The Death of Porn: A Webinar with Ray Ortlund

Arvind Balaram: Great to be here with all of you this evening. And thanks for joining us. And we’re here to talk about a very, very important topic, as you all know, and that is for pornography and issues related to that. I don’t know if you realize that India is the third highest consumer of porn in the world.

And so this is something that’s of huge relevance to each one of us. It’s also something that’s not just kind of out there in the world. This is something that’s very much in the Church as well. And so it’s something that affects every one of us, young and old, men and women.

I was also reading that research says that in some parts of the world, at least, the average age of exposure first exposure to porn is eleven years. And if you can just imagine all of the effects that that has on young minds and hearts and brains and just the effect that it has on all of society. So this is a huge issue.

It’s something that needs to be addressed, even though it may make us feel a little uncomfortable, perhaps addressing a topic like this. But obviously, it’s something that we need to talk about. And so we’re glad that we’re talking about it this evening.

And we’re glad to have our special guest speaker with us to address this issue for us. And that’s Pastor Ray Ortlund and I’ll introduce him in a moment here.

But before I do that, I want to let you know that today’s event is brought to you and kind of sponsored by The Gospel Coalition India. The Gospel Coalition is a fellowship of churches and pastors, christians that produces all kinds of gospel centered resources for the church at large. And The Gospel Coalition has one of the most viewed websites, Christian websites in the world. It also has different coalitions, chapters, and branches all around the world.

And we’re very glad to announce this evening that we’re going to get our own coalition and website here in India. So The Gospel Coalition India is going to be starting launching early next year, 2022. And so this is a place that will be able to produce articles, videos, podcasts, a whole host of resources for us, for the church in India.

And our vision and our desire is to see the whole Indian church renewed in the biblical gospel, to ultimately impact a billion people for the glory of God. And so we’re super excited about The Gospel Coalition launching in India. And we’ll keep you informed about that. And I’m also happy that you are a part of the very first event of The Gospel Coalition India.

That’s happening right now, as I speak this one right here. And so we’re glad that you could be a part of it.

And so now, without further do, I want to introduce our speaker for the evening, that’s Pastor Ray Ortlund. Let me just tell you a little bit about him. He received his BA from Wheaton College, ThM from Dallas Theological Seminary, MA from the University of California, Berkeley, PhD from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.

He served as an associate pastor of Old Testament and Semitic languages in Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, for many years. He was ordained by Lake Avenue Congressional Church in Pasadena, California in 1975.

He served as the pastor of Immanuel Church in Nashville, Tennessee. That’s an Acts 29 Church. He’s a Council member with The Gospel Coalition. He’s also the President of Renewal Ministries. And Ray has authored several books, including his most recent one on the topic that he’s going to be talking about today, i.e., The Death of Porn: Men of Integrity Building a World of Nobility.

He’s also the co host, along with Sam Allberry, of a relatively new podcast from The Gospel Coalition called You’re Not Crazy. And the tagline of that podcast is Gospel Sanity for Young Pastors. And I’ve been listening to it, and it’s been fantastic. So I encourage you to go on to The Gospel Coalition website and subscribe to that podcast. Ray has been married to Janie for 40 happy years. They’ve got four children, 13 delightful grandchildren.

And before I turn it over to Ray, let me just let you know how the evening is going to proceed. He’s going to speak for about 30 minutes or so, and then we’re going to turn it over to you to ask questions. And he’ll respond to questions. And so you can be thinking of those and will let you know how to communicate whatever questions you might have for Ray a little bit later after he speaks. And one other thing before I turn it over to Ray.

And that is the reason that we’re doing a Zoom meeting like this is because Ray asked if he can see his audience. So every speaker, of course, loves to see the people that he’s addressing. And so if you feel comfortable, I know he would appreciate it if you wouldn’t mind turning on your video. And so that would be fantastic so that we can just be together in this and especially so that Ray can see who he’s talking to. Okay.

So with that, let me turn it over to Pastor Ray Ortlund. And we’re so glad that you’re here, Ray, and I’ll give it over to you now. Thank you.

Ray Ortlund: It is my privilege to be with you all. I very much respect how you are coming together, rallying around Jesus and his gospel and using The Gospel Coalition as a rallying point and as a platform for advancing the cause of Christ there in your wonderful nation. In launching this, you are pioneering something new, and it’s never easy to be a pioneer, but the Lord is calling you to play that strategic role. He is with you. His hand is upon you.

