CORROSIVE FRUITS OF IMMORALITY

 

I was horrified the year I learnt how Eli’s sons seduced women by misusing their office of priest and engaged in adulterous acts at the very door of the tabernacle (1 Samuel 2:22). It reminds one of fertility rites and the groves of idolatry, does it not?

Eli paid a high price for not correcting this abomination as a parent and as the high priest. An unnamed ‘man of God’ came to him and pronounced the Lord’s curse upon Eli’s house because he honoured his sons above Him (vv 27,29). The inference was that Eli didn’t want to rock the boat with his sons but apparently he didn’t mind rocking God’s…..

When Alma of the Book of Mormon called his son Corianton to repentance for his sexual misconduct during his mission to the Zoramites, he pointed out that sexual sin is so serious, it is a sin next to murder (Alma 39:5). Elder Jeffrey R. Holland explains this is so because of the connection between the worth of a soul and the Atonement:

“In exploiting the body of another – which means exploiting his or her soul – one desecrates the Atonement of Christ, which saved that soul and which makes possible the gift of eternal life. And when one mocks the Son of Righteousness, one steps into a realm of heat hotter and holier than the noonday sun. You cannot do so and not be burned.

“Please, never say: ‘Who does it hurt? Why not a little freedom? I can transgress now and repent later.’  Please don’t be so foolish and so cruel. You cannot with impunity ‘crucify Christ afresh’ (see Hebrews 6:6). ‘Flee fornication’ (1 Corinthians 6:18), Paul cries, and flee ‘anything like unto it’ (D&C 59:6), adds the Doctrine and Covenants. Why? Well, for one reason, because of the incalculable suffering in both body and spirit endured by the Saviour of the world so that we could flee. We owe Him something for that, we owe Him everything for that.

‘Ye are not your own’ Paul says, ‘Ye have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s (1 Cor 6:19-20). In sexual transgression the soul is at stake – the body and the spirit.”  (in Conference Report, Oct 1998, 99-100; or Ensign Nov 1998, 76)

Very often we think we have the principle of repentance up our sleeve so not all will be lost if we deviate from the path, thinking we can always repent later. Many people have ‘sowed their wild oats’ in their youth and later returned to God’. Elder Holland goes on to clarify the foolishness and unfairness of such attitude:

“There is peril in playing the prodigal son knowingly, expecting God to forgive us, expecting Christ to bleed for us, expecting mercy to cover us. Among the most grievous sins a mortal can commit is to crucify Christ ‘afresh’ to knowingly ask Him to suffer on the cross a little longer – or again and again and again – while such an one commits knowingly, with planning and premeditation, his or her ‘presumptuous sins’.” 

Will the sinner for whom you suffered,

Who rejected and reviled Thee

Weep in the end for Thy pain and Thy sorrow?

Will his heart understand

When he kneels before Thee

The debt he owes for the existence

Of his merciful tomorrow?

 

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: The Cross by Ron DiCianni)