The Bible does not directly name masturbation or classify every possible instance of the physical act as sin. I also cannot use that silence to excuse pornography, chosen lust, deceit, exploitation, or a habit that takes control of a person’s life.
My counsel is abstinence as the clearest course toward sexual self-control and undivided holiness. That is counsel drawn from Scripture’s teaching about desire, the body, and marriage; it is not an explicit prohibition I can quote from a verse. Keeping those claims distinct helps us confront actual sin without assigning guilt for temptation, involuntary bodily responses, or abuse someone suffered.
Begin With What Scripture Says
Scripture often judges conduct by what a person desires, why he acts, whom his actions affect, and what follows from them. It does not need to supply a modern label for every practice. The Bible does not use our word pornography, either, but Jesus plainly condemns looking at someone in order to lust. New technology can provide new opportunities for that conduct without changing its moral character.
Where masturbation involves pornography, deliberate sexual fantasy about someone who is not one’s spouse, coveting, marital dishonesty, or loss of self-control, we have clear biblical commands to apply. The absence of a verse naming the physical act does not remove the sins accompanying it. A person cannot describe only the bodily movement and leave out what he deliberately sought or imagined.
The harder question concerns a case without pornography or chosen fantasy about another person. Suppose there is also no coveting, enslavement, covenant betrayal, or violation of conscience. We should not dismiss those qualifications or invent a verse to settle the question that remains. I counsel abstinence, but I will not turn that recommendation into a universal prohibition Scripture never states.
A direct command tells us what God expressly requires or forbids. A moral inference explains how a particular practice falls under that command. When someone uses an act to cultivate lust deliberately, he is doing what Scripture condemns. The inference must explain that connection instead of assuming the conclusion it needs to establish.
Pastoral counsel applies wisdom to conduct and circumstances. It may recommend abstinence or boundaries because a practice repeatedly leads toward sin. Conscience concerns the person’s understanding of right and wrong before God: he must not do something while believing he is disobeying Him. Conscience needs respect and biblical instruction, but one person’s present conviction does not create a command for everyone.
We cannot use these distinctions to avoid examining our conduct. What desire are we feeding? Are we using another person in imagination, breaking a promise, or protecting a pattern that is becoming controlling? The teacher also owes the reader an honest explanation. I should identify a command as a command, show how an inference follows, and present counsel as counsel. The study on Legalism and Christian Liberty examines that responsibility further.
Onan, Temptation, and Chosen Lust
Genesis 38 is often offered as the direct prohibition, but we need to read what Onan actually did. Judah had arranged for Tamar to marry his firstborn son, Er. After Er died under God’s judgment, Judah instructed Onan to raise an heir for his deceased brother (Genesis 38:6-8):
And Judah said to Onan, "Go in to your brother's wife and marry her, and raise up an heir to your brother." But Onan knew that the heir would not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in to his brother's wife, that he emitted on the ground, lest he should give an heir to his brother. And the thing which he did displeased the LORD; therefore He killed him also.
Onan knew that a child born through this arrangement would be counted as his brother’s heir. He had sexual relations with Tamar while deliberately preventing conception, defeating the purpose of the arrangement. The passage describes withdrawal during intercourse, not masturbation.
His refusal was selfish and exploitative. He took advantage of the arrangement for sexual pleasure while refusing the family responsibility attached to it. The text tells us why: he knew the heir would not be his. God’s judgment requires us to take that wrongdoing seriously. We should not overlook Tamar’s mistreatment while trying to make the passage describe a different act.
Deuteronomy 25 later regulated levirate marriage, the duty of a brother-in-law to raise an heir for a deceased brother. It included a public process for refusal. Genesis 38 occurred earlier, among the patriarchs, so the later law helps explain the family duty without making Onan a defendant in a Mosaic court. This account concerns his treatment of Tamar and his deliberate refusal of a known obligation. It does not supply the missing verse about solitary sexual stimulation.