The anointing of the Holy Spirit is covering you and the one whom we serve as we all believe he has all authority in heaven and on Earth. Everything is going his way, and we have the privilege of serving him and paying a price for him. So I feel very connected with you. May I be your friend? Would that be okay? Let’s just agree we’re friends now, and let’s just jump into this now. This book, The Death of Porn, is founded on four beliefs.

1. We are all created in the image of God.

That’s on the first page of the Bible, Genesis 1:26-28. That is not a denominational option. That is just baseline orthodox Christianity. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God, he created him male and female. He created them. That means, of course, that every human being, I mean, this is a matter of creation.

Every human being we all believe has dignity, worth, stature. Everyone deserves to be treated as a human being. One of my commentaries on Genesis over here behind me on my shelf, points out that the word ‘image’ in Genesis 1 is used elsewhere in the Old Testament for a statue. But clearly we are not statues, literally statues of God. Because God has no form, he has no edges. God is spirit, Jesus said in John 4, so in what sense are we in the image of God?

And this commentator points out that the word suggests this scenario. When an emperor has a vast empire and there are parts of his empire where he does not personally visit, often, he will, in those parts of his empire, erect a statue of himself to declare to everyone there that he is indeed their king and their emperor. And that’s who we are, we represent, and by his grace, for his glory alone can embody the kingdom of Christ entering into this world. That’s what he created us for. We represent the king of the universe, which means that we reflect his royalty.

I very much respect the British royal family. I respect the Queen very much. She’s a magnificent person. We are a royal family too, representing a much higher throne. And the gospel does not begin in Genesis 3 in human sin, the gospel begins at Genesis 1.

And God’s goodness and God’s wisdom and our dignity as his image bearers, bringing his royalty into this world. God created all of us for that magnificent purpose. So that’s the first belief, we are all created in the image of God. Second belief.

And this takes us to Genesis 3.

2. We are all sinners. We are all sexual sinners

I am faithful to my wife and I am a sexual sinner. Everyone who enters into puberty becomes a sexual sinner. Because everything about us, everything about me, at all levels, all the time. If sin were the colour blue, everything about me, all the time would glow some degree of blue. That’s not a choice I make as much as it is a condition I live with, and it touches everything that I am. And you too.

So let’s admit it. God has put his magnificence upon us. And secondly, we have not stewarded magnificently the gifts that he has given us, including our sexuality. And every one of us has reasons for regret and grief and repentance. We are not saying, by the way, to our mission field, your sexuality is your problem.

God gave us our sexuality and he’s not wanting to take it back. He’s not having second thoughts. He is not wishing he had not given us that gift. God gave us our sexuality as part of the package of creation that he himself called. Very good. At the end of Genesis 1, we’re saying to our mission field, along with many other messages, “Your sexuality was created with magnificence and with wisdom. And Christ can redeem all that.”

We are including our sexuality. I don’t have it with me, but I have a smartphone that’s being recharged in another room. If I take my smartphone and use it to hammer nails, I will break my smartphone. Hammering nails is not what a smartphone was created for. If I use my smartphone for what it was created for, it works.

Human sexuality is brilliant. If I may say it this way, thank you for being understanding. It’s brilliant communications technology. If I take this brilliant communications technology and use it to hammer nails, I will break it.

If I’m going to enter into the experience of sexual wholeness as God created it to be, I need to repent my way from Genesis 3 and go back through Christ and his grace to Genesis 1 and go back to agreeing with God that his purposes in our magnificent sexuality are way better than our crazy ideas for our sexuality.

So the Christian church today is not saying to the world, “You folks are way too interested in sexuality. That’s your problem.” What we’re saying to the world is, “God understands and cares about our sexuality far more than we do. Let’s go learn from him.”

So, number one, we’re all created in the image of God. Number two, we are all sexual sinners and we all have regrets.

3. Jesus, our saviour, is recruiting every one of us to fight for our integrity and to fight for the dignity of every person, to create a world of nobility and of safety.

Starting right where we are with what we have. So we want to think big, start small, and grow this impact one step at a time. But we all deeply believe this is a matter of profound conviction. We all feel this. This is why we’re talking about this today.

