Fornication: A Python in Disguise

It’s a horror story I’ll never forget. A man had trained a python snake from its birth. Since the snake was non-poisonous, the man had no fear. As the enormous snake grew, it was taught to coil around its master’s body from the ground up. What an act! It won raves every where. Until that certain day.

Everything was going as planned. People cheered when the python encircled the man and their two heads were side by side—man and serpent. And then it happened. The man’s face turned a deathly color and his eyes bulged. Then the terrified audience heard the sound of the crushing of bones. The man’s pet had become his killer.

How do I apply that horrific event to fornication? Stay with me. Fornication is a long word for what I term “no-no sex”—that’s sexual intercourse between unmarried people. It used to be frowned on as unlawful, unhealthful, hurtful and sinful.

Times have changed—but not the main actors who either condone or condemn sex between  the unmarried. On one side you have three who will tell you there is nothing wrong with sex minus marriage. Have all you want. That threesome is the world, the flesh and the devil.¹The other trinity—God the Father, Jesus Christ the Savior and the Holy Spirit—will tell you to flee fornication or else find that it is a python in disguise.

You will choose which road to take. But listen to this warrior—even with my wrinkles—and I’ll give you more than talk. I’ll tell it like it is. The world’s voice tells you you’re just material—with raging hormones of youth. Here today, gone tomorrow. So get all the sex you want—now. Like a fellow Marine who raved over his pleasure with prostitutes. Until he was sent home with a probable time-limit on his life—advanced syphilis. Or the gal who bought the line, “If you love me, you won’t say no”—so she said yes. You wouldn’t want to hear her scream when she later learned she had AIDS.

But those are the gross examples. There are so many more singles having sex who really think they are in love, enjoying their pleasures together and seem no worse for it. Enter the God of the Bible and Creator of passion and sex. He says fornication is sin and allows no excuse for it.² That’s because God doesn’t indulge in tall tales—only the truth. He says you are going to live forever. And He says that if you repent of your sins and let His Son, Jesus, rule your life, He will make you value a pure heart and the reward that goes to those who choose Him.³

I shall tell you something I don’t often say. How God ever kept me from fornication in my youthful single years I do not fully know. Not with my background. But He did—and the mystery of glorious sexual relations with the girl I promised my loyalty to in marriage was mine to discover. Hers too. Once I met Jesus, I understood more about my single days. That restraining hand. Even those strange thoughts: “If I love her, I’ll respect her. I shall not—without marriage—take away her purity that she may later regret losing.”

“But my sex drive,” some say, “is something I can’t control.” Here’s where Christ comes in. He will give you the power to say no to sexual sin—and the wisdom to avoid the path of the python before you embrace sin and the python makes another coil.⁴

Eternity is forever. That’s why youth are ordered to “flee fornication.”⁵ God wants to make you different—and an example to follow. Look what He did for Joseph who chose God over sexual sin,⁶before Pharaoh chose Joseph as Egypt’s Prime Minister.⁷ But what if you’ve already blown it? Or are involved in sex sin right now? Stop it! Turn around. Ask Jesus to forgive you, enter your life and give you new directions.⁸ Reserve sex for only marriage. Then you won’t fall for the world’s tall tales. You’ll know the truth—and the truth will set you free!⁹ 

"Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ" (I Corinthians 11:1)
The ST. PAUL SCHOOL, with Frank Eiklor, Eileen Young and Cecilia Contreras