Just This Once
Keith Sharp
Clayton M. Christensen was a Rhodes Scholar and is a Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and a best selling author. Each year in the last session of his class on management theory he delivers a speech in which he asks his students to apply what they have learned to their own lives. This speech has had such an impact that it has been published in “Harvard Business Review” and in abbreviated form (of course) in “Reader’s Digest” (February 2011).
One of his major points is “how to live a life of integrity.” He notes: Often when we need to choose between right and wrong, a voice in our head says, ‘Look, I know that as a general rule, most people shouldn’t do this. But in this particular extenuating circumstance, just this once, it’s okay.
He goes ahead to tell how he, the starting center on the undefeated Oxford University basketball team refused to play in the game for the collegiate championship of England because it was played on a Sunday, and he had made a commitment at age 16 not to play ball on Sunday. He observes, “The lesson I learned is that it’s easier to hold to your principles 100 percent of the time than it is to hold to them 98 percent of the time.” After all, life is a series of “extenuating circumstances.”
Joseph refused to commit adultery with Potiphar’s wife even though he was a slave, she was mistress of the house, no one else was around, and she repeatedly insisted that he do so (Genesis 39:1-12). As wife of the captain of Pharaoh’s guard, she was most likely a beautiful woman. But to her demands he replied: Look, my master does not know what is with me in the house, and he has committed all that he has to my hand. There is no one greater in this house than I, nor has he kept back anything from me but you, because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God? (Genesis 39:8-9)
Even though she lied about Joseph to Potiphar, and Potiphar had him cast into prison, Joseph refused to give in even once. Had he succumbed to temptation once, how could he have refused the second time?
Daniel and his friends Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were taken as captives while they were young from Judah to Babylon to be educated in the wisdom of the Chaldeans. “Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's delicacies, nor with the wine which he drank” (Daniel 1:8). Daniel refused to yield even once though he was a captive.
I knew two teenage Christians who were on their high school football team, and the team won the district championship. The fans rewarded the team by paying their way to the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. They had a free ride and free tickets to a once-in-a-lifetime event. They never even asked their parents if they could go, because the team would be traveling on Sunday, and they would have to miss the worship assembly of the church. “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Matthew 6:33).
And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching (Hebrews 10:24-25).
If they had let a sporting event come ahead of the Lord then, how could they have refused to do so a second (third, fourth,...) time?
I knew another teenage Christian who was elected to the Senior Court at her high school. The court was presented at the high school senior play, and they were to attend the school dance afterward. She refused to engage in lewdness by attending that dance (Galatians 5:19-21). “Lewdness” includes “indecent bodily movements” and “unchaste (impure - KS) handling of males and females” (J.H. Thayer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament. 79-80). But that just comes along once in a life time! Yes, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to show her character and to set the right example.
Her escort to the play was also a Christian, but he wasn’t as strong. He took her home after the play, got another girl as a date, and went to the dance. He later fell away from Christ.
King David bitterly learned the results of yielding to sin “just this once.” He only committed adultery one time (2 Samuel 11:1-4). But Bathsheba conceived, and, in an effort to cover up his sin, he arranged to have her husband Uriah, a loyal soldier of Israel, killed (2 Samuel 11:5-17). One sin led to another. In his bitter regret for his sins he lamented: I am weary with my groaning; All night I make my bed swim; I drench my couch with my tears. My eye wastes away because of grief; It grows old because of all my enemies (Psalm 6:6-7).
Satan is clever (Ephesians 6:11) and vicious (1 Peter 5:8). “Just this once” is his clever device to pull us down to our sorrow and shame. It’s always easier to yield the second time, and those isolated acts turn into habits that mold character which determines destiny. It’s also easier to resist temptation the second time we take the right stand. “Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). As righteous Joseph and godly Daniel, determine in your heart not to yield to the temptation to sin even once. Circumstances don’t change wrong to right.
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