We all deeply believe and feel, no one should be degraded, no one should be used. No one should be bought and sold. No one should be displayed in a humiliating way. No one. We deeply believe and feel everyone should be treated with dignity and with respect such that they can.

I’m a Christian pastor. The Lord has called me, and I want to be such a man that anyone and everyone can feel comfortable in my presence. They literally have nothing to fear from me. We all feel that way. We want our churches to be that. So we look at and this takes us to our fourth foundational belief underneath this book.

One, we are all created in the image of God. Two, we are all sexual sinners. Three, Jesus is recruiting us to stand up for the dignity of everyone and to make a prophetic statement to our generation.

4. The Role of the Pornography Industry

Well, for starters, this is not good sex education for our children. But far more, not only will this destroy us into the future, and it’s our privilege and sacred responsibility in our generation to take our stand.

Here’s what I want to say, though. Number four, the porn industry offers itself as brief, momentary entertainment, brief thrills, some sexual fun, not a big deal, nobody’s getting really hurt, and so forth.

The porn industry utterly— it not only trivialises who we are—the porn industry denies everything we believe in, everything we revere, everything we’re living for. The porn industry comes out of a total worldview, and that industry brings with it a total worldview. The porn industry is not about sex. It is about God and every way in which God makes a difference.

And the porn industry is the absolute, total, blatant denial of God and of Christ and of the gospel and of us and of everyone on the face of the earth. It is the utter repudiation and desecration of everything glorious and humane and worth living for. Let’s see the porn industry for what it is.

Now, those are the beliefs that got me going in writing this book. And as a pastor, I have had so many conversations through the years, as all pastors do, all of us do, so many conversations with younger guys. And it came to the place as the years went by, when I no longer wondered if, let’s say, in the last week or so, this guy I’m speaking with had been exposed to pornography. I just assumed. I came to realise, I have to assume because pornography is the wallpaper of our culture and it’s time for a change. And it can change.

I don’t know about your nation, but as I look at my own lifetime here in the USA, here’s a culture shift I’ve seen in my own lifetime. When I was a boy and a teenager, all the cool people smoked cigarettes. And the tobacco industry was accepted, respected, very profitable.

When I went to a movie, the movie stars all smoked cigarettes, you know, and it was sophisticated, it was suave, it was cool. And if you wanted to be like that, then you’d light up and starting, I think, in the 1970s. And then it got momentum in the 80s and the 90s. Voices began to be raised in objection to the tobacco industry because it was literally killing people. And we all knew that. But we needed voices to be raised to say, this is just wrong. This is literally killing people.

And the industry, we’re not saying wipe the industry out, but we are saying this has to be limited. It has to be regulated more strictly by law. So, for example, I think it was in the 1990s, a package of cigarettes had to have by law a warning label on it in red. And I forget the exact wording, but it was just a nice diplomatic way of saying, if you smoke these cigarettes, they might kill you.

Cool people in our culture, they’re not smoking anymore. People still smoke. But I’m saying, you know what I’m talking about. There’s been a shift in the perception, a shift in our cultural assessment and smoking cigarettes I have seen in my lifetime smoking cigarettes marginalised, limited, and even stigmatised.

And I’m sure I don’t know India. I’m sorry, I don’t know India well enough to be aware of the shifts that you’ve gone through as a culture where beliefs and practices that once were traditional and just widely accepted, the perception was changed. India and America, we’ve taken steps forward along the way. Well, now it’s time for the porn industry.

We need voices to help expose it, name it, tell the truth about it, marginalize it, stigmatize it, limit it. So that 20 years from now and 30 years from now, America is different and India is different.

And we know this can happen, friends, because the reason why I wrote each chapter as a letter is this—what kind of fired me up about this was I read a letter that John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, wrote to William Wilbur Force in 1791. This was the last letter John Wesley wrote before he died. He wrote it from his deathbed. He was an old man.

William Wilberforce was a young man. He was a politician. He was a member of the British Parliament. He was a Christian. And Wesley wrote to him and said, in the name of Christ, “I’m calling you to devote your life to opposing the slave trade in the British Empire.”

Wesley said, “You will have many powerful opponents. They will fight like mad to defeat you. But if God is for you, who can be against you?”