We also need to distinguish temptation from the decision to cultivate a sinful desire. James explains how desire develops into sin:
Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am tempted by God"; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.
God does not entice anyone to evil. James describes how a person is drawn away by his own desire, then how desire conceives and produces sin. His warning follows the process through to sin’s deadly result. We need to take that progression seriously without treating every unwanted thought or bodily sensation as a completed moral choice.
Jesus was tempted and remained completely sinless, so temptation by itself does not establish guilt. An unwanted thought, an image seen unexpectedly, or a bodily response before a decision does not mean someone has embraced lust. He needs to respond faithfully, but he need not confess to deliberately choosing something he did not choose.
Seeking sexualized material for arousal, returning to an image in order to enjoy it, or intentionally developing a lustful fantasy is different. Those are ways of feeding desire. Planning private access while calling the whole experience an unwanted temptation does not give an honest account of the choices being made.
Unwanted sexual thoughts can also occur with obsessive doubt, anxiety, or trauma. Mentally reviewing a thought over and over to prove innocence may become part of a distressing cycle. The International OCD Foundation’s guidance for faith leaders explains how repeated reassurance can reinforce OCD. That calls for care when someone repeatedly seeks reassurance through confession. Qualified clinical help and mature pastoral care can work together without equating intrusive thoughts with chosen lust.
Jesus addresses the deliberate cultivation of desire in His teaching about adultery:
"You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.
The Greek expression pros to epithymēsai describes looking for the purpose of lusting. Jesus takes the command against adultery into the heart: a person can seek to possess someone sexually in imagination while avoiding the outward act. His warning does not make an accidental glance identical to an intentional gaze.
Recognizing that someone is attractive is not the same as choosing to use that person in sexual fantasy outside the marriage covenant. Responsibility concerns what we willingly seek, retain, and develop. The imagined person may be known, fictionalized, or encountered through media; changing the medium does not make a chosen lustful purpose innocent.
Jesus’ language about the eye and hand calls for decisive action against occasions of sin. He does not command mutilation, which cannot cleanse the heart. Repentance needs to address whatever gives lust a ready opportunity. Saved images may need to be deleted or a particular account closed. A private conversation may need to end, or a device may need to be moved into a shared space instead of kept nearby at night. Those choices should remove the actual occasion for sin rather than show others how strict we can be. Covenant Eyes develops the responsibility to govern what we choose to look at.
Pornography invites viewers to treat people outside their own marriage as objects of sexual gratification. That conflicts with Jesus’ teaching about chosen lust and dishonors people made in God’s image. An image’s presence on a screen does not establish that it was freely produced or shared. The viewer may not know whether coercion or trafficking was involved, whether an image was stolen or altered, or whether it was distributed without consent.
For a married person, pornography also directs sexual attention outside the covenant. Hidden accounts, payments, and deleted records may conceal the conduct, while comparisons with a spouse and repeated broken promises deepen the betrayal. Singleness does not give an unmarried person a right to someone else’s body in imagination, either. A hypothetical case without pornography cannot excuse a real case that depends on it.
Suspected child sexual abuse material requires proper reporting rather than private investigation. Do not download, copy, or forward it to show an accountability partner. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children likewise warns against downloading or sharing material to seek help and directs people toward its reporting process. Where abuse or nonconsensual distribution is involved, seek qualified reporting and evidence-preservation guidance rather than circulate the images yourself.
The Body Belongs to Christ
Paul’s teaching about the body requires us to consider more than whether an act is named in a prohibition:
Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's.
Paul’s immediate example is sexual union with a prostitute. A believer must not take a body that belongs to Christ and join it to sexual immorality. Paul reminds us that sexual union makes two people one flesh. He also appeals to the Spirit’s indwelling, the price paid for believers, and the promised resurrection of the body (1 Corinthians 6:12-20). These are reasons to place our bodily conduct under Christ’s authority.
