There is a silence that sits in thousands of Christian homes tonight. It is not the silence of peace. It is the silence of shame — the kind that follows a confession not yet made, a wound not yet named, a marriage straining under the weight of secrets neither spouse knows how to carry. Pornography. Betrayal. Broken trust. The statistics are not abstract: according to the Barna Group, 54 percent of practicing Christians admit to viewing pornography at least occasionally, and Pure Desire Ministries places that number among churchgoing men at 75 percent. These are not strangers in the pews. They are deacons, worship leaders, Sunday school teachers, and their spouses — people who love Jesus and are losing a war they are too ashamed to admit they are fighting.
Into that silence, XO Marriage has released Made Whole: Healing, Wholeness, and Holiness in a Sex-Saturated World, a free four-session video course and companion guide created by Joshua and Hope Broome. Joshua spent six years as one of the most recognized names in the pornography industry before encountering the redemptive power of Christ. More than a decade later, he and Hope speak to couples from a place of hard-won, gospel-forged wisdom. The course is available at no cost at XOMarriage.com. Read the source article.
What Scripture Says About the Wound
The Bible does not flinch at sexual brokenness. It names it, traces it to its root, and refuses to leave us there. The apostle Paul, writing to the church in Corinth — a city saturated with sexual immorality — does not moralize from a distance. He goes straight to the theological core: “Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:18–20, ESV). Sexual sin is not merely a behavioral failure. It is a desecration of something sacred — a body that belongs to God, a covenant that images the relationship between Christ and His church.
Genesis tells us that marriage was designed as a place of complete vulnerability without shame: “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed” (Genesis 2:25, ESV). The entrance of sin into the world shattered that nakedness-without-shame into hiding, blame, and broken intimacy. Every couple navigating pornography or betrayal is living in the long shadow of that original fracture. They are not uniquely broken. They are humanly broken — and that is precisely the kind of brokenness the gospel was made to address.
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” — Romans 3:23–24, ESV
Paul’s diagnosis in Romans is unflinching: the wound runs through every human heart. But he refuses to stop at the wound. The same sentence that names our falling short announces our justification — freely, as a gift, through Christ. The gospel does not merely cover sin. It redeems it.
Christ: The One Who Makes Whole
The name of this course is not accidental. Made Whole is a phrase that echoes through the Gospels. When Jesus healed the woman who had suffered for twelve years, He did not simply stop her bleeding. He called her “daughter,” restored her to community, and sent her in peace (Luke 8:48). When He encountered the man at the pool of Bethesda who had been ill for thirty-eight years, He asked a question that cuts to the heart of every couple sitting in shame: “Do you want to be healed?” (John 5:6, ESV). The question is not rhetorical. Healing requires wanting — it requires bringing the wound into the light rather than protecting it in the dark.
“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.” — 1 Peter 2:24, ESV
This is the theological ground on which Made Whole stands. Jesus did not come to manage our brokenness from a safe distance. He entered it fully — taking on flesh, experiencing temptation in every form (Hebrews 4:15), and then absorbing the full weight of human sin on the cross so that His resurrection could become the firstfruit of our own renewal. The Christ who forgives is the same Christ who restores. That is not a motivational slogan. It is the logic of the atonement. Because Jesus bore our shame, we no longer have to hide in it. Because He rose, dead things — including dead marriages — can live again.
Ephesians 5 places marriage inside this very story: the husband’s love for his wife is meant to mirror Christ’s self-giving love for the church, a love that “sanctifies her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word” (Ephesians 5:26, ESV). When pornography enters a marriage, it does not merely break a rule. It contradicts the very story that Christian marriage is meant to tell. Healing a marriage, then, is not just a therapeutic project. It is a theological act — a witness to the world that the gospel actually works.
Living It Out: Walking the Road to Wholeness
The Made Whole course structures its four sessions around a framework that is both practically wise and deeply biblical: honesty, consistency, safety, and intimacy. These are not self-help categories. They are the contours of covenant love. Here is how couples can begin walking this road, whether or not they have access to a formal course.
1. Choose Honesty Over Self-Protection
Proverbs 28:13 is direct: “Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy” (ESV). Healing cannot begin in hiding. The first act of courage is naming the wound — to God, to a spouse, and if needed, to a trusted pastor or counselor. Shame thrives in secrecy. Confession breaks its power.
2. Build Consistency as a Form of Love
Trust is not rebuilt in a single conversation. It is rebuilt in a thousand small moments of faithfulness — showing up, following through, keeping promises. Lamentations 3:23 reminds us that God’s mercies are “new every morning” (ESV). Couples rebuilding trust are invited to practice that same daily renewal — not demanding instant restoration, but committing to faithful presence one day at a time.
3. Create Safety Through Covenant Forgiveness
Forgiveness in Christian marriage is not the same as pretending the wound did not happen. It is a decision, grounded in the forgiveness we ourselves have received, to release the debt and refuse to weaponize the wound. Colossians 3:13 calls us to forgive “as the Lord has forgiven you” (ESV) — which means forgiveness is not contingent on the offender deserving it. It is an act of grace that mirrors the cross.
4. Pursue Intimacy as a Spiritual Discipline
True intimacy — emotional, spiritual, and physical — does not happen by accident. It is cultivated through intentional rhythms: prayer together, honest conversation, shared worship, and the deliberate choice to pursue one another rather than the counterfeits the world offers. Song of Solomon celebrates the beauty of covenant intimacy as a gift from God. Reclaiming it after brokenness is not naive. It is an act of defiant, resurrection-shaped hope.
The Gospel Is the Good News Your Marriage Needs
Every human being — every husband, every wife — has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). Sexual brokenness is one expression of a universal condition: we are people who have turned from God toward lesser things, and we have wounded ourselves and one another in the turning. That is the honest diagnosis. But the gospel does not end with diagnosis.
Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, took on human flesh, lived the life we could not live, and died the death we deserved — bearing our sin, our shame, and our brokenness on the cross. Three days later, He rose from the dead, defeating sin and death and opening the way for every broken person and every broken marriage to be made new. This is not a metaphor. It is history. And it is an invitation.
If you are carrying a wound in your marriage tonight — whether you are the one who caused it or the one who received it — the risen Christ is not standing at a distance, arms crossed, waiting to see if you can fix yourself. He is the Good Shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine to find the one that is lost (Luke 15:4). He is the Father who runs toward the returning son before the son can finish his rehearsed apology (Luke 15:20). He is the one who makes whole.
Repent. Trust Him. Bring your marriage into the light of His grace. “He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it” (1 Thessalonians 5:24, ESV).
