Happily Ever After: Devotions from Time of GraceSample

When You're Single: Flee Adultery

It might seem pointless to try to advocate for celibacy among single people in the 21st century, that it’s a battle long lost. Do it anyway. It’s never too late to relearn God’s ways. If even one heart is changed, if even one life is blessed, it’s worth it.

Even while tolerating and encouraging sexual behavior outside of marriage, all societies know that there are social and personal costs to it. Inconvenient pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases are just two. God knows of those costs and more, for it was he who designed marriage as the exclusive place for human sexuality.

He guided St. Paul to write, “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body” (1 Corinthians 6:18).

Whose word and ways can you trust more than God’s? He who sent his own Son as a sacrificial lamb to take away the sin of the world isn’t going to promote behaviors that will hurt us. The things he forbids really are destructive and painful. His will is good; his commandments protect precious things. Like marriage. Like your body.