“But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day. The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent. But the day of the Lord will come as unexpectedly as a thief. Then the heavens will pass away with a terrible noise, and the very elements themselves will disappear in fire, and the earth and everything on it will be found to deserve judgment. Since everything around us is going to be destroyed like this, what holy and godly lives you should live, looking forward to the day of God and hurrying it along. On that day, he will set the heavens on fire, and the elements will melt away in the flames. But we are looking forward to the new heavens and new earth he has promised, a world filled with God’s righteousness. And so, dear friends, while you are waiting for these things to happen, make every effort to be found living peaceful lives that are pure and blameless in his sight. And remember, our Lord’s patience gives people time to be saved. This is what our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you with the wisdom God gave him—”
2 Peter 3:8-15 NLT
Even the Phillies’ Phanatic got in on the fun the other day. There he was on the Jumbotron canoodling (love that word, by the way) his mistress, enjoying the day, and then, gasp, he noticed he was on display. Promptly and quite comically, he dove for cover as the audience laughed. Hard. Even uproariously. It was all clean fun and clean fun has been had across the land in the wake of a big executive and his HR mistress getting caught at, of all places, a Coldplay concert. Yes, they were canoodling and they weren’t married. Their jobs are lost. Their reputations are destroyed. Their families traumatized. All the while, America has fun. Lots and lots of fun.
Why?
Is it funny to see this? Our thought is that it’s so outlandishly funny precisely because we’re truth suppressors (Romans 1:18-21; Psalm 19:1). What we mean to say is that it is funny…but not that funny. For crying out loud, this is a full-blown cultural phenomenon and that’s a little bit weird. It’s a bit like someone repeatedly reminding you that they’re trustworthy. Every little while they find another way to tell you that they can absolutely be trusted because they’re so obviously of elevated character. After a while you begin to suspect that you’re being conned. This is the same thing. Except that it’s worse. Much worse.
What exactly are we saying is so stupid (and funny) in the first place? The fact of adultery? The fact that they were in public and didn’t expect to be world famous in a matter of hours? Clearly, their reaction was the thing that draws our attention – and laughter. But it’s more than merely that or else the whole affair (sorry…couldn’t stop myself) wouldn’t have become so infamous.
The fact is that we all know in our hearts that God will one day judge what are for the time being just secrets (Romans 1:32). We know it. But we presume on the richness of His patience (Romans 2:4) rather than repent of our own sin. This is, if you allow your author to play theological party-pooper, the dark and uneasy truth underneath our collective chuckles. They got caught in such a comical way and they deserved it…right? Well, what about us? What sins of ours will be shouted from the rooftops unless we repent?
“The time is coming when everything that is covered up will be revealed, and all that is secret will be made known to all. Whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be shouted from the housetops for all to hear! “Dear friends, don’t be afraid of those who want to kill your body; they cannot do any more to you after that. But I’ll tell you whom to fear. Fear God, who has the power to kill you and then throw you into hell. Yes, he’s the one to fear.”
Luke 12:2-5 NLT
So, in the spirit of not being mindlessly conformed to this world, we do well to take some spiritual inventory in the face of so much public ridicule of the adulterous couple. It’s easy to smugly laugh at them while forgetting that we all have a date with the Judgment Seat. If we confess our sins now we will not be put to the shame of two poor sinners at a concert. Not only that, we avoid the eternal punishment that awaits all those who refuse Christ and think they can play the Creator God for a sucker. Do we really believe that there will be no reckoning? Of course not…and our laughter over this, overblown and even a little heartless, shows it. We know God but suppress the truth about Him for that hideous lie of autonomy. Could it be, then, that the Lord has allowed this comic and social episode to remind us of the reality of judgment? Could it be that as we see news of the couple’s job losses, and witness their shame, that we get a glimpse and hint of Judgment’s enormity?
Today is the day of grace and His church should delight in telling (and reminding) others of this beautiful fact. Oh, and the thing about adultery is, in this case at least, even the morally compromised America we inhabit knows that it’s a sin. Our culture accepts every single sexual sin there is. We even rejoice in them. But this…adultery at a concert…well, that’s just wrong because there’s an innocent spouse involved. You see? We get that.
But there’s a problem right here. The “other” sexual things we figure are no one’s business are actually His business! If adultery is wrong because it’s the violation of one’s promise to another, we do well to consider the real depth of sin. It isn’t a private act, nor an impersonal moral wrong. Our modern deceit, even within the church, is to be convinced of an impersonal moral force in the universe under which we all operate. We hardly use the word sin anymore and prefer to say that things are immoral or wrong and that karma will getcha. Yeah, stuff like that. All of that drivel are the exhaust fumes from our overheating engines as we run from the personal God against whom we sin. He is. And we are His. A sin is a sin precisely because our action is unfaithful to Him. To see it that way, that all sin is adultery against our Creator God and to that end we do can read the book of Hosea and wonder.
Yes, wonder.
How does He love such wayward whores as us who go off after the world and the flesh so terribly often? The answer: thanks be to God for Jesus Christ our Lord! Indeed, the answer is the glorious sixth, seventh, and eighth chapter of Romans. More still: it’s the breakfast on the beach that Peter had with the very Lord he’d denied. We are all failures before Him but lest we forget the glory and power of the gospel, we recall that Peter, who knew Him so well and yet denied Him thrice, wasn’t abandoned. Jesus went to get him. He will never abandon, nor forsake you!
“Peter, do you love me?”
He asked three times. The worst thing Peter ever did, that would have marked his soul and destroyed his confidence evermore, trapping him in despair, Jesus turned upside down. Deny Me three times and I’ll restore you on a beach for all to see exactly that many times! This is the Lord we serve and this is why we can bring our failures to Him.
Don’t hide any more. Don’t wait. Go to Him and just as He did for Peter, He will do for you. He will take what’s broken about you, that ugly thing you let define you in silence and in shame, and He’ll turn in upside down and inside out and you’ll never be cast aside. Indeed, He is the faithful One and whatever you have broken He will fix.
Go to Him. Repent. Don’t hide. Stop your suffering by calling on Him who will love and restore you.
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