Is masturbation a sin?

Sin is not just a feeling of shame. It is also more than a list of acts named in the English Bible. Scripture defines it this way:

Failing to do good can be sin too:

And God's commands include faith and love:

So a general command can reach an act that Scripture never names. The reading searched the King James text for "masturbation", "masturbate", "self-abuse" and "self pollution" and found none of them. That only shows what those searches returned. It does not prove Scripture is silent, and it is not the argument either way. What matters is what Scripture's commands teach about this kind of act.

Lust in the heart is sin, even alone

Jesus, teaching on the command "Thou shalt not commit adultery." (Exodus 20:14), said:

He also said that evil comes from inside a person:

Proverbs and Job say the same about the heart and the eyes:

So sexual wrongdoing does not need another person in the room. Masturbation that deliberately feeds the lustful desire Jesus describes includes sin. Being alone does not excuse it, and neither does avoiding intercourse. Using an image or an imagined scene to feed that desire is not made innocent by being private. What makes it wrong is the lust it feeds, not just the fact that a thought or picture is there.

This does not mean every passing thought or bodily feeling is already adultery. Jesus speaks of looking in order to lust. Scripture also tells us where to set our minds:

Your body belongs to God

Paul wrote to the believers in Corinth:

God's will is holiness:

Fornication, uncleanness and evil desire are all forbidden:

Grace does not change this. Jude warns against those who twist grace into a licence for lewdness:

These commands can reach an act that is not named in them, and an act does not escape them by being done alone. But each time, it has to be shown that the act really is what they forbid. Their wide scope also does not make every bodily pleasure one of the things they name. The "works of the flesh" include hatred, strife and envy as well as sexual sins:

So "flesh" here means a way of living set against God. It does not mean the body itself or physical feeling.

Appetite is not its own master

Peter warns that a promise of freedom can hide slavery:

Self-control matters beyond marriage too. Paul reasoned about it before Felix:

Freely choosing to let sexual gratification rule you, against obedience to God, goes against these texts. Difficulty, temptation, how often something happens, and real compulsion are four different things. None of them was described here, and nothing in this answer says you are enslaved to anything.

What you live for matters, not only what you avoid

The test is wider than lust or addiction. Scripture warns against a life run by pleasure:

Paul says this about a widow who lives for pleasure, set against one who trusts God and prays night and day. James says something similar to rich men who held back their workers' wages:

Jesus said pleasures can choke the word:

Paul lists among the marks of a disobedient people:

And Christ died so that people would live for Him:

Proverbs warns about loving pleasure, and about trusting your own approval:

Hebrews describes a faithful choice of suffering over pleasures that belong to sin:

Isaiah shows that your own pleasure gives way where God has given a command:

The same chapter also condemns fasting that is joined to injustice. So harshness to the body is not, by itself, the obedience God asks for. (This answer does not try to settle today's Sabbath questions. They are a different matter.)

So a practice that takes the place of prayer, care for others, obedience or known duties is not made right just because no image is involved. A practice can take part in that wrong direction of life without being an addiction. This is something to examine honestly, not a finding about you.

Pleasure is not evil in itself, though. Scripture speaks of pleasure with God:

Ecclesiastes says a trial of pleasure was vanity, and in the same chapter it says that ordinary enjoyment comes from God:

So the fact that something is enjoyable does not make it right, and the word "pleasure" does not make it wrong. Neither one is the whole test. Two more passages use the word. "If they obey and serve him, they shall spend their days in prosperity, and their years in pleasures." (Job 36:11) is spoken by Elihu, and it is not a promise to you or a permission for any sexual act. "Therefore hear now this, thou that art given to pleasures, that dwellest carelessly, that sayest in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me; I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss of children:" (Isaiah 47:8) is God's judgment on proud, careless Babylon. It condemns that self-exalting way of living, not every enjoyment.

In marriage, your body is not only yours

If masturbation is used to hold back from a husband or wife what this passage commands, that holding back is wrong. Calling it private does not excuse it. But not every private act, every time apart, or every unmet wish counts as holding back. That depends on facts nobody has told.