He called Wilberforce to this great and magnificent and just and godly cause. And Wilberforce accepted that call. And it took decades and he suffered many defeats, but he and others did eventually win that fight. Now, it didn’t turn Britain into the Garden of Eden. They still had a lot of problems, but they didn’t have it. The slave trade was declared illegal.

We can’t turn this world by our ministries into a Garden of Eden. We need nothing less, friends. We all believe this. We need nothing less than the second coming of Christ. But here in our generation, what is our sovereign Christ calling us to do? What difference is he calling us to make? And I believe that I cannot look at the porn industry and shrug my shoulders and say, well, that’s just the way it is. It’ll never change. It’s not good.

But, oh, friends, this is painful for me. Here in the United States of America, until 1863, slavery was legal. I live in the state of Tennessee. Here in the south part of the USA. Slavery was legal in this state until 1863 and Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Declaration.

Now, when I think about America before 1863 and the Christian community in a place like Tennessee, there were basically three kinds of Christians in the Christian community. There were Christians who owned slaves. They had bought slaves. They may have sold slaves, they were involved in the traffic, and they found some way to rationalise it. They even used the Bible to justify it. And today we look back at those American Christians and are grieved for them.

Secondly, there were Christians who were just sort of they didn’t own slaves. They knew it was bad, but they didn’t do anything about it. They just accepted it. They thought, well, you know, what can you do? This is just the way things are. And they were quietly passive.

Thirdly, there were some Christians who were active liberators, and they won. And today, here is this horrible trade analogous to the slavery of my own nation’s past. Who am I going to be in my generation? Am I going to be involved in that trade? Am I going to be quietly passive or am I going to be an active liberator? I mean, we’re all thinking the same thing right now, aren’t we?

By God’s grace, for his glory alone, we want to take our stand and powerful interests. I mean, the porn industry is this gorilla in the room. But you and I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit, and we the hand resting upon us is the hand of the one who has all authority in heaven and on earth.

And I wrote this simple book because I wanted to light a fuse that might detonate an explosion of liberation and joy and dignity. Oh friend, what if here in America and there with you in India, what if ten years from today, what if some of the most compelling preachers of the gospel are former porn performers? What if the next great revival begins inside the porn industry?

Our Lord above looks at those people, the performers, the videographers, the website managers, the financial investors, everybody involved and the consumers. He looks upon every one of them with compassion. All he wants to do is just scoop them up in his arms, in his embrace.

What if God gives us the privilege of serving both the people in our churches, the men in our churches, especially women, too, and those in our communities, in our mission field who are involved in porn. And even as only God can orchestrate reaching our ministry, extending our ministry out into the porn industry itself. Oh, my goodness. What a sacred privilege.

Wouldn’t it be great to get down on our knees and just ask the Lord for that privilege, which we totally don’t deserve? But I think he would love to give us. What if America and India, ten years from now, the consumption of porn in our two nations collapsed, and the people running the porn websites are worried about their loss of income, the loss of power, their loss of autonomy.

Well, I could go on and on. You see what I’m thinking and what I’m longing for. My beliefs. Your beliefs. There’s my heart, and I know it’s your heart, too. So thank you for giving me the privilege of addressing you.

Akshay Rajkumar: Ray, thank you so much for those of you who have joined us. My name is Akshay, and I just want to thank you, Ray. Thank you so much for your talk today. And thank you so much for writing this book. The book is called The Death of Porn: Men of Integrity, Building a World of Nobility. And my experience of reading it was very personal and moving.

I felt swept up. I really felt swept up, as if God reached out and swept me up, brought me into his presence. And it’s a rush of hope. It’s a thrill of hope. So it’s not so much a strategy or a plan, although there is that in there. But it’s just this rousing series of letters written from a father to a son. And very powerful and very moving. So I’d love for you to get this book. We hope to have this printed in India soon.

Let me begin by asking a couple of questions today to begin with. I think in India, talking about sexuality is always associated with shame. And fighting pornography is always a private, secret, individual battle. So could you speak to us a little bit into overcoming shame and finding community because it seems like a battle very hard to win by yourself?

Ray Ortlund: Yes, that is the question at issue here. Thank you for that. Yes. Actually, no one I believe no one is helped by being shamed, scolded, belittled, yelled at, pressured. Sometimes Christians behave that way to one another. Where is that in the gospel? You and I did not become Christians because Jesus screamed at us long enough until we finally gave up and said, “Okay, you win.”