The passage does not directly name masturbation as fornication. I should not claim that it does. Yet Paul’s refusal to be mastered by anything and his command to glorify God in the body apply to the desires and habits involved (1 Corinthians 6:12, 20). An appetite cannot be excused as a physical need that has nothing to do with obedience.
We should not despise the body God created. The Holy Spirit indwells the believer, and God will raise the body. Describing it as His temple does not make every disputed sensation a contamination of the Spirit. Nor does one sexual failure mean He has left a genuinely born-again person. His presence gives us reason to turn from sin, with confidence that we are not trying to persuade Him to return.
A habit may begin to control a person’s life by occupying more of his attention and shaping how he spends his time. He may arrange device use around finding privacy for it. Broken commitments and seeking increasingly explicit or extreme material deserve attention. So do neglecting work or relationships and lying to protect access. Another warning is a pattern of relying on the behavior as his only response to anxiety, anger, loneliness, or fatigue.
Someone may dismiss those concerns by saying, I can stop whenever I want.
We need to look at what he actually does and the harm involved. Do his repeated decisions interrupt the habit or protect it? Frequency alone does not establish that he is being mastered, and distress alone does not establish addiction. A pastor should not assign that label from one disclosure or promise that a single accountability technique will cure the problem.
A qualified clinician can assess compulsive behavior and consider whether anxiety, depression, trauma, medication, or other factors contribute. That assessment does not remove moral responsibility for chosen conduct, but it may help identify needs that a rule about frequency cannot address. We can take loss of control seriously without reducing the person to a diagnosis.
God’s will includes sanctification, being set apart to Him in the way we live. Paul applies that calling to sexual conduct:
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.
Paul calls believers away from sexual immorality and passionate lust toward holiness and honor. Readers differ over what he means by possessing one’s vessel. Some understand the phrase to mean governing one’s body; others read it as taking and living with a wife honorably. The NET note on 1 Thessalonians 4:4 discusses that difference. Neither reading permits lust, dishonor, or taking advantage of another person.
Sexual conduct can reach beyond the person who calls it private. A spouse may be deceived, someone represented in an image may be exploited, or duties may be neglected to protect access. Paul’s warning against defrauding a brother requires us to consider those relationships rather than describe everything as an individual appetite.
Paul also reminds the church that God has given His Holy Spirit (1 Thessalonians 4:7-8). Sanctification is therefore more than an exercise in determination. The Spirit works through truth and conviction, renewing our thinking as we learn to obey. Despising the body is no substitute for depending on Him, and that dependence does not exclude wise boundaries or help from other believers. The study on Sanctification examines that continuing growth.
Paul describes the Spirit’s fruit alongside the works of the flesh in Galatians 5:
Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.
Paul places adultery, fornication, uncleanness, and lewdness among the works of the flesh, and self-control among the Spirit’s fruit. These categories carry real moral force, but they do not automatically classify every possible instance of masturbation. If I apply them to a person’s conduct, I need to explain how his chosen desire, the material he uses, or the pattern he follows fits what Paul condemns.
Walking in the Spirit involves responding to Him (Galatians 5:16-18, 24-25). A believer receives the truth, refuses to prepare opportunities for lust, obeys at the point of decision, and confesses when he has sinned. The Spirit does not make practical boundaries unnecessary or bypass the person’s will.
Learning self-control does not mean hating sexual desire or expecting it to disappear. Desire has an honorable place within marriage and must be governed by Christ. Nor does crucifying the flesh authorize self-injury or bodily punishment. Reckless fasting and humiliating accountability do not produce the obedience Paul describes, either.
Conscience also needs to be governed by truth. In Romans 14, Paul addresses differences over food and days in which believers could honor the Lord through different practices:
It is good neither to eat meat nor drink wine nor do anything by which your brother stumbles or is offended or is made weak. Do you have faith? Have it to yourself before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves. But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because he does not eat from faith; for whatever is not from faith is sin.
