1 Timothy 1:5 But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. (NASB)

Yesterday I ended the devotional with the comment “And you still have not sinned but all the warning signs are there.” Having a positional advantage over someone else is not a sin. What you do with that advantage could be sin. It is like coming to a crossroad and having to make a decision about which way to turn. At the crossroads you will have signs telling you, instructing you as to which path leads where.

In my thesis called “Walking in the Spirit” I spent the better part of that section on the pure heart. It is the most important part of sound judgment. An evil heart will look to the signs at the crossroads and see perhaps lust or greed as the desirable path and ignore the one marked righteousness.

David’s sin of 2 Samuel 11 was created not so much by his true heart condition as it was by the pondering observations of looking down the path to lust. It held his eye which is the vehicle of coveting. Looking back to 2 Samuel 11 David asked directions at this point. His “What’s down there?”

2 Samuel 11:3 And David sent and enquired after the woman. And one said, Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?

That did not change his focus and he went down that road far enough to sin. Once he had, he dismissed her, sending her back home. If his heart had been for her, he would have kept her. But he did not and sin and the consequences for sin kept going down the wrong path even though David chose to leave it. Leaving a sin does not dissolve the consequences of the act.

Only a pure heart will keep your eye perfectly focused on the path to righteousness, no matter the crossroads we encounter.

2 Samuel 11:2 And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king’s house: and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon.

In a recent devotional I said “Don’t focus on the woman.” A dear friend took my advice and focused on the roof. Her point was that David had probably been there before. Point well taken, but was not the point of that devotional. So let us now talk about the roof.

From a pure standpoint of what a roof represents, it is not meant to be an observation point. Those are represented in the bible as windows and parapets. In this example it represents a high place, an advantage point, which it was not meant to represent.

In life this could be taking advantage of a natural position and abusing the position, such as being a supervisor or business owner. Abuse of power isn’t uncommon but we are not all in a position to worry about that danger. If you are in that position, take care not to cross those ethical lines of responsibility.

For most of us having information about a situation, private and perhaps secretive is more in-line with our positional advantage. Perhaps someone has placed trust in you, confided to you a thing which has burdened them. It might even be an observed behavior, something discovered which that party is not aware of your knowledge. The examples are too vast to cover them all.

How would you know if you are at risk of sinning because of this “position”? The position itself is not sin, only a “jumping off” point. What are the warning signs we should look out for here? I would have to say that David did not look away when he saw her naked. He observed her long enough to notice her beauty. So pondering on these observations is the first warning sign.

Do thoughts about a situation turn from an observation to an obsession? Do you think about it a little too much?

And still you have not sinned, but the warning signs are all there.