We became Christians because we encountered a compassion and a love and mercy and grace we’ve never believed was real. That’s how we become Christians. That’s how we grow as Christians. The future of the world lies in the grace of Christ.

James 5:16, for example, actually, thank you for what you said about the book because what you just said is exactly what I was hoping for. I want a reader of this book to feel understood and respected and valued and lifted up. That’s how we change. I deeply believe this.

So where this book takes—it’s written to men, but women tell me it helps them too, so that’s great. Where this takes the reader is gathering with other Christians, men with men, women with women, and we begin to live in. James 5:16, “Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.”

That shaming voice between our two ears, that’s inside my head and it’s inside everybody’s head. The gospel says, the gospel gives us the authority to say to that shaming voice, “I will not let you dictate to me anymore. You are not telling me the truth about myself.”

This shaming, accusing thought inside me.That is not Jesus talking to me. That’s me talking to me. And I’m not putting up with that anymore. And so if I lived in Delhi, what I would want to do is I would want to get with Akshay or someone like you once a week to fight the shaming voice in my head.

And I would fight it by looking you right in the eyes and as a brother in Christ and saying, “Okay, here’s what isn’t working in my life right now. Here’s how I’m not doing well, here are the patterns of sin in me. Here’s how I’ve messed up this past week. Let me tell you about that.”

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and it’s mutual to one another back and forth. So then Akshay would say to me, “Okay, Ray. And here’s how I messed up.” And there’s no shaming, there’s no scolding. And we listen respectfully and quietly, perhaps with tears to one another, and Akshay would put his hand on my shoulder and he would say, “Well, Ray, let me pray for you.”

And he would pray for me, therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another. And after you had prayed, actually, I would put my hand on your shoulder and I would say, “Oh, Lord, Oh, Lord.” And I would pray for my dear brother.

And then we would have every right in Christ by his grace to rejoice and accept healing and expect healing. Shame keeps us from healing. Confession destroys shame and opens the door to healing.

Now, I have to tell you, when I meet in this very room with Pastor TJ Tims and Sam Alberry, to whom I confess my sins, at one level, I love it. At another level, I hate it. It’s so embarrassing. I don’t want to lose face. I want everyone to think I’m wonderful.

One of the problems with the world today is you just don’t know how wonderful I really am. That’s ridiculous. So it’s really good for me and to confess my sins to these brothers. And it’s the sin that I most want not to confess. That’s the very one I most need to confess. Then I start getting free. So, Akshay, thank you for raising the issue of shame.

Precious brothers and sisters, let’s believe the gospel enough to not be bullied by the shaming voice within, but by talking back to that voice and saying, “No, you will leave me alone long enough while I go to my brothers or my sisters and I’m going to confess my sins. Come back in 30 minutes. You can bother me then, but I’m going to have 30 minutes of peace and quiet inside my head and in my conscience while I confess my sins to my friends. Then when I’m done, you can come back.”

Thank you, Akshay. That is the key issue. And let’s never, never shame one another, but only comfort and help and pray for one another. We are in this together. I am a sexual sinner. I want to say that to you. And if you never say that to me, I’m not sure I can trust you. But of course you would say that because it’s true. Okay, long answer. I apologise.

Akshay Rajkumar: Thank you so much, Ray. We’ve got a number of questions coming in. Let me start with what seems to be the most popular one. What do you do if a pastor is addicted to porn? How do you correct him?

Ray Ortlund: Yeah. Thank you. That’s a very significant question. It’s not easy to answer that question because different denominations have different procedures for caring for and shepherding the shepherds. Let me answer it personally.

Therefore, as a pastor, if I were involved in repeated ongoing uses of porn, I would feel conscience bound to start asking very deep questions about myself. What is going on with me? Why am I doing this? This is not about porn. Something far deeper is when did I stop walking with Christ? Was it three months ago? Six months ago? Three years ago? How did I get here? What other compromises have I made to land here?

So, very personal questions then ministry questions I would have to ask. Conscience would require it. Integrity would require it. Why am I preaching on Sundays? Why am I leading in worship? I’m representing myself to these people as a man of God, qualified to lead them to a deep place with Christ. But I’m not in a deep place with Christ. Why am I doing this? Is it just a job?

