A real and present danger
What was Eliot Spitzer thinking? How could a man with so much to risk yield to lust? Spitzer has plenty of company, both past and present. King David, one of God’s most powerful and enduring saints, could not resist the lure of Bathsheba. Numerous political and religious leaders have also fallen in shame over the course of the past several years. School teachers have been caught engaging in affairs with their students.
All you have to do is to look at the cancerous spread of shame and indignity into the lives of innocent wives, children, siblings, friends and co-workers to see the destruction. The consequences of adultery reach far, far beyond the adulterers’ shame and guilt. Relationships are destroyed. Reputations are destroyed. Institutions are destroyed. Churches are destroyed. Families are destroyed. God knew those consequences would be inevitable. That’s why He instituted the Seventh Commandment.
In reality, sin is a state of our existence. The sins we commit are nothing less than symptoms of the universally inherited disease of evil. It infects all of us. To be sure, all of us are sinners, and in our sin, we are equal in God’s eyes. Not one of us is acceptable to Him until we have encountered the atoning blood of Jesus Christ given by the grace of God.
As I consider the thousands of Awana missionaries, leaders, and volunteers who labor with me in bringing children and youth to Christ, I must concede to the statistical probability that some among us have succumbed to the temptations of adulterous relationships. To those people, I implore: Please step back from your emotions and think about the damage that we will all inevitably suffer.
Oswald Chambers said it well in his acclaimed devotional book, My Utmost for His Highest: “The inescapable spiritual need each of us has is the need to sign the death certificate of our sin nature.” The Apostle Paul emphatically stated, “I have been crucified with Christ!”
This is serious stuff. Don’t treat it any other way than as a real and present danger. Guard your heart and mind.