“You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with
the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a
friend of the world becomes an enemy of God”
(James 4:4, NIV).
What begins as a look, progresses in fits and starts as
desire lurches increasingly towards opportunity. The imagined
occurrence becomes a yearning and the yearning is given life, as it obsesses
and gathers focus and energy. At some given moment, what was envisioned becomes
available and will be greedily consumed.
The after effects are seldom blissful, as the consequences begin to
weigh on the evaporating and elusive vision of what was imagined. Often times
what was; is lost in brokenness and what was to be; becomes unwanted because it
is found to be, a false illusion and empty promise. Such is the course of
adultery.
Adultery is not just
the sexual abandonment of a partner in a relationship. It can also be the abandonment of a covenanted role, the love or affection in any relationship for
another relationship. It does not matter if the adultery occurs in marital, a
familial or even spiritual relationship. Much is lost and in the false
illusions and empty promises … very little is ever found. Jesus
cautions us to never allow the tiniest of looks or footholds in the area of
lusting (Matthew 5:27-30) because lusting leads to adultery and adultery to
dire consequences in all relationships.
Looking back over our own experiences, we often see the
heartbreak of adultery in our own lives or in the lives of others. Over and over in history we see people
abandon their relationship with the Living God as they lured into adultery with
other gods. They become adulterous partners to evil and false gods, forsaking
what was true and real for what is often empty and full of despair. Adultery always leaves a distance in what was
and what is. It always leaves a void in what was promised and what is
delivered. In spiritual matters, a
mighty distance or a gulf is left whenever we abandon or forsake the Living God
for the countless false gods of money, position, power, pleasure and the many
others that promise much and deliver little.
The gulf is our sin and it becomes mighty gulf because there is little
we can do to remedy the situation.
There is a mighty gulf between the holiness of God and the
sinfulness of human beings. Yet over and over we see redemption and restoration
coming from in the grace from a Mighty God. Over and over, we see God reaching
in grace across the vast span of this gulf to redeem and restore the people
with His mighty love. He does over and over again. In a greater way we see our
Lord Jesus Christ by His grace reaching across every mighty gulf of separation
from sin, to redeem and restore all people for all time. God reaches across any and every gulf we
have created, whenever we have forgotten or abandoned His ways, truth and
blessing to bring us again and again back into a grace secured relationship by
His steadfast and mighty love. Only a mighty love could span the mighty gulf
that all sin including adultery will leave in its wake. Thanks be … to our
Mighty God, for crossing the mighty gulf of all sin to save, redeem and restore
us.
“There you will worship man-made gods of wood and stone,
which cannot see or hear or eat or smell. But if from there you seek the Lord
your God, you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all
your soul. When you are in distress and
all these things have happened to you, then in later days you will return to
the Lord your God and obey him. For the Lord your God is a merciful God; he
will not abandon or destroy you or forget the covenant with your ancestors,
which he confirmed to them by oath.” (Deuteronomy 4:28-31, NIV)
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