The christian ministry is not just a job. It’s a sacred calling. And how can I expect the blessing of God if I’m I mean, all pastors are sinners, but pastors with integrity are not protecting and concealing their sins. If one of us is a pastor and involved in porn, I think the place to go is James 5:16. I would say to every one of us and especially to pastors—James 5:16, therefore confess your sins to one another.

Here’s the question that raises. To whom do you confess your sins? Now, if we don’t accept the Roman Catholic practice of the confessional, fine, I don’t. But to whom do we confess our sins? I’ve just got to have faithful, trustworthy men of God to whom I confess my sins. I’ve got two men, and they know the Ray Ortlund behind the appearance. Who knows you really?

I believe brothers, that our saviour above does not shame us. And I believe that there are brothers around every brother, sisters around every sister who can be trusted and to whom we really can let our guard down and talk about what’s really going on.

Akshay Rajkumar: Thank you so much, Ray. There’s a lot of questions coming in. I doubt we’ll be able to get to all of them. So I’m going to try to find a theme in a few and just try to ask one question that kind of summarizes a couple of them.

So there’s a couple of questions that generally have to do with how can I cultivate love and desire for Jesus that is stronger than the lure of sexual temptation. I think in the book you mentioned how when someone goes to a porn site, they’re looking for Jesus, they’re looking for God subconsciously. So could you speak into that a little bit?

Ray Ortlund: That’s a profound question. I believe that in creation, God filled the world with so many pleasures of so many kinds because each one is a prophetic whisper to us of his ultimate and eternal goodness and pleasure and joy.

When I get up each morning here in Tennessee, I make myself some really strong coffee. I love coffee. Why did God create coffee? Why did God create me such that he knew I would love coffee? Ultimately, coffee doesn’t matter. But when I sit down in the morning with my open Bible and a cup of hot coffee, I’m experiencing a tiny literal taste of the goodness of God. And this is true of all the joys and pleasures and beauties of this world, including our sexuality.

Our sexuality is a prophetic gift at the deepest level of its meaning, declaring to us pleasures at his right hand that are forevermore. Psalm 16. So I don’t know that we can ask the Lord to flood our sinful hearts with such pleasures from above that we finally become convinced he is the one we really want.

Because, dear ones, there’s coming a moment when I’m going to drink my last cup of coffee. There’s coming a moment when I’m going to be dead and buried and all this will be over. And you and I both believe the same is true for you. Of course, we all believe that is when the pleasure actually begins.

That’s when we leave these metaphors and enter into the realities. That is when we leave these little whispers and enter into the great symphony. Jesus Christ is pure pleasure. Let’s believe it and let’s go tell the world.

Akshay Rajkumar: Thank you, Ray. All right, let me jump into a number of questions that really tap into the question of hope. They start with, “How do I?” And they are really about is it possible to have victory in this area? What does victory look like? Could you speak into that? Because you said even in the I think in most of the tagline, the book is, your battle with porn isn’t about porn. It’s about hope. So could you give us some hope?

Ray Ortlund: Thank you. We all believe the reason why we’re Christians at all is that we do not believe that evil and oppression and despair and ugliness are ultimate reality. We believe that goodness and joy and beauty and truth and glory, our ultimate reality.

We have parachuted into a universe where evil is secondary, dependent, parasitic and temporary. But evil, in its arrogance, constantly screams at us that it is ultimate and final. It’s here to stay. We might as well just give up and give in. That is the false prophecy of evil.

There are many wise ways to fight back against that lie. But here’s one way. Martin Luther taught me this. When the devil accuses us of our sins and tells us what lousy christians we are, what failures. And he points to our sins and he says, “There you go again and you’ll never change, you piece of trash.”

And those kinds of thoughts that are in. You know what we say? We say, “Devil, thank you for reminding me that I’m such a sinner. What a comfort. Because Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for sinners. And all my sins, by the grace of God, lie not on my shoulders, but on his. And he went to the cross and paid the price for my sins in full, in advance. He said, ‘It is finished. It is done with.’

So devil, when you intimidate me and bully me by reminding me of my sins, you do not terrify me. But you comfort me greatly because you remind me of Jesus, my saviour, from sin. Thank you very much. Please come back and tell me again soon, because I will mock you again the next time you come. And you will get tired of messing with me and my mind because I know what to say to you and I will resist you and I will defeat you every day because I am winning. I’m on the right side of history and you are a loser. And I’m here to tell you.”

