Man Code entries are designed for parents or adults seeking to mold young boys into strong Christian men. Previous entries can be found here.

Flee from sexual immorality. 1 Corinthians 6:18

Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. 2 Timothy 2:22

Son, you’re taught as a young man not to run away, from a fight, from a challenge, from anything. It’s not manly to run. Momma didn’t raise no wimp. The Bible even says to resist the devil, to stand and fight him (James 4:7). When we stand up to the devil, he is the one who will flee from us. But there are times when the best thing you can do, the manliest thing you can do, is run. To flee. As a young Christian man, you’re called to resist the devil, to fight for those who can’t fight for themselves, but to flee temptation, the evil desires of youth.

Running away from temptation doesn’t make you a coward, it makes you smart. Think of it this way: let’s say you came across some radioactive material, something that gave you a headache and burned your eyes just going near it. To breathe the fumes from this waste longer than a few seconds would be poisonous. At what point would it be smart to try and see how close you could get to the radioactive materials and how long you could hold it before it burned through your fingers and gave you cancer? No, only idiots would do that, and you’re not an idiot.

There are temptations out there that will lure you in, and part of you will want to see how close you could get to disaster without any consequences. How much can you drink or smoke before you become addicted and start to ruin your body? How much pornography can you look at before it messes with your head, rewires your brain, and ruins your future marriage before you even meet your wife? How far can you go with your girlfriend without going “all the way”? Those are questions you honestly never want to find out the answer to, because once you figure out the answer, it will be too late and you’ll be stuck with the consequences for the rest of your life.

That’s why Paul tells early Christians to “flee” when facing temptation. That’s not resisting, ignoring or even walking away. It’s running away as fast as you can. Paul knew how much damage temptation could do in a man’s life. That’s why he counseled Timothy, a younger Christian in the faith, to run away from the temptations of youth and instead run towards God as fast as he could.

It doesn’t make you less of a man to run away from temptation. It just makes you wise, and it may end up saving your future marriage, your future sex life, maybe even your life. Be a man and run!

QUESTION: What’s a temptation in your life right now that if you were honest, you need to start running away from?