Is masturbation a sin?

CS1 says, I am counseling a married man who is addicted to this very thing. <-- is he suggesting that he can be of help in that area?

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It's all in your mind and in the way you yourself personally interpret the
Bible. If you think it's a sin to watch porn, then for you it is definitely sin.

● Rom 14:14 . . To him who thinks anything to be unclean, to him it is
unclean.

● Rom 14:23 . . If you do anything you believe is not right, you are sinning.

NOTE: Beware judging others according to your own personal values
because that would be usurping Christ's sovereign right to make the rules.
_

masturbation is the reaction to what has caused this to be done. porn is the number one cause . in addition it too is habit forming. I am counseling a married man who is addicted to this very thing. porn is the cause. he is a Christian and he is seeking help. if it was so harmless why has it caused so much pain. masturbation is the end result to a larger issue.

Its obviously not a mature spiritual thing to do, but still better than to have a lover, than to have a bad marriage full of other sins (anger, arguments, various evils) or than to buy prostitutes.

Try to limit it and get rid of it, but concentrate rather on getting your life and spiritual status better in a general way.

I disagree. In the old testament they were not stoned to death for anger and arguments, but they were for sexual sins.

Never for a masturbation, though. It was not even a thing to be mentioned at all on thousand pages of the OT.

Under the authority of Christ (new testament) if you even look at someone to lust after them you are guilty of the sin of adultery even if you didn't commit adultery physically.

A married man should certainly control himself and his lust after foreign women.

Also, I am not sure if the translation is OK.

Anyone needs to control themselves whether married or not, foreign or not.

Sure. But the verse is about adultery, i.e. about a married man lusting for a foreign woman or about a single man lusting for a married woman, specifically.

Same applies, because lust is also a sin, and what Jesus is saying is that sinning spiritually and sinning physically both arrive at the same guilt. When satan sinned and fell out of heaven he didn't have a fleshy body to commit physical acts, yet he sinned, spiritually, with real consequences for his guilt.

Lust is not a sin. Lust is a temptation.

"But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.
Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death."
James 1:15

Of course, people must limit their desires and other temptations, not to play with them or enlarge them. Its like a fire and they will lose in the end.

Not every desire is bad. Christians have a desire to please God. Women have a God-given desire to please a husband, the desire to bring forth children, and have a family- (all of which begin with sex). Paul said that if you can't control yourself (masterbation imo) that you should marry (not have to) instead of burning with passion (if you have that much passionate love you should give it to a spouse). Every marriage started with not listening to your advice to not play with or enlarge these desires.

People are different and have different levels of desires.

Somebody can be every day for hours in a sexual desire. Somebody just once a month. People are different. Its better to marry than to burn with passion intensively, if it will help.

Its not better to marry just beause of an occasional desire and to yoke yourself with many troubles in a marriage, imo.

I have common sense. I long to be married but i can't marry just any guy.

well for some of us who have never even had a pleasant experience with sex, not once, nothing fulfilling from sex, nothing but intense pain associated with sex and have reached their mid 30s to be incredibly lonely without almost any friends and zero prospects of getting married at any point in the foreseeable future, masturbation provides the only small bit of relief to what is incredibly painful sexual frustration. And for anyone who wishes to condemn me for that I'd like to ask how much of your life have you spent in solitude? How many happy relationships had you been in by the age of 34? Were you married by that age? How many years of your life have you gone without a moment of feeling attractive or desired by any woman, while at the same time finding love and companionship remains the #1 desire of your heart, always a source of pain? I have had little sexual experience-- and I'm not proud of it and would have no qualms erasing that from my past. But other than a few regrettable sexual experiences, I have nothing from my own life to supply any concrete reference to the profound power of what intimacy is. I have never been promiscuous and never wanted to be, have no interest in casual sex.
I want love. It's the only thing I want from this life.
Sex without love is meaningless. But a life without any love as well as the other thing-- guess what, it's pretty sad and depressing. And I've heard every pep talk before about how ok it is to be alone and how I don't anyone to be happy and blah blah blah. I haven't met too many men or women who were never married by age 34 and who wanted to be. I don't have any fantasies in my mind involving myself having sex either. Masturbation has never had anything to do with that. Because the thought of something like that is more removed from my reality than the garbage depicted in porn. Yes porn is a problem and so is the other thing. But what's killing me inside is the loneliness. The lack of connection. The lack of possibilities. Now I already hear the "Get off your butt and do something" response coming. Please don't assume you know the story about someone before you have developed any curiosity of understanding it.
You think I wanted my life to be this way. You think I wanted to reach the point where the only association I have with sex is through lonely self-treatment? I didn't choose to want something that has eluded me for 34 years and seems impossible to have. I didn't choose to be a sensitive and intense man who doesn't embody the qualities of the 'common man.' I didn't choose the way my hormones work or the fact that sexual desire is a powerfully driving force. And I don't look for meaningless sex, which I probably wouldn't find anyways, for the purpose of tempering this famished, aching urge. Only God may judge me.
Frankly if I had no hormones, if I were just a eunuch living in a monastery it would be less different than my circumstances as they are, except for the suffering endured due to perennial deprivation and isolation.
You can tell me all you want about the evils of masturbation. I could tell you about the suicidal suffering of severe loneliness and an adulthood devoid of any love or intimate relationships. Loneliness kills, making yourself have an orgasm doesn't. I didn't choose to be lonely and I didn't choose for loneliness to hurt as much as it does.