Should I tell my spouse about my pornography addiction?

We cannot understand why you should have occasion to seek a human opinion on a point where Hebrews 13:4 and 1 Timothy 4:1-4 are so clear. Oh! when will people learn to open their Bible and bow down to its holy authority in all things? We have an abhorrence of that mock spirituality, sanctimoniousness and transcendentalism so apparent in the remarks to which you call our attention. To us it seems to be simply holiness in the flesh, which we know is one of Satan's crafty wiles. As we said, marriage was instituted by the Lord God in the Garden of Eden. It was sanctioned by the presence of Christ in Cana of Galilee. It is pronounced honorable by the Holy Spirit in Hebrews 13. To forbid it is said to be a doctrine of demons in 1 Timothy 4. This is quite sufficient for us, let pious sentimentalists and hyper-spiritualists say what they will.

It must be entirely a question of individual faith. You must walk before God in happy loving fellowship. You should both wait upon God together and seek to be of one mind in the Lord. This is your happy privilege. It is of the utmost importance for man and wife to cultivate the daily habit of waiting together on the Lord. It has a marvelous effect upon the whole range of domestic life. Bring everything before God, pour out your hearts together. Have no secrets, no reserve. Then will your hearts be knit together in holy love, and the current of your personal, conjugal and domestic life will flow peacefully and happily on, to the praise of Him who has made you one and called you to walk together as heirs of the grace of life.

Now I say as a husband, have I failed? What do I do if I have failed as a husband? Obviously the first thing to do is to get on my knees and confess my failure to the Lord in exactly the same way as I would confess any other failure. There is no difference. Let us be preserved from thinking that any failure in the home can be glossed over lightly because it does not reach the public eye. God sees us. We are under the eye of God. Any failure in the home must be confessed in exactly the same way as any public failure. And if the wife fails in any of her responsibilities she has exactly the same recourse for help and for blessing, to confess it. Then we must do something that we are not always prone to do, to confess it to each other that we might not fall into the same snare again and so avoid anything that would hinder the interests of the Lord. I believe with all my heart that Aquila and Priscilla would be such a couple, so concerned about doing what was right for the Lord that they would be harmoniously knitted together, united in the interests of the Lord. This is the attitude that governed their lives. What a delightful couple indeed.

p451 [From the French.] DEAR -, - I had already heard of your fall, but I did not know the details, nor did I know that you had been restored. … Having been restored by the assembly, I receive you as pardoned by God, and as His child, recognised by Him as belonging to the assembly just as any other brother - as myself - for we are all pardoned sinners. But, as a personal matter, I may tell you what I think. You never knew your heart to the bottom, you never were really delivered. When this is the case, there is always too much confidence in oneself. Then your activity, and the acceptance of your labours by others, have hidden from you the inward state of your soul; and this very activity has had the effect of making your conscience ever less sensitive to the evil which was in the heart. God, in His sovereign and faithful grace and in His mercy, did not allow this to go further. I do not at all think that you were wanting in sincerity; but activity, when one is not in the presence of God, when the heart does not judge itself, has always a tendency to harden. You will be much happier now that all is known; and God has permitted that all should be known by men also, because there was in your case a tendency to have a good opinion of yourself. For He is faithful in all His ways, and we are, save as in grace, only miserable creatures who are worth nothing.

The Apostle Paul’s confession in 1 Timothy 1:13 is a model. It is not “sharing” but a confession intended to extol the grace of God in reaching such a sinner as he was. Note his confession does not go into prurient details of an indecent nature. He confines himself to the opposition to God manifested in his blasphemy against God’s truth and injury to His people. As to confessing sexual matters in public, Scripture emphatically forbids this. “Fornication and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becomes saints” (Eph. 5:3). There is not a line in Scripture to support “Sharing” as practised by the Group.

If I have wronged another, I confess it to him. If I go wrong and find someone more spiritual than myself, or if I get my heart engaged with anxieties and it is burdened, and I know a person who is really spiritual and has the mind of Christ, I may go and open my mind to him; but do not go to one not spiritually minded.

Here the Christian is characterised by a spirit wholly different from first to last. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from every unrighteousness." If we have been betrayed into sin, what do we do then? It is so at conversion; it remains so throughout when the need arises. For our God cannot bear sins. We do not hide them; we confess them to God, and, where it is necessary or edifying, to man too. Thus the pride of will is broken; and by grace one renounces his own poor reputation. We care for Christ's character whom we bear. It is His name henceforth; and what is ours compared with it? If we confess our sins therefore, He is faithful and righteous to forgive. What an encouraging word this is, and true from the very time of first turning to God! Here again it is in principle true; and there is no limit to particular time here as in other cases. It is a first principle, and a standing one, for the Christian; it is meant to govern his new walk from the start to the end, a living fact always in the Christian.

The case of a man deceived unconsciously into drunkenness, and who knew he had been under the strong effect of liquor, though no one else did, and who came and told me of it himself, would be quite a different one from another who had gone and sat down among drinking men, and been the worse for liquor, and seen by others, and who had not come and made it known himself. In the same way a man may come and tell me of a sin he has committed unknown to any one, the mere fact of his having committed such a sin would not justify my publicly announcing the sin. I only name these things as showing how impossible, without seeing a person, it is to form a sound judgment about the individual, or the conduct of the company toward him, or what the mind of Christ is as to the conduct, and its times to be pursued, both for the health's sake of the soul, and for the name and honour of God, and His assembly before the world.

But if I carry it to another, how many things might happen! It may lead to others so repeating it, as from me that I myself am shown in the most shameful light. This area of things is extremely delicate and requires real energy of communion with God to have wisdom to act rightly; for in certain cases, there may be facts that others should know, and where to draw the line is a matter for serious exercise; but I must be careful not to be guilty of putting my neighbor in a wrong or bad light, and always before speaking, to judge in myself any feeling of personal grievance.

The apostle adds a more general admonition as to which there is no difficulty: "Confess" therefore, "your sins one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed." This still, however, needs wisdom for its application. The confession of sin itself may be looked at, as men look so much at confession to a priest, as if it were to work something merely as confession. Apart from the recognized need of confessing to another that in which we have wronged him, there may be, and no doubt are, cases where it would be good for any one burdened with the sense of wrong-doing to unburden himself, and find the help of another's prayers. The acceptance of the humiliation of it may be good in itself; but, on the other hand, there is no general rule but will have its exceptions; or, rather, there is no principle that does not need wisdom in application. Nothing will do away with the need of this.

The second point is that once such a branch has occurred we confess this sin before God and, if necessary, before men. The third point is that if the same sin occurs in our life again and again we must think about the sources from where this comes and perhaps we need to change something fundamental in our lives. This is the matter of "putting to death our members".