An extremely wealthy man wakes up one sunny morning, picks up his coffee cup that's been poured by the maid, and steps outside onto his deck to read the paper and take in the morning. The man sits and sips his coffee in supposed contentment, surveying the splendor of the day as he looks across his expertly-manicured lawn. He should be at work but he felt like staying home to enjoy the splendor of a day like today.
Suddenly a sight catches his eye. Over his fence, through his neighbor's window, he sees a woman bathing. She is stunning and steals his breath. He tries to look away but her alluring beauty is intoxicating. Before long he can stand it no longer. The rich man asks his gardener who this woman is, knowing her to be his neighbor's wife, and has her summoned so as to covet her for her sex.
David and Bathsheba is the well-worn biblical story of adultery (2 Sam. 11). David, a king of remarkable wealth and stature, covets the sight of Bathsheba and devises a heinous plot to seduce the woman, to cover up his adultery, and, ultimately, to covertly kill her husband. And although David repented of his sin when confronted by Nathan (2 Sam. 12:1-13), the perennial question remains: at what point did David sin? when he saw Bathsheba and didn't turn away? When he beckoned for her? When they had sex? When he covered it up? When he had Uriah killed?
The core of the issue is sin, although it has often been reduced to a how-far-can-I-go-before-I-sin quandary. There are two remarkable passages that shed light upon this challenging story. The first is Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7). Jesus says, "everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Matt. 5:28)." Jesus is speaking about the state of a person's heart. In this way, Christ indicates that the root of sin goes beyond mere external expressions, but in fact lies much deeper.
Secondly, Solomon writes in Proverbs, "Whoever plans to do evil will be called a schemer. The devising of folly is sin, and the scoffer is an abomination of mankind (24:8-9)." The point is that temptations abound in a world that is in the hand of the evil one, and guilt is not measured by whether we are tempted or not, but in how we react to those temptations. If we scheme and plan to do evil, we have sinned in our heart already. God wants more.
In reference to David, it was not a sin for him to see. But at the moment of scheming, he sinned. The moment that desire conceives to give birth to sin (James 1:13-15) is the moment of claiming that sin and devising of plans to make the desire a physical reality. Sin then becomes a much more intimate, much more integral part of who we are. Therefore, only when we really utterly on God, from every single moment to every single moment, will we be able to withstand the desires that lure us away. Let us fix our eyes upon the Lord, so as to be freed from the enticements to sin!
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