What is the real cost of pornography?

John Piper explained in a small talk recorded at a recent 2015 conference for pastors here

in Minneapolis.

Here's what he said.

Not all sexual desire is lust.

God made sexual desire.

It has its good place.

In fact, it can become an act of worship in the temple of marriage.

But lust is a sexual desire gone wrong.

Here's my definition.

Lust is a sexual desire that dishonors its object and disregards God.

Disregards the promises and the warnings of having or losing the beauties of Christ.

The lust it after woman or man in your head or on the screen or on the street is dishonored.

Not treated as a sacred, precious, eternal person in the image of God.

Whose eternal destiny is always paramount and whose holiness we either long for or ignore.

And the only way that kind of dishonor can daringly be carried out and holds sway is by disregarding God while we are in the sway of lust.

Ponder with me for a few minutes the natural and the spiritual role of self-control in relation to lust.

Addiction, I think, is a relative term.

I would stake my life on the gas that in this room no one is absolutely addicted to pornography or any sexual sin.

None of you is.

What I mean by this is if the stakes are high enough and sure enough, you will have all the self-control you need to conquer any sexual temptation.

For example, tonight, if you are feeling totally in the sway of a sexual desire, more blazing, more powerful,

...