You must smash your idol, not modify your behavior

Mark Driscoll:

In a pastoral counseling session, a man confessed to being sexually addicted to pornography and masturbation, and was guilty of committing adultery on his wife; even engaging in homosexual sex. He had been meeting with a counselor who was not a Christian and was merely trying to modify his behavior rather than smash his idol. His questions to me were all about behavior modification and he was trying to figure out how to not have television or Internet access on the road.

To be fair, he knew that sin leads to death and that it was killing him, his wife, and their marriage. He meant well, but he had been pointed in the wrong direction in pursuit of a solution. I explained that while we need to not tempt our flesh and the changes he had made were likely good, they were not nearly enough because his real issue was not the Internet but idolatry. What he needed was not behavior modification, but worship transformation.

Repentance is the act of turning from sin and returning to God by trusting in Jesus Christ who is the perfect worshiper.

In his condemnation of idolatry, Paul predicted the same lifestyle this man was living (Romans 1:25-28). Those who fail to worship God their Creator worship that which is created. This can be any created person or thing, but is often the worship of the self and sex. Why? Because, of all the things God made, the human body is the apex of God’s creative work (Genesis 1:21). This fact makes its passions and pleasures the most likely candidate for idolatrous false worship. In our age, this includes an addiction to beauty, pornography, sexual sin, drunkenness, drug abuse, people-pleasing, fear of man, and gluttony as Paul said, since for some people, their god is their stomach.

For this man, the real issue was he was worshiping the created body rather than the Creator God. He was breaking both the first and second commandments, which led to his breaking the seventh.

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