If I believe an act disobeys God and do it anyway, I am choosing to disregard what I understand as His authority. I should abstain while seeking clarity. Another Christian must not pressure me to act against conscience simply to prove I understand liberty.
Conscience deserves respect, but it is not infallible. Scripture describes consciences as weak, defiled, seared, or bearing witness. A person’s conviction may be sound, yet fear and misinformation can also affect judgment, as can trauma and obsessive doubt. Patient biblical instruction should help him understand what God requires without turning every anxious accusation into a divine command.
Romans 14 does not leave pornography, chosen lust, deceit, adultery, exploitation, or enslavement to individual preference. Where Scripture speaks, we must receive its standard. Where it does not name the bare physical act, we apply its broader commands honestly, explaining our reasoning without claiming to quote an explicit prohibition.
Writing to Corinth about food and conscience, Paul also explains why calling something lawful does not settle whether it is helpful or serves another person’s good (1 Corinthians 10:23-30):
Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no offense, either to the Jews or to the Greeks or to the church of God, just as I also please all men in all things, not seeking my own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved.
Paul’s immediate concern is food and conscience, including food offered to idols. He teaches believers to honor God in ordinary conduct and consider another person’s good. Applied to this question, that requires us to face any lust, deception, exploitation, broken promise, or injury to another person’s conscience involved in the practice.
The question Can I do this to God’s glory?
can help someone recognize a problem. A person’s degree of confidence, however, cannot by itself determine whether an act is right or wrong. An anxious person may feel distressed about innocent conduct, while a hardened person may feel confident about actual sin. Glorifying God does not require an intense spiritual feeling before every bodily act. Even eating can honor Him through gratitude, moderation, fellowship, and love.
Our feelings must answer to His written Word. I counsel abstinence because I believe it best helps a person govern sexual desire and honor the marriage covenant. I must still distinguish that counsel from a direct biblical prohibition. Equally, the absence of a named prohibition cannot excuse lust or dishonesty that is actually present.
Sexual Desire, Marriage, and Involuntary Responses
Genesis describes a man and his wife becoming one flesh, and Jesus reaffirms that creation pattern. Paul also describes marriage as honorable in Hebrews:
Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge.
Sin did not create sexuality. A husband and wife may receive intimacy gratefully, with tenderness, mutual care, privacy, and honesty. Outside marriage, Scripture calls believers to chastity, meaning sexual purity. Desire does not create ownership of another person’s body or image. What Marriage Is examines that covenant more fully.
Masturbation differs from intercourse and should not be classified as fornication merely by assertion. Still, the creation pattern shapes my counsel. Sexual desire is directed toward union within the marriage covenant, and a habit of private gratification can readily encourage fantasy, secrecy, and preoccupation with one’s own satisfaction. Abstinence can help a person learn to wait under Christ’s authority. I can recommend that without claiming that Scripture directly prohibits every imaginable case.
Paul’s instructions about marriage combine mutual responsibility with recognition of faithful singleness:
Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
Paul directs husbands toward their own wives and wives toward their own husbands (1 Corinthians 7:2). He joins mutual affection with responsibility for one another’s bodies, permitting temporary abstinence for prayer and fasting by agreement. He rejects selfish deprivation without authorizing sexual force. Illness, pain, or recovery may make intimacy difficult. Trauma, medication, and exhaustion also call for care and honest communication rather than pressure.
Within marriage, the question involves more than an individual’s desire for release. Is pornography being used, or is another person being imagined? Is the act hidden because it breaks a promise? It may be replacing mutual intimacy or being used to punish a spouse. Someone may also use it to avoid a necessary conversation, or the conduct may create pressure for unwanted participation. A couple needs to consider what the conduct is doing to their marriage.
A spouse needs the truth about serious betrayal, spending, contact with others, and broken agreements. Health concerns and patterns affecting the marriage also need honest discussion. That does not require graphic descriptions or submission to intrusive surveillance. One spouse’s lower desire does not cause the other’s lust or pornography use; each remains responsible for his or her choices. Qualified pastoral, medical, or clinical help may be needed.
