Can someone be baptized who is still struggling with pornography?
Question:
My friend keeps watching pornography, he says he is trying to stop, but he keeps failing. He wants to be baptized, but when I baptize him and he keeps on doing so, will God keep on forgiving him, or will his Christianity just fade away to God?
Answer:
There is a difference between wanting to quit, but not thinking it is really wrong, and really trying to quit but slipping up. Sin doesn't have to be completely conquered before baptism, but a person has to have the attitude that he no longer accepts sin in his life. "What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?" (Romans 6:1-2).
Sometimes you have to take a really radical approach to get sin out of your life. "For observe this very thing, that you sorrowed in a godly manner: What diligence it produced in you, what clearing of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what vehement desire, what zeal, what vindication! In all things you proved yourselves to be clear in this matter" (II Corinthians 7:11). Too often people think that getting baptized is going to make the temptation to sin go away. It won't. The temptation will always be there. What changes with repentance is our attitude about the acceptability of sin in our life.
Try sharing Lies Pornography Tells Men with your friend.
