The One Sin He Says to Run From

Flee sexual immorality! “Every sin that a man does is outside the body,” but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. (1 Corinthians 6:18, WEB)

Paul writes, flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. It is worth noticing that Paul does not tell us to stand and fight this one. With many temptations we are called to resist, to hold our ground, to endure and outlast the pressure. Here his instruction is to run, and there is wisdom in the difference that our pride does not want to hear.

Sexual temptation has a way of overpowering a man who lingers near it to prove that he can win the argument. The longer you stay to reason with it, the more ground it takes, because it does not fight fair and it does not tire the way you do. You do not debate it. You do not stay in the room and reason with it and wait to feel strong enough to leave. You get up and you leave, and you do it early, before the pull has its hooks in you and leaving starts to feel like tearing yourself away.

Paul also says something sobering about why this sin cuts so close, that it is a sin against your own body, against the very self God has joined to Christ. This is not distant or abstract, not a rule broken somewhere out there. It reaches the most intimate part of you, the place where you are meant to belong wholly to God. That is why it leaves the particular kind of ache it leaves, an ache other sins do not.

So take the escape route seriously and practically, without waiting for a feeling of resolve that may never come in time. When it comes, move your body, change your location, put the phone in another room, walk out the door and keep walking. Do not wait to feel strong; fleeing is what you do precisely because you are not. Ask God for the humility to run, and then run.