Acting against your conscience is not safe

Paul wrote this about food, but the reason he gives at the end of the verse, about whatever is not of faith, reaches further. So going ahead while you believe something is wrong before God is not a safe permission. Each person answers to God, not just to someone else's scruples:

This only works in one direction, though. Feeling sure does not make every act right:

Feeling ashamed does not prove something is wrong. Feeling at ease does not prove it is right.

Sexual delight belongs in marriage, and it is good there

Scripture directs sexual union and desire into faithful marriage, and it calls the marriage bed honourable. So sexual delight itself is not dirty. Scripture's answer for someone who cannot contain is marriage. Nowhere is masturbation given as the remedy instead.

Scripture teaches this: lust in the heart is sin; the body is to be used for God's glory and kept in holiness; fornication, uncleanness and evil desire are forbidden; appetite must not be allowed to rule; a life lived for pleasure, or one that pushes out known duties, is wrong; depriving a husband or wife of what marriage owes them is wrong; acting against what you believe is right before God is not safe; sexual delight is honoured within marriage. A particular act of masturbation that involves any of these wrongs falls under these commands.

Each of the following makes some other verse false, so it cannot be what Scripture means.

"Without intercourse, or alone, it can't be sexual sin." This would make Matthew 5:28 false. Jesus calls lust in the heart adultery already committed.

"All desire, or all sexual satisfaction, is sinful." This would make Jesus' own desire sinful:

It would also go against the command to be satisfied with your wife in Proverbs 5:19. The original word for "desire" here is used of Jesus' longing to share the Passover. It is also used of Paul's longing to be with Christ: "For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better:" (Philippians 1:23). Yet with the command against coveting, the same kind of word means sinful desire:

So the word itself does not decide whether a desire is good or bad. What is desired, and why, decides it.

"My body is my own, so my pleasure settles it." For the believers Paul was writing to, this would make 1 Corinthians 6:19 false. It says they are not their own.

"Onan's sin was masturbation." This would make Genesis 38:9 false. It says he went in to his brother's wife (see the section on Onan below).

"Being unclean after an emission means every act that causes one is sexual sin." This would make the marriage bed sinful, against Hebrews 13:4 (see the section on uncleanness below).

"Freedom or grace makes the listed sexual sins allowed." Scripture limits freedom itself:

And Colossians 3:5 still stands.

"A clear conscience makes any act right." This turns Romans 14:23 backwards. It would also cancel the commands that still stand, such as Matthew 5:28, and it goes against Titus 1:16.

"Because virginity is praised, marriage or enjoying marriage defiles." This would make these verses false:

It would also go against Hebrews 13:4.

Some other claims are not proved, even though no verse was found that flatly contradicts them. They have to stay unproved rather than be called true or false:

• that every act of masturbation is the fornication, uncleanness, lust or failure to contain that these passages forbid;
• that every act is harmless or approved as long as no one else is present;
• that every act without a sexual image is pure;
• that every private act by a married person holds back from the spouse;
• that every emission outside conception falls under Onan's judgment;
• that only Onan's motive mattered and the spilling itself could not;
• that the mention of a hand in Matthew 5 points to this act;
• that the words in 1 Corinthians 6:9 mean masturbation.

"If thy right hand offend thee"

This comes right after Jesus' words on lust, and it calls for dealing seriously with whatever causes sin. That seriousness stands. But it is an "if" warning, and it does not name any particular thing a hand does. In another place Jesus gives the same warning about a hand or a foot, in teaching about causing others to stumble:

So naming a hand does not, by itself, point to masturbation.

Onan

These verses belong together. Onan had a duty to raise children for his dead brother. He had intercourse with his brother's widow, spilled his seed on purpose, and did it so that his brother would have no child. God condemned the deed as a whole. Later in the chapter, failing Tamar is again the issue: "And Judah acknowledged them, and said, She hath been more righteous than I; because that I gave her not to Shelah my son. And he knew her again no more." (Genesis 38:26)

So the story is not about a solitary act. It does show that his deliberate refusal of the duty was part of what was condemned. It does not say that only his motive mattered and the spilling could not. It also does not say that every emission outside conception gets the same judgment.

A later law describes a similar duty:

That law came later. It is not the law Onan was judged under, and it gives no general law against solitary stimulation.

