Amid occasional sexual scandals that rock the pulpit, President of the Christ Apostolic Church of Nigeria, Pastor Samuel Oladele, has offered counselling on how clerics can stave off crises.
According to him, temptation is not a sin, yielding to it is what is sinful.
In an interview with ‘The Punch’, he said:
Before one becomes a man of God, one is first and foremost a man. And when you put on this load of flesh, you are prone to all the temptations that any man who is a man can face. The Bible says Elijah was a man of passion. There is nothing different in what they are experiencing or encountering in terms of temptations that people like Elijah did not encounter. We do not have a high priest who has not been touched by the feeling of infirmity. He feels infirmity because he also has put on this load of flesh. Temptation itself is not a sin. It is when you yield to temptation that becomes a sin. The Bible says if you yield yourself to the demand of the spirit, you are controlled by the spirit but you can easily yield yourself to the demand of the flesh as well.
However, certain guidelines will safeguard us if we want to counsel members of the opposite sex. These were simple teachings when I was in a Bible college as a pastor. When you want to counsel female members, don’t be alone with them. Let the windows be open. If God sees you, let men see you as well. The Bible says we have to be aware of all appearances of evil. Something may not be evil but may appear evil. So, anything that will give room to suspicion, be aware of it. Let us be conscious of this that men of God are first and foremost men. When the twins, Jacob and Esau, were in the womb of Rebecca, the Bible says the two children were struggling in their mother’s womb. They went to the House of the Lord because they didn’t know why, and God said there were two nations in her womb, one representing the flesh and the other representing the spirit. And you know when you become a Christian, the fact that you are a human is not eliminated. You are still subject or prone to all these temptations as I’ve said earlier.
So, every Christian, including ministers, has two nations in their wombs – the flesh and the spirit. The Bible says the spirit wars against the flesh and the flesh against the spirit.
