Lining Up Sin

This was my bulletin article for this week, thought I would share it:

“How far can you go and still be okay?” I have been asked this question many times when talking to teens about dating relationships. Kids want to know what is acceptable and what isn’t. When does a romantic activity pass from acceptable to sinful? What can I get away with and still be okay? Where is the line? There’s only one problem with this, it’s a bad question. My response is always, “If your concerned about the line, your already going in the wrong direction.” Purity is not about not doing certain activities. It encompasses the whole direction that you take. Purity is all about where your heart is focused. If your heart is focused on how far you can go without sinning, your heart is already sinning. You’ve taken your focus off Christ to play in the devil’s backyard. Purity in Christ is not a place, it is a direction.

But there is a deeper undercurrent here. Do we live lives that are focused on purity and holiness in Christ, or do we focus on sin and trying to avoid it, just being sin managers? The Pharisees and scribes were into sin management. They had drawn lines to distinguish what was sinful and not. Don’t dare cross that line. They were watching you. Jesus came with a direction. His response to people stuck in sin was to meet them where they were and tell them, “Follow me.” He didn’t give them a line to avoid, He gave them a direction to go. No matter where you are on the “sin line,” you can always walk towards Jesus.

Starring at “the line” will only bring temptation. It’s impossible to not think about something your thinking about. For example, don’t think about cookies. There, are you successfully not thinking about cookies? So it is with sin. To stare at sinful activity and wonder how close you can get is to already invite temptation, sin, and separation from Christ, because we are no longer looking His direction, instead focusing on what we are trying to avoid.

If we are focused on Christ, we have no worry about the line, because even if we are on the wrong side, we are walking the right direction. We don’t stop when we’ve crossed to the right side. In fact we often finds lines we’ve crossed we didn’t even know about. We keep following as He leads us into His righteousness. The only line that matters is walking the straight and narrow one to Christ. To wonder where any other line is is to get off course.

A side note: I remember previewing a video for teens about sexual purity that used the phrase over and over “stay pure until you are married.” Please don’t say that. What a terrible statement. It implies that sexuality is impure. To have a sexual relationship in marriage IS sexual purity. I would offer the phrase “stay chaste until you are married” or something of that sort. The video went on to give the reasons to stay pure were to avoid diseases and pregnancy. I love when we take scare tactics. "Don't have sex or your weiner will fall off."* I think Christ has more in mind when He calls us to sexual purity. I didn’t show the video.

*That sentence was not in my bulletin article.