What the Bible Says About Touching Yourself
The short answer
Here is the honest starting point: the Bible never mentions masturbation. There is no verse that names it, forbids it, or permits it. So when people ask what the Bible says about touching yourself, they usually end up at a handful of passages that seem close — especially Jesus' startling words about cutting off a hand or plucking out an eye (Matthew 5:29-30; 18:8-9), and his saying about those who have made themselves "eunuchs for the Kingdom" (Matthew 19:12).
Those sayings deserve careful reading, because they are deliberately non-literal. Jesus is using shocking language to make a point about wholehearted discipleship: nothing, however precious, should matter more than following God. He is not issuing surgical instructions, and he is not handing out a rulebook for private acts. The eunuch saying works the same way — it is about the real, sometimes painful cost of renouncing marriage for the sake of a calling, not about the body itself being the problem.
Read this way, the question shifts. Instead of asking "which body part is guilty?" the Bible asks something deeper: what is shaping your desires? Jesus consistently moves the conversation from outward acts to the heart — "everyone who gazes at a woman to lust after her has committed adultery... in his heart" (Matthew 5:28). Sexuality, in other words, is part of a whole life of discipleship, not a separate compartment with its own checklist.
One more thing worth noticing: Jesus himself says this kind of renunciation is not demanded of everyone. Some are called to it and able to receive it; others are not. That caution against one-size-fits-all rules is built into the very passage people most often quote. The Bible's silence on this specific question is not an accident to be filled in with anxiety — it is an invitation to think about desire, vocation, and self-mastery with honesty.
What scholars say
N. T. Wright takes up the question of what Jesus meant by the eunuch saying: he reads it, like the sayings about cutting off hands and plucking out eyes, as deliberately non-literal — pointing to the real cost of renouncing marriage for a vocation, while noting that God does not ask the same renunciation of everyone.
“These sayings may indeed have been cryptic because Jesus was aware that people might ask questions about his own marital status. The implication is that he has chosen to stay single because he is conscious of his extraordinary vocation and the demands it must make. When he says that some ‘have made themselves eunuchs’ in this sense, it’s like the sayings in 18.8–9 about cutting off or plucking out hands, feet and eyes: he doesn’t mean it literally. Of course, for some, the decision to postpone or renounce marriage seems every bit as hard as physical mutilation. And Jesus knows that God will not ask the same kinds of renunciation of all his servants. People who hear the call and find that they are able to follow it should do so. That’s as far as one can go.”
What it means for you
If you came here worried that a specific verse condemns you, you can set that fear down: no such verse exists. But the Bible does invite a better question than "is this allowed?" It asks what your habits are doing to your heart — whether they are training you toward love, patience, and self-mastery, or toward compulsion and using others in your imagination. That is a question worth sitting with honestly, ideally with people you trust.
And take seriously Jesus' own caution: God does not ask identical renunciations of everyone. Rather than measuring yourself against someone else's rule, ask what wholehearted discipleship looks like in your own life, body included.
In context
The key passages sit inside larger conversations. In Matthew 5, the hand-and-eye sayings follow Jesus' teaching that lust in the heart, not just the act of adultery, is the real issue; Matthew 18 repeats the image in a warning about anything that causes stumbling. The eunuch saying in Matthew 19 comes right after a hard exchange about divorce, when the disciples blurt out that maybe it's better not to marry at all. Jesus' answer takes their objection seriously — some really are called to singleness — while insisting this calling is given, not universally imposed.