For ten team points and a makeup lesson, please read the following quote including the scripture links, watch the videos, and report to Sister Colvin that you have completed the assignment.
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles spoke of the seriousness and the consequences of sexual sin:
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles spoke of the seriousness and the consequences of sexual sin:
“By assigning such seriousness to a
physical appetite so universally bestowed, what is God trying to tell us about
its place in His plan for all men and women? I submit to you He is doing
precisely that—commenting about the very plan of life itself. Clearly among His
greatest concerns regarding mortality are how one gets into this world and how
one gets out of it. He has set very strict limits in these matters. …
“The body is an
essential part of the soul. This distinctive and very important Latter-day Saint
doctrine underscores why sexual sin is so serious. We declare that one who uses
the God-given body of another without divine sanction abuses the very soul of
that individual, abuses the central purpose and processes of life, ‘the very
key’ to life, as President Boyd K. Packer once called it [see Ensign, July
1972, 113]. In exploiting the body of another—which means exploiting his or her
soul—one desecrates the Atonement of Christ, which saved that soul and which
makes possible the gift of eternal life. And when one mocks the Son of
Righteousness, one steps into a realm of heat hotter and holier than the
noonday sun. You cannot do so and not be burned.
“Please, never
say: ‘Who does it hurt? Why not a little freedom? I can transgress now and
repent later.’ Please don’t be so foolish and so cruel. You cannot with
impunity ‘crucify Christ afresh.’ [See Hebrews 6:6.]
‘Flee fornication,’ Paul cries [see 1 Corinthians
6:18], and flee ‘anything like unto it,’ the Doctrine and
Covenants adds [see D&C 59:6;
emphasis added]. Why? Well, for one reason because of the incalculable
suffering in both body and spirit endured by the Savior of the world so that we
could flee [see especially D&C
19:15–20]. We owe Him something for that. Indeed, we owe Him
everything for that. ‘Ye are not your own,’ Paul says. ‘Ye [have been] bought
with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are
God’s.’ [1 Corinthians
6:19–20; emphasis added; see also vv. 13–18.]
In sexual transgression the soul is at stake—the body and the spirit. …
“In matters of
human intimacy, you must wait! You must wait until you can give everything, and
you cannot give everything until you are legally and lawfully married. To give
illicitly that which is not yours to give (remember, ‘you are not your own’)
and to give only part of that which cannot be followed with the gift of your
whole self is emotional Russian roulette. If you persist in pursuing physical
satisfaction without the sanction of heaven, you run the terrible risk of such
spiritual, psychic damage that you may undermine both your longing for physical
intimacy and your ability to give wholehearted devotion to a later, truer love.
You may come to that truer moment of ordained love, of real union, only to
discover to your horror that what you should have saved you have spent, and
that only God’s grace can recover the piecemeal dissipation of the virtue you
so casually gave away. On your wedding day the very best gift you can give your
eternal companion is your very best self—clean and pure and worthy of such
purity in return” (“Personal Purity,” Ensign, Nov. 1998, 76–77).
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