothers and sisters, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day . . . that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Heb. 3:12–13).
Imagine taking a hammer and slamming it down on a solid rock. It cracks a little, but the rock holds together. A hard heart is in a very dangerous place spiritually. What would it take to soften a hard heart (rather than chisel it!) and see it more open to Christ and the gospel?
As we see from Hebrews, a possible antidote to a hard heart is twofold. We have a personal responsibility to fight our unbelief: “take care . . . lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart” (v. 12). There is also help in daily fellowship with other believers: “exhort one another every day” (v. 13). These show us how to soften a heart, but they are also the preventative measures for slowing down the hardening of a Christian’s heart.
Self-Deceit
Self-deceit starts early as the addict drifts away from God and the gospel. It doesn’t happen by itself. Long before an addict acts out, self-deceit conspires with his desires (and sometimes his fears). A guy sees a girl in skimpy clothes on a hot spring day and begins to imagine the possibilities. He wants her. He wants sex. He wants to be affirmed. He buys into the lie: Jesus is not enough right now. As his heart rages and his body gets aroused, he can ignore his conscience and actively convince himself of anything. This is the sin before the sin. Self-deceit sets him on the well-worn pathway to acting out.
In a moment of self-deceit, the struggler doesn’t want to see the truth or believe it. He doesn’t want to believe that Christ is sufficient.
He wants pornography to satisfy him. Like the Pharisees who didn’t want to believe Jesus was the Son of God, lest their Pharisaical house crumble (see John 12:19), so also an addict doesn’t believe Christ is enough, lest he be forced to give up his sin. Sexual sin makes him feel good quickly, so he wants to believe it provides the relational satisfaction that he craves.3 Is it any surprise that the devil wants us to question the One who is all-sufficient? The worst lies are the ones about the all-sufficient Christ.
This is the slippery path of a porn addiction—unbelief and rebel- lion lead to self-deceit, hardened hearts, and forsaking the Lord (see 1 Tim. 4:1). Practically speaking, you should encourage your struggling friend to take personal responsibility for fighting his doubts. As addictions get worse, believers can give up and give in.
But also take time to exhort your friend—to speak a gracious and loving but firm word. Ask him,

Are you wrestling with doubts about God’s character? If so, explain.
Can you share some of your thoughts and feelings about God? (It may be embarrassing, especially if you’ve been critical of God in your thinking. But I encourage you to be honest.)
Have you wrestled with any other kinds of doubts? If so, can you share them?
Would you say your heart is hard or soft toward the gospel? What softens your heart?
By its very nature, self-deceit is hard to recognize in yourself. So, let’s consider: What do you get from your pornography habit? In what ways does your sin satisfy you? What are the promises of sin that you are believing? In contrast, are there promises of God that give you hope?

You may think, “I’m not going to make much of a difference.” Who knows? Your words may be the very lifeline your friend needs to end his turning away from God and to persevere in his faith!
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
The first two As (access and anonymity) deal with external temptations; the second two As (appetite and atheism) reveal the battle in the heart. When fighting sexual sin, we start with restricting access and anonymity. We take a radical approach to cutting off access points and getting rid of opportunities for anonymity.
Limiting open access and anonymity starves the appetite of our sinful nature. But this takes time. Change doesn’t happen overnight. Addictions start early, are cultivated for years, and become ingrained as personal choices begin to rewrite our embodied existence. The longer the addiction has been cultivated, the longer it will take to get rid of it. Ingrained patterns take time to unwind. So be patient. Take a long-term view of starving the appetites of your friend’s sinful nature.
But keep in mind that restricting access and anonymity alone is not an adequate strategy. An addict can cut off access to porn but still wrestle with fleshly desires that rage inside his heart and doubts that fill his mind. At best, when you restrict access, you put a fortified wall around a sin-crazed heart. When an addict develops good habits for fighting external temptations and achieves significant victory over them, the battle often shifts inward. Satan puts more pressure on the struggler’s inner life—his appetites and atheism. The war in the heart becomes more fierce.
Consequently, our strategy shifts. Though we start by taking steps to limit access and anonymity, we then move to focusing on the internal war, in which the appetites of the heart are involved. As disciplers, we spend more time working through an addict’s desires, motivations, and doubts than focusing on limiting access, as important as that is. At the same time, since issues with accessing porn and fighting off temptation consistently come up, we expect them to be a normal part of our conversations.
In this fight, it’s a mistake to take a narrow view of a struggler and become far too focused on her sin. Faith is the wind in a sinner’s sails. Without it, there is no true forward progress. Help her to fight unbelief, root out self-deceit, and grow in her affections for Christ.
Hold out to her the riches of our glorious Savior. After all, what better way to help a porn addict than to repeatedly set her eyes on the cross?
Chapter 3 of the recently released book, Rescue Plan, by Jonathan D. Holmes and Deepak Reju. Used with permission.

Spurgeon believed suffering could benefit believers in various ways, and he particularly reflected on the good a variety of evils could produce for pastors. In times of ease and prosperity, pastors might rely on themselves and not look to God’s promises, consider eternity, or lean on the strength that comes from the Spirit. Through suffering, pastors learn to live the truths they preach. Spurgeon asked, “Does a man know any gospel truth aright till he knows it by experience?”

Many pastors have longed for a taste of Charles Spurgeon’s preaching gifts and ministry success, but few have desired the pronounced suffering that accompanied them. Spurgeon’s published sermons show him a master of preaching to distressed souls, but he had to be distressed himself to do so. Sufferings were not coincidental or unfortunate in a pastor’s life; for Spurgeon, ministry and suffering were theologically connected, the pastoral package deal.
Spurgeon argued suffering is necessary for faithful ministry, because of the distinctive relationship pastors have with Christ—they were his conduits of God’s grace to others. In preaching the gospel of Christ’s sufferings, they would become like Christ in his sufferings. Suffering is also necessary for ministers because of its benefits: it makes pastors experience the truths they preach to their people, keeps them humble, and gives them the sympathy necessary for their labors.
All-Out Ministry
Spurgeon’s life was filled with a mix of sufferings that came upon him in his remarkable ministry. For example, he preached more than 10,000 times, sometimes preaching while so sick that he had to be carried from the pulpit. His popularity and growing church created never-ending duties, but he did not skirt or delegate what he believed were key pastoral responsibilities.
Spurgeon insisted ease in ministry is evidence of a false ministry, which will be hard to account for at the judgment seat of Christ: “The man who finds the ministry an easy life will also find that it will bring a hard death.” True ministers would have the marks of “stern labor” upon them; this was necessary, for how else were God’s people—sheep with many spiritual needs and diseases, who often rambled far and caused great trouble to their shepherds—to be adequately cared for? The pastor at ease was usually the one content to let a few sheep die!
Spurgeon’s comments on strain in ministry must be appreciated in light of his practice of rest and renewal.
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