Masturbation and Christian faith

The Bible never mentions masturbation, and if you have carried a weight of shame about it for years, Scripture invites you to set that weight down. Your body, with its desires, is part of the creation God called good. Like anything people do with their bodies, masturbation can become a moral problem when it turns compulsive, when it becomes a way of hiding from loneliness or pain, or when it depends on pornography that exploits real people. Those are the questions worth bringing to God, and God hears them with kindness.

Does the Bible say masturbation is a sin?

No verse in the Bible mentions masturbation. The closest the Bible comes is a purity law in Leviticus about a man’s “emission of semen,” which makes him ritually unclean until evening:

If a man has an emission of semen, he shall bathe his whole body in water and be unclean until the evening.

Leviticus 15:16, NRSVUE

The same passage says that a husband and wife who have sex are also unclean until evening (Leviticus 15:18). In the purity laws of ancient Israel, “unclean” meant unfit to approach the sanctuary for a time. Married sex and childbirth also made people unclean, so uncleanness in these laws was a different thing from sin. The law treats an emission of semen as a matter of ritual washing, and it says nothing about how the emission happened.

What was the sin of Onan?

For centuries some Christians called masturbation “onanism,” after a man named Onan in Genesis. The story itself is about something different.

In Genesis 38:8–10, Judah tells his son Onan to sleep with the widow of Onan’s dead brother and “raise up offspring for your brother.” Onan sleeps with her but “spilled his semen on the ground,” and the text says that what he did was evil in the LORD’s sight and that the LORD killed him.

Onan was having sex with his brother’s widow, Tamar, and withdrawing so she would not conceive. Under the custom later written into Deuteronomy 25:5–6, a man whose brother died childless was to father a son who would carry on the dead brother’s name. Onan took the sexual use of Tamar while refusing the duty that came with it, leaving her without a child, which in that society meant leaving her without security. The text gives his reason: he did it “lest he should give offspring to his brother.” Onan’s sin was selfishness and injustice toward a widow, and the story does not speak about masturbation at all.

Is masturbation the same as lust?

Jesus spoke about lust in the Sermon on the Mount:

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Matthew 5:27–28, NRSVUE

Jesus’ words come in a teaching about adultery, which in his world meant taking another man’s wife. The lust he condemns is desire that treats another person as something to possess, the inner beginning of betrayal and theft. The last of the Ten Commandments uses the same idea when it forbids coveting “your neighbor’s wife” (Exodus 20:17).

Sexual feeling in itself is something else. God made human bodies, and the psalmist thanks God for them: “I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14). Masturbation can be tied to lust, as when it feeds a fixation on a coworker or someone else’s spouse. It can also happen with no one in mind at all. Christians are called to guard their hearts against lust and to receive their sexual feelings as part of the good body God made. For a fuller account of what sin is, see What is sin?

When does masturbation become a problem?

Paul quotes a slogan from the Christians in Corinth and answers it:

“All things are permitted for me,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things are permitted for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything.

1 Corinthians 6:12, NRSVUE

Paul’s words, “I will not be dominated by anything,” give a wise test for any habit: does it leave you free? Masturbation becomes a problem when it is compulsive, when you cannot stop even though you want to, or when it crowds out sleep, work, or friendship. It becomes a problem when it is the only way you cope with stress, loneliness, or grief. It becomes a serious problem when it depends on pornography, much of which is made through exploitation and which trains people to see others as objects. Paul also reminds Christians that the body is “a temple of the Holy Spirit” and urges them to “glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19–20).

If you feel trapped, you are not alone, and help is near. Compulsive habits grow in secrecy, so the first step toward freedom is to stop hiding. A counselor, a support group, or a trusted pastor can walk with you, and anxiety that drives the habit deserves care of its own; see Is anxiety a sin? God’s mercy does not run out; see Will God forgive me?

What do the churches teach about masturbation?

For much of Christian history, teachers treated masturbation as a sin. Thomas Aquinas, the great medieval theologian, classed it among the sexual sins he called unnatural, meaning sexual acts from which conception cannot follow (Summa Theologiae II-II, question 154, article 11). Many conservative Christians still hold that view, often out of a sincere wish to keep sex bound to love and marriage, and many of their pastors add that habit, anxiety, and immaturity lessen a person’s responsibility.

The mainline churches, including the ELCA, the PC(USA), the United Methodist Church, and the Episcopal Church, have issued no official teaching against masturbation. The ELCA’s 2009 social statement on sexuality, Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust, does not address it at all. The ELCA statement does speak to pornography: it says pornography can damage healthy sexual development in those who view it, “often obsessively and in secret,” and that the ELCA “opposes the sale and purchase of pornography.”

Because Scripture is silent, masturbation is a matter for a Christian’s own conscience before God. Paul’s hope for the body is freedom and holiness, and the questions that matter are the ones Scripture asks about everything people do with their bodies: whether it is free of lust toward another person, free of compulsion, and free of the exploitation of others. For the related question of sex between unmarried people, see Is sex before marriage a sin?

God already knows you completely, every thought and every habit, and loves you still. Psalm 139, which thanks God for the body, ends with a prayer you can make your own in that trust:

Search me, God, and know my heart. Try me, and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.

Psalm 139:23–24