News recently broke that Vice President Mike Pence has a policy of never dining alone with a woman nor attending an event where alcohol is served unless his wife, Karen, is with him. (We reported the story here.) Not surprisingly the liberal media ridiculed the VP for adopting the “Billy Graham Rule” to protect his marriage. So on the heels of this “scandal” Denny Burk, Professor of Biblical Studies at Boyce College, has come up with ten brief reflections on this particular discipline. Here are Burk’s thoughts, which he says are “by no means everything that can or should be said about the so-called ‘Billy Graham Rule’:
1. We must take sexual holiness seriously because God takes sexual holiness seriously. To reject God’s purpose of holiness in our lives is to reject God altogether. For this reason, we must be blood-earnest about holiness.
- “Without holiness, no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14).
- “For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality… Consequently, he who rejects this is not rejecting man but the God who gives His Holy Spirit to you” (1 Thess. 4:3).
- “But do not let immorality or any impurity or greed even be named among you, as is proper among saints… For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God” (Eph. 5:3-5).
2. The Bible commands us not only to avoid sexual immorality but to avoid situations in which we know that we are vulnerable to temptation.
- “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matthew 6:13)
- “Flee youthful lusts” (2 Timothy 2:22).
- “Make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts” (Romans 13:14).