Akshay Rajkumar: Thank you, Ray.

Ray Ortlund: I’m serious about that. By the way, Akshay, sorry. We need to talk back against evil. Let’s agree. By grace right now we’re going to draw a line in the sand. We are no longer taking that bullying from evil and Satan and temptation and our own pasts and our own regrets. We’re not going to take that anymore. That does not define us.

It is the love of Christ and the grace of Christ and the finished work on the cross and the endless power of the Holy Spirit that defines us. Now that’s the deepest truth about me. It’s the deepest truth about you. So there and let’s throw our heads back and laugh the laugh of faith and go do something great for Christ.

Akshay Rajkumar: Thank you so much. Let me just ask maybe a question, which it brings together just views that the world has of sexuality and pornography. So in secular counselling, pornography is encouraged as a positive coping mechanism. There’s movements that are now recognising the evils of porn, and the alternative is ethical pawn, where the participants are willing and well paid and things like that.

And there’s a question about how in India, pornography, pornography and prostitution helps to restrain rape in India because men can satisfy themselves in these ways in these alternative ways. So these are kind of views in the world of sexuality. How do you engage with them meaningfully?

Ray Ortlund: That’s a great question. It’s a timely question. I think, friends, that we are close to a tipping point about porn because there are non christian voices being raised that are well researched and that are exposing this. And here’s a recommendation.

One of you or someone, some leading christian voice in India needs to write another book answering these very objections with strong research, because porn does not offset sexual crime. It intensifies it and spreads it and increases it. But that is a point that has to be proved by research.

My book is a theological argument that will resonate with Christians, but more broadly across the culture, we need evidence based arguments. I’m sure that some of these objections, actually that you’re referring to, they might even be sincere, but they are not well informed.

So we need a book. India needs a book that takes each one of these objections and each chapter answers it with evidence and that anyone, christian and non christian, can read and say, “Whoa, well, that changes my mind.” So, yeah, that is the next step.

Actually, I believe that is really crucial. And more and more research is coming out. We’re at a good time for that argument to be made right across the culture and those books to be written. Right now, the research is out there. It just has to be brought together and made into a book.

Akshay Rajkumar: Thank you. Let me ask a question, a couple of questions that are asking the same thing. How far can an addiction of porn take a real believer away from Christ? Or will I still be saved if I continue engaging in sexual sin without repentance? The Bible says Jesus died for my past, present and future. So, yeah, just questions about persistent sin.

Ray Ortlund: Yes. And everyone one of us faces that question inevitably in some area, not necessarily with regard to porn, but we discover some sort of defeat and impasse. All of us do at some point. Just this morning, I was reading and meditating on John 10:28. “I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand.”

The verse does not say, “No one will snatch them out of my hand except that one weakness and sin that is in your life. No one will snatch them out of my hand.” Now, that’s very clear. We could go to Romans 8: 31-39. “Nothing will ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” So, friends in Christ, we are in Noah’s Ark to ride all the way through the flood of divine judgment and get out the other side.

But at the same time, Colossians 1:10, we want to be fully pleasing to him. We are safe and secure in him. We want also to be fully pleasing to him. We all feel the same way. I don’t want one area of my life to be withheld from him, hidden from him, where I’m saying to him, “Stay out of here. Keep your distance. This is mine, not yours.”

Fully pleasing to Him does not mean sinless. It does mean completely open to him. So we are secure in him forever. We want to be fully pleasing to him. And it takes us right back to James 5:16, when I am in utter defeat, because with my understandings and my capacities, I’m facing this sin in my life. And it just has me down on the floor in a headlock and I can’t get free. Okay? That’s when I go to my brothers. That’s when you go to your sisters and so forth.

Okay, here’s what’s happening. I am defeated. I am embarrassed. I am just profoundly dismayed. Pray for me, and they will. And God promises to answer that prayer if we’re living in isolation. We will not do well. If we’re living in community, real honest community of trust, we will trend well.

Akshay Rajkumar: Thank you so much. I think we have time for one last question. I’ll ask the most popular one. In the Bible and in recent history, we’ve seen men of great faith falling into sexual sin. If men like them couldn’t battle in this area, how can I do it?

