Sin Stinks

  Let marriage be held in honor among all Hebrews 13:4a

Sin stinks, often leaving an ugly mess for someone else to clean up. It seems I am seeing it in marriages a lot these days. This is my own challenge, from God’s word and to the church, to come with a mop.

I grew up in the “if it feels good do it generation” or at least that’s what we are always accused of. I am beginning to wonder if there was ever a generation that did not live that way – at least apart from the Lord?

In recent weeks I  have heard  about a young married woman who thinks it should be no problem for her to go to a club on Friday night and dance the night away because she married a man who doesn’t like to dance. A married man who thinks it is perfectly fine to stay in regular contact with female friends from before he was married. A “reconnection” with an old friend on Facebook that led to several meetings over meals creating havoc in a long standing, otherwise healthy, marriage.  Pornography, adultery, and a multitude of other kinds of abuses that have put families at risk of no longer being intact. All of this came in professing Christian households.

Marriage and families are under attack in our culture. I fear that they are only in marginally better shape in the Church of Jesus Christ.  We need help.

If it really didn’t matter to anyone but the sinner it would not be as much of a problem. If someone knowingly chooses to sin against God I realize that I cannot fix a person’s broken heart condition. But, I am feeling for the husband who gets left alone while his wife is out dancing – with her girlfriends (really?) or the kids who are left in the wake of the split marriage over adultery or pornography – or any other  abusive or neglectful habits that break up a marriage. The innocent suffer because of one person’s sin.  Victimless?  Hardly!

A sinner needs to be restored and a lot of energy and time can be placed there while forgetting that others are being affected by the sin and often seem to be forgotten while the hurt is dealt with on many levels inside and outside of the family.  In what my pastor calls the myth of “It Takes Two,” sometimes people who are close to the sin can be blamed. That young husband may be seen as culpable if his wife is out dancing because he obviously isn’t willing, or the wife of the adulterer may be accused of not being available for her husband, but the truth is that there is a heart problem that needs to be resolved or the sin would not have happened. Self –control is a fruit of one who is a child of God.

I know there will always be sin. I know that true believing Christians will fall. I know that no human will be the perfect husband or the perfect wife. What I am not sure about is how we are ministering to those who are hurt by the sin of another. Are we willing to come into the life of one who has been hurt and help build them up, to point them to God’s goodness and His steadfast love, to have confidence in His grace and mercy?

This kind of ministry requires a good mop and a willingness to get our hands dirty as we help clean up the mess someone else has left. Do you know someone who could use a lift up after being pulled through the mud by another?

Are you are leaning toward a sin that might drag someone else through the mud? If so, would you stop to consider the consequences to your family so the mop is never necessary?