Ill refer to sexual sin because this webpage is too tiny to do more than briefy mention just one sin as an example of how differently God views things to the way we tend to. You will find this illustration will work well, irrespective of whether that particular sin is of any direct relevance to you.
Imagine you are unmarried and have a hot romance. Ill assume your friend is Christian, because God views sex with a non-Christian in a disturbingly different light to the way we tend to. (Comment)
Regardless of your Christian friends past, the Almighty Lord sees him or her as the purest virgin, and he feels as fiercely protective of his or her purity as the most devoted father would feel toward a young and cherished daughter. And Father God never lets his darling out of his sight. You never see the Father, but he sees you. You may forget he is there. He never forgets. It would be a grave mistake to misinterpret the fact that the Almightys anger is seldom displayed instantly. As the Eternal, all-seeing Judge, he holds all the aces. It seems that for almost a year King David thought he had got away with his sin. Only after Bathshebas baby was born did he first learn of Gods judgment. Years later, he was still suffering the consequences (2 Samuel 11:26 12:14).
Theres a sense in which intentionally or unintentionally tempting someone to be morally loose with you, is spiritually worse than rape, because it is an attempt to defile someone in the deepest possible way. Rape produces an innocent victim. Seduction corrupts far deeper because it reduces a person to a willing partner in sin. It is better to die than to tempt someone, warned Jesus. (Scripture)
Jesus teaching on divorce shows the seriousness with which God views a relationship in which two become one flesh. A bond is forged so binding that it should never to be broken. And yet the alarming truth is that Scripture applies the principle of two becoming one, to even the most casual of sexual encounters. (Scriptures) There is another sobering consideration stemming from Scriptures declaration that in the act of prostitution, two become one flesh. One might guess that with less effective contraceptives in ancient times, prostitution might have been more likely to involve acts that stop short of coitus (full heterosexual relations). Scripture does not specify exactly how far one need go physically for God to regard two as one. Obviously, homosexual relations stop short of full heterosexual relations and yet Scripture seems to place these sinful acts in the same general category as ones that definitely make two people one. (Scriptures)
And lets not forget that deliberately having sex with someone in your fantasies is a serious offense, even though it is the ultimate in ensuring that no one gets hurt. (Scriptures) In actual fact, God would be hurt and so would you. Moreover, anyone you sin with in your thoughts has, in reality, been sinned against as surely as someone who is unaware that he or she has been swindled. (And if the object of your fantasy were married, you would have also sinned against the marriage partner.)
Sinning in ones thought life is a most serious matter that must be understood correctly, lest the Enemy distort the truth to cause unnecessary condemnation and further temptation. I urge you to read a very short note on this subject.
The Old Testament, taught the apostle Paul, is written to warn we who live under the New Covenant. (Scripture) One of the concepts the Old Testament tries hard to impart is that to violate something holy is to call down the fearsome wrath of God. Your friends body is holy. It is the sanctuary of the Holy Spirit. The word chosen to convey this truth in the original text (1 Corinthians 6:19) is often used to specify the inner, holier part of the temple, rather than the temple as a whole. In fact, it is appropriate to think in terms of the holiest thing in ancient Israel, the ark of the Covenant, since your friends body is the very object in which the Holy One has taken up residence. We are not discussing ritualistic or theoretical holiness: the Holy Spirit of almighty God literally resides within the bodies of Christians. Most of us have totally missed the implications. Better to play with a nuclear reactor than tamper with something made holy by the actual presence of the King of the universe. You need to treat your friends body with almost the caution with which Old Testament saints had to treat the ark. Seventy used the ark to satisfy their curiosity. Another touched it in an inappropriate way. All died. (Scriptures)
When God struck Uzzah dead for touching the ark, Scripture says David was afraid of the Lord that day (2 Samuel 6:9). Such fear is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 1:7). If few of us have this fear of sinning against God, it is not because we live in the age of grace, but because we barely know the God of the New Testament; the God who in Acts struck Ananias and Sapphira dead, killed Herod for his pride, and blinded Elymas for opposing Paul; the God of the Corinthian believers who were afflicted, or even killed, for the flippant way they treated holy communion; the God into whose hands, warns Hebrews, its a fearful thing to fall; the God whom Jesus said is the one Person in the universe to fear because he alone can destroy body and soul in hell. (Scriptures) The Judge of all the earth is our Father. Do we see the implications of this in the same light as Scripture does? Since you call on a Father who judges each mans work impartially, says 1 Peter 1:17, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear.
We have looked briefly at sexual sin, merely for purpose of illustration. The point is that we rarely view any sin with the seriousness that God does. It is said a pirate killed a man. He was so horrified by his sin that it ruined his sleep for days. Yet he kept killing. He reached the point where he could murder someone and sleep like a baby, using the corpse as a pillow. We, too, having been surrounded by sin all our lives, have a conscience that in many areas has become disturbingly dull, and we must fight Satans attempt to keep us that way.
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