Ray Ortlund: That is such… we all feel the urgency of that question, don’t we? I would go back to what we just considered together. Any Christian man or woman who walks with Christ alone, facing his or her own issues alone, is headed for disaster.

I believe friends, I am always five minutes away from total disaster if I’m just by myself. But any Christian man or woman walking with Christ in honest community, with trusted brothers, trusted sisters, the blessing of God is all over that walk.

Jesus did not come to save isolated individuals. Jesus came to create a new kind of community in a world of shaming. He came to create a world of confession and prayer and healing. So precious friends that we all listened to and trusted and respected. And now we grieve over them. Something entered in and got a hold of them and they just kept it to themselves and it ate them up. Oh, dear ones, that does not have to happen.

Akshay Rajkumar: Ray, thank you so much. We’re out of time for the evening and we really want to thank you so much from the bottom of our hearts just for being available, for just pouring your heart out and lifting us up to the grace of God and just reminding us of the hope we have. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. You really encouraged us and we’re really really grateful.

Ray Ortlund: I am profoundly grateful, especially because you’ve had to stay up late into the evening to share this time together. And I do thank you and it is what a privilege for me. Thank you Akshay. Thank you one and all.

Akshay Rajkumar: Thank you. Let me just remind everyone who’s here. The book is called The Death of Porn: Men of Integrity Building a World of Nobility. We hope to have it printed in India soon. And also, I just want to remind you if you still have the link to the type form, make sure to sign up. Tell us how you felt about the webinar.

And if you’d like to stay in touch, we would love to keep you informed about The Gospel Coalition India and its launch and all the events leading up to it. So make sure to sign up for that mailing list and we’ll stay in touch with you. Let me close in praying and let me pray for Ray and just pray for all of us.

Let’s pray. Father, we just want to thank you so much, Lord, for your grace to us in Christ. And I just pray for each of us here that you would really give us a vision of who we are through your eyes, Lord. I just pray that we would really cease to see ourselves through our own filters and our own perceptions and really be given eyes to see ourselves the way you see us.

Because we are in your eyes, beloved, and we belong to you. And you love us, not for anything in ourselves, but because you are love and you have set your affection on us and you have chosen us and called us to be your own. And Lord, we need this, Lord, we need to see ourselves the way you see us.

It’s when we lose sight of that that we turn to things to make us feel better and to kind of heal ourselves. But if we could see ourselves the way you see us, how our lives would be different and how our hearts would change. So I ask for your spirit, Lord, to just move in a so powerfully, Lord, that you would lift our eyes, help us see you clearly, help us see ourselves through your eyes clearly, and help us know deep in our hearts that we are your beloved and we are treasured and loved and cherished in a way that even our own imaginations cannot fully comprehend.

We pray for your Spirit to keep this love fresh in our hearts and move in us in a way where we have no more doubts, no more shame, no more guilt about who we are, but truly believe and truly rest in the cross of Christ and truly put our hope in the grace to be shown to us, Lord.

We thank you, Lord. We thank you so much for all you’ve done for us in Christ. And we pray, Lord, for the Indian church to be rich in the grace of the gospel and that we would really begin to be able to speak about sexuality freely and wisely and be able to confess our sins to one another, be able to pray for one another, and be able to experience the healing that you promise to us.

I pray that small communities would grow and build in their momentum of growing in grace, and many many would testify to the power and the victory that they have received in community and through your spirit and through the faith that they’ve been given in their hearts to see themselves as you see them.

We pray for, just, this country to be delivered from its bondage to pornography and to be filled with hope, Lord, because it’s our despair that we turn to substitutes. So I pray for rush of hope to come into the country through the church and through your people. Make us people of hope that inspire hope.

And I thank you so much for Ray being with us here this evening. We thank you so much for his ministry, his faithfulness and just his heart and the way that he has shepherded us and led us and just poured his heart out to us in bringing to us the grace of Christ.

I pray, Lord, that you would bless him, bless his ministry, bless his family, bless and just give him a rich experience of your grace even as he proclaims it. May he always be rich in your love for him, Lord, and rejoice always in being your beloved. We thank you for this evening and we thank you for your presence with us this evening.

In Jesus name I pray, Amen.

All right. Thank you all for joining us.