After my recent sermon on sexual purity, a parent of a teen approached me after the service to ask for advice about how to talk with their teen when they do sin sexually. In particular, the question was how to help their teen deal with the shame of sexual sin. I thought I’d share my answer in this brief article. 

Suppose for the sake of the question that the teen has looked at pornography. Here are a couple of things I think you want to keep in mind as you talk with your teen. Of course, there is much more to say on the matter, but I’m keeping it to just these two broad ideas: 

Affirm the goodness of sex in its proper place

A foundational piece of a biblical, healthy way of addressing sexual sin is to distinguish between the goodness of sex and the abuse of sex. Teach your child that God created sex. He created us male and female, sexual creatures with sexual desire, and this is good. God designed our bodies so that sex is pleasurable. God doesn’t just affirm desire—he created it! And he did this for a reason: that a husband and wife might enjoy sex, which has several benefits and purposes: it leads ordinarily to procreation, it strengthens the marital bond, and it pictures the self-giving and satisfying nature of the gospel. It is the gift that keeps on giving. 

Your role is to teach your teens what to do with shame.

And so, when your teen feels sexual desire, they should know that this is normal, and more than normal, it is good. They are beginning to desire something good that God created. So don’t condemn your teen’s desire—God certainly doesn’t. Instead, affirm it as good when exercised in the proper place. 

Teach them that sex, like many things, is a good thing when enjoyed properly but a sin when misused. A common analogy is that sex is like a fire in a house: it’s wonderful when it’s in the fireplace (marriage) but destructive when it’s anywhere else. When they feel shame for their sexual sin, this too is part of God’s design. He has given us his law and has even written it on our hearts so that we know when we break it—and we feel it. That feeling is shame. If we didn’t feel shame, that actually would be a problem. It would mean we disregard God and his law, which is serious. But when you feel shame for sexual sin, that is your conscience telling you that you have taken something good and misused it—and it’s a good sign that you feel that! 

So shame itself is not the problem. It’s what we might do with the shame that’s the problem. And so your next role is to teach your teens what to do with shame. 

Teach them what to do with shame

Shame is essentially the soul hiding. Think about what Adam and Eve did in the garden when they sinned against God—they hid from him in the bushes. The natural response of the soul when it has sinned against God is to hide from him and from others. And if we stay there, hidden, things only get worse. In isolation, we ward ourselves off from the help of God and others, we grow bitter, and we will likely only entrench ourselves further in sin.

That’s the natural response. 

The supernatural response—the response that’s on offer to us through the Spirit because of the gospel—is to go to God with our shame. It’s to walk in the light instead of continuing in the darkness. The gospel gives us everything we need to deal with shame: forgiveness of sins, the cleansing blood of Jesus, the fellowship of the Spirit and of God’s children, and the promise of the Spirit’s help unto eternal life. Here’s how 1 John 1:5–7 puts it: 

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

The Bible promises us that confession—telling the truth about our sin—is the quickest way to disarm it, move past it, and walk in the light. 

So essentially, you want to use this opportunity with your teen to teach them how to deal with shame. Teach them they will always be tempted to let shame drive them away from God and others, but that this only makes things worse. But remind them that the gospel is powerful enough, sturdy enough, good-almost-beyond-belief enough to make shame a signal that leads them to God, who removes our shame from us in Christ and restores us to fellowship with God and one another. 

Teach them to listen to shame but not give it the last word. Teach them to hear and obey the message God designed shame to speak—“Your sin is a problem, and God has answered that problem in Christ—go to him and he will forgive you.” 

God bless you as you teach your children to walk in sexual holiness—and what to do when they sin. God is good; he will sanctify all his children completely (1 Thess. 5:23–24).