For someone considering marriage, a future spouse is not treatment for lust, pornography, or compulsive behavior. Concealing sinful patterns until after the vows can bring serious betrayal into the new marriage. Nor does loneliness make it wise to marry anyone available. Paul’s statement that it is better to marry than to burn with passion does not command a rushed marriage (1 Corinthians 7:8-9). A truthful covenant requires free participation, maturity, provision, and a willingness to care for the other person.
Jesus lived a completely holy human life without marrying, and Paul describes faithful singleness as a gift (1 Corinthians 7:6-9). An unmarried believer is not incomplete or waiting to become a real adult. He or she needs friendship, shared meals, prayer, useful work, and opportunities to serve in the church. The grief of an unfulfilled desire for marriage can be real without making a faithful life impossible.
Young people need to learn self-control and to understand that some bodily responses occur without a decision. Puberty may bring spontaneous arousal, dreams, or nocturnal emissions that were not chosen. Such events do not require confession as deliberate sin. A distressing thought that arrives unwanted also differs from a fantasy someone decides to entertain.
An involuntary response during assault is not consent. RAINN explains that bodily arousal can occur during an unwanted experience without making it consensual. Freezing, complying under threat, or being unable to stop a stronger person does not transfer guilt to the victim. The offender is responsible for the abuse.
Confession should name what I actually chose. I should not accept blame for someone else’s abuse or for a response I did not choose. Parents and teachers should help young people distinguish these things without calling ordinary bodily development proof that they are filthy.
Repentance, Help, and Safety
An honest examination begins with what someone is doing and why. Name any pornography, lustful fantasy, coveting, or deceit involved. Face broken promises and neglected responsibilities, and recognize a habit that has become controlling. A carefully described hypothetical case cannot excuse those actual choices. We need enough truth to respond faithfully, not a graphic account of every image or sensation.
A period of abstinence may help reveal how much a habit controls someone’s routine. Repeated bargaining or plans to regain access deserve attention, as do escalation and continued conduct despite harm. Anxiety or panic by itself does not prove that the habit has taken control; obsessive fear may also be involved. Seek mature help to understand what is happening rather than treat the attempt to abstain as a crude test of addiction or spiritual worth.
Repentance includes changing the arrangements that make it easier to repeat sin. That may mean deleting material, canceling access, closing secret accounts, or changing a predictable routine. It may also require telling a spouse necessary truth and seeking appropriate accountability. These actions do not buy forgiveness. They express the change of direction repentance requires.
After a lapse, confess the actual sin and return promptly to obedience. One failure does not authorize a binge or prove that change is impossible. Self-hatred does not repair the wrong, either. Godly sorrow agrees with God and turns from sin; destructive shame tells someone he is permanently contaminated and has no place in fellowship. Christ shed His blood to cleanse sinners, and His people should help the repentant believer continue faithfully.
Paul gives practical instruction about turning from conduct that feeds sinful desire:
Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.
Paul’s command to make no provision for the flesh includes decisions made before the final moment of temptation. Notice when the pattern begins and what prepares the way for it. A time of day, private device access, exhaustion, isolation, or a particular emotional response may be involved. Moving into a shared space or calling someone trustworthy may help interrupt the pattern. Rest, work, prayer, or a useful activity may also help. No single substitute is a cure; these choices should remove planned access to sin and make room for obedience.
Persistent compulsion or obsessive doubt may require qualified clinical assessment. Depression, anxiety, trauma, and other health concerns may need attention too. A pastor can explain Scripture, help a person understand confession and find hope in God’s forgiveness, and support relationships and spiritual habits. A clinician can assess mental health, trauma, or compulsive patterns and provide suitable treatment. Both should recognize the limits of their competence.
Neither pastor nor clinician should promise a timetable for change on biblical authority when Scripture gives none. Abstinence carries no biblical guarantee about hormone levels, fertility, strength, or success. Medical questions require qualified medical judgment and reliable evidence. If someone faces immediate danger, coercion, exploitation, or thoughts of self-harm, urgent qualified support takes priority over an ordinary accountability conversation.