Emissions and "uncleanness" in the Law

These laws were given to Israel and tied to the holiness of God's tabernacle. They mattered in their own setting. Breaking the rules about holy things was serious:

The same temporary uncleanness comes after intercourse between husband and wife (Leviticus 15:18), and Hebrews 13:4 calls the marriage bed undefiled. So being unclean until evening is not the same thing as committing sexual sin.

That point has limits, though. In some cases the Law does tie uncleanness to guilt, and it does not say the guilt comes only if washing is neglected:

The Law also forbids a particular sexual act during a time of uncleanness:

So a washing rule is not permission for whatever act led to the uncleanness. Taken together, these laws do not say masturbation is harmless, and they do not say it is the sin Onan died for. Another law speaks of a wife, her husband and another man:

That is one example of sexual wrongdoing. It is not a full list of every kind.

The Hebrew word for "seed" shows why setting matters. It means a man's emission in Leviticus 15, offspring in Genesis 38, and seed for crops here:

1 Corinthians 6:9

This is a real warning, and it must not be set aside. But read whole, the last phrase speaks of abusers of themselves with mankind. It cannot be cut down to mean solitary self-stimulation. The original word for "effeminate" is used elsewhere for soft clothing ("But what went ye out for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? behold, they that wear soft clothing are in kings' houses." (Matthew 11:8)). That use does not define the word's moral meaning here. The word index for this verse was also unclear about which original word sits beside which English word. So no definition was built from it. That this verse means masturbation is not proved. The unclear index is not a permission either. Like every warning, this verse says nothing about any particular person.

Romans 1:26–27

Here what is against nature is tied to the relations and desires the passage itself describes. That connection has to be kept. But the passage does not call every bodily act that cannot lead to children contrary to nature. Its examples are not a complete list of every sexual wrong.

"Possess his vessel"

"Vessel" could mean your own body. Scripture uses that picture: "But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us." (2 Corinthians 4:7) and "Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body." (2 Corinthians 4:10). It could also mean a wife: "Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered." (1 Peter 3:7). The original words do not settle which one Paul meant.

It doesn't change the answer. Read either way, the verses around it still command holiness and forbid fornication, lustful passion and wronging another person. Neither reading, by itself, decides about every act of solitary stimulation. The duty to honour God with your body is already stated plainly in 1 Corinthians 6:19–20.

"Flee fornication"

Paul says this while speaking of bodily union with a harlot. It does not permit other bodily wrongs. It also does not prove that every touch of your own body is fornication. And the freedom Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 6:12 cannot include fornication, because the same passage commands you to flee it. The passage's setting starts earlier, with a man who had his father's wife: "It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife." (1 Corinthians 5:1)

Flesh and the body

This is a strong warning against living by the flesh. It is also a call to put sinful deeds to death through the Spirit. But here "flesh" means a mind set against God's law, and the Spirit gives life to the body itself. So the body is not the evil. Caring for your body is not wrong either:

That verse does not make masturbation a form of bodily care, and it does not permit living for yourself (2 Corinthians 5:15). The warning in Romans 8:13 is an "if". It is not a sentence passed on anyone.

Harsh rules about the body

Paul warns against human rules about not touching, tasting or handling things that perish:

The next chapter then commands, in Colossians 3:5, putting sexual and other sins to death. So these chapters support neither side alone. They don't allow a ban whose only basis is being hard on the body. They also don't allow anyone to excuse the sins Colossians 3 names. Colossians 2 is not a permission for masturbation. The same goes for "All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not." (1 Corinthians 10:23) and "Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." (1 Corinthians 10:31). These are about food, and they are not a statement that every sexual act is clean.

"Contain"

The original word for containing in 1 Corinthians 7:9 is the same word Paul uses for an athlete's self-control:

It describes discipline. It does not describe a particular sexual act, and it does not mean that feeling desire is the same as failing to contain.

Is sex only for having children?

This is a blessing and a command about human fruitfulness. It does not say that every permitted sexual act must lead to conception. Proverbs 5:19 praises delight in marriage. 1 Corinthians 7:3–5 gives mutual duty, and protection from temptation, as reasons for marital union. Not everyone is required to marry and have children:

The wider question of deliberately preventing conception is a different one, and this answer does not decide it.

