A Price on Virginity?

To quote a recent cnn.com report, "There a price on virginity and apparently it is 3.7 million dollars." This story tells of a 22 year old woman, Natalie Dylan, who recently "sold" her virginity online to the highest bidder. She did this, supposedly, to help pay for her education (though she probably earned enough to pay for 10 ivy league educations). This auction was not illegal either, as it was based in Nevada, where prostitution is legal.

While 3.7 million dollars may seem like a lot of money, I personally believe that the price of losing one's virginity illegitimately is far greater than this large sum of cash. Consider the words of Deuteronomy 30:15-16: "See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the LORD your God will bless you..."

According to this passage of Scripture, obedience to God has far broader implications than we often consider. Obedience is also about more than 3.7 million dollars, though I believe most (even believers) would do the same if they were promised to gain that huge amount of money. (Perhaps we wouldn't commit a sexual sin such as this one, as prostitution is so looked down upon by our culture, but maybe we might commit another "lesser" sin for a large sum of money.) Obedience to God is a matter of life and death, as Deuteronomy 30 says. We all have the option to accept God's commands and live by them, or we can wrongly assume that we are the final judge of our decisions, living in line with our own desires and culture's expectations.

Romans 6:23 further tells us that the end result of sin is death. We often think that our sins do not matter, but God's Word tells us that they do. In fact, God's actions tell us that sins matter very deeply. It was because of our sin that God sent his one and only son, Jesus Christ, to die. It was because of many wrong deeds like this one- which is nothing more than desire to earn money illegitimately and an animalistic desire for sex - that Jesus Christ died. He died to pay the price for my sins and for your sins, so that we could have a worshipful fellowship with the father and be complete, as he created us to be.

The choice of losing virginity outside of marriage has nothing to do with 3.7 million dollars. According to God, obedience and disobedience has everything to do with life and death, implications that far exceed any amount of money!