Children and adolescents need age-appropriate teaching about bodily development, privacy, and sexual purity. They also need guidance about digital content, consent, and which adults they can trust. Adult silence leaves others to supply that instruction. Mockery, threats, public exposure, and panicked accusations can attach shame to the body while teaching little about self-control.
Answer questions plainly without graphic detail or intrusive questioning about fantasies and physical specifics. Household rules about devices, content, shared spaces, and schedules can reduce access to harmful material. Filters do not replace a truthful relationship, and appropriate parental oversight should be explained rather than disguised dishonestly.
A child’s disclosure or evidence of coercion calls for qualified safeguarding help. Fear of a particular person, unexpected sexualized behavior, or knowledge beyond developmental expectations may also raise concern. Such signs do not by themselves establish exactly what happened. Listen calmly, protect the child, follow applicable reporting law, and avoid conducting a private investigation. Do not require repeated retelling or confront a suspected offender in a way that increases danger.
Some readers first encountered stimulation through grooming, coercion, abuse, or unwanted exposure. Later patterns may be connected with intrusive memories, fear, learned bodily responses, or attempts to find comfort. The abuse they suffered was not their sin. Current choices can still need moral evaluation, but we must distinguish those choices from the violation someone else committed against them.
Qualified support that understands trauma may help a survivor recognize triggers, recover confidence in making choices, and develop safer responses. Pastors should not ask graphic questions or require disclosure before a group. Nor should they demand quick forgiveness or promise that one prayer will remove every effect. No spouse, parent, leader, counselor, or ministry worker can make abuse a private religious matter by invoking authority.
Illegal material, coercion, abuse, or danger to a child requires more than private accountability. Immediate protection and medical care may be needed, along with proper guidance about preserving evidence. Reporting duties and civil authorities may also be involved. Christ does not treat the person who was violated as contaminated. His people should tell the truth about the wrong and place responsibility where it belongs.
Christ Cleanses Sinners and Makes Them New
Sexual restraint cannot justify us before God. Abstaining does not remove pride, deceit, unbelief, or the guilt of other sins. A person with a long sexual history can be fully received through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.
Jesus is the eternal Son, fully God and fully man, born of a virgin and completely sinless. He faced temptation without consenting to sin and is a merciful High Priest for those who struggle. He voluntarily gave Himself to be slain as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. Wicked men inflicted His bodily suffering and death as He willingly shed His innocent blood for us.
The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on Jesus. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit acted in unity. Christ’s saving sacrifice through His shed blood and death was complete before He was buried and rose bodily from the dead. He died for the whole world, and God’s gracious offer is genuine even though people can resist and reject it.
Everyone who truly repents and believes receives forgiveness and justification, meaning a right standing before God. That person is born again, made a new creation, and indwelt and sealed by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is fully God and a divine Person who works through the truth He inspired and produces self-control.
A genuinely born-again believer is eternally secure in Christ. Our conduct does not earn salvation or keep us saved, but new birth produces evidence in a changed life. Calling ourselves Christians does not establish that we have been born again, and assurance gives us no permission for lawlessness. A believer who falls can confess without bargaining to become God’s child again. From that secure relationship, he can continue in holiness without pretending the sin was small.
My Final Thoughts
I counsel abstinence, but I will not claim that Scripture directly condemns every possible instance of the bare physical act or that Onan supplies that prohibition. The commands concerning lust, pornography, deceit, exploitation, covenant faithfulness, and self-control give us substantial guidance. We should apply them to what is actually being chosen.
Where there is sin, name it honestly, remove what supplies it, and seek appropriate help. Where there is an involuntary response or a wound from abuse, do not invent guilt. Christ receives repentant sinners, and the believer can pursue holiness with the security of His forgiveness and the Spirit’s help.