The virgins in Revelation 14

This describes one particular company in a vision. It cannot be turned into a rule that all marriage, or delight in marriage, defiles, because that would make 1 Corinthians 7:28 and Hebrews 13:4 false. It is not used here to decide about masturbation.

The Song of Solomon

The Song delights in a spouse: "Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck." (Song of Solomon 4:9). It also gives a charge: "I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please." (Song of Solomon 2:7). The poem does not support calling all desire dirty. It also gives no separate permission for masturbation.

Other uses of "fornication"

Scripture uses "fornication" in many settings. Gentile believers are told to abstain from it: "That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well." (Acts 15:29). A king led a nation into it: "Moreover he made high places in the mountains of Judah, and caused the inhabitants of Jerusalem to commit fornication, and compelled Judah thereto." (2 Chronicles 21:11). The prophets use it as a picture of cities: "And it shall come to pass after the end of seventy years, that the LORD will visit Tyre, and she shall turn to her hire, and shall commit fornication with all the kingdoms of the world upon the face of the earth." (Isaiah 23:17) and "But as a wife that committeth adultery, which taketh strangers instead of her husband!" (Ezekiel 16:32), which is spoken to Jerusalem: "Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her abominations," (Ezekiel 16:2). In Revelation the woman is named as a city: "And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth." (Revelation 17:18).

Every place where the English word "fornication", and its Greek word, came up in the searches was read. Most examples involve another person. That does not prove a sinful solitary act is exempt. None of these passages says that masturbation is fornication.

One narrow question is left. Take an act of masturbation with none of the wrongs above: no lust, no rule of appetite, no holding back from a spouse, nothing pushed aside, nothing against conscience. Is it sin simply because it is self-stimulation?

The strongest case for "yes" builds on marriage. Scripture directs sexual union and desire into marriage (Genesis 2:24, 1 Corinthians 7:2), gives husband and wife power over each other's bodies (1 Corinthians 7:4), and gives marriage as the answer for those who cannot contain (1 Corinthians 7:9). Paul also speaks of holiness in body and in spirit:

On this view, all deliberate sexual gratification belongs only in marriage. This case cannot be dismissed just because the word "masturbation" doesn't appear.

But this view takes one step further than the verses do. They establish marriage, its union and its duties. None of them says that all stimulation outside sexual union is fornication, or failure to contain, or adultery.

The other view keeps every one of those marriage commands. It tests the solitary act by the duties already shown above: holiness, a pure heart, self-government, love of neighbour and spouse, God's ownership of the body, and acting in faith. It does not add that further step. This view does not turn the missing ban into approval. Nothing in Scripture holds up a solitary act like this as approved. And imagining an act free of lust does not prove that such an act really happens.

Both views keep every verse true. Neither has a verse that settles the question against the other.

Scripture speaks to this, but doesn't settle it. This applies only to that narrow question: whether self-stimulation, by itself and with none of the wrongs above, is always sin. The reading did not establish that it is always sin. It also did not establish that it is permitted without conditions. Saying a firm "yes, always" or "no, never" would claim more than the verses show.

This open point does not reach the rest. Scripture does settle that lust in the heart is sin. It settles that fornication and uncleanness are forbidden, that appetite must not rule, and that living for pleasure or pushing out known duties is wrong. It settles that depriving a spouse is wrong and that acting against conscience is not safe. Any real act may fall under these commands. Whether it does depends on what goes with it, and why.

• It does not claim Scripture is silent. The searches were wide, but not every passage of the whole Bible was opened, and some search results were listed but not read. Nothing is said about passages that were not read.
• It says nothing about anyone's soul: not whether anyone is saved, forgiven or right with God, and not what is in anyone's heart. You have not told anything about yourself, and nothing here describes you.
• It makes no medical or scientific claim, either that masturbation always involves lust or that it can be free of it, or that it is harmful or helpful. None of that was checked.

Only if you want to weigh your own situation, one question matters: what thoughts and purpose go with it, and is it taking control, pushing out your responsibilities or closeness with a spouse, or going against what your conscience tells you before God?

An honest answer applies the commands above. If one of these concerns turns out not to apply to you, that alone does not make the act approved.