An able young man with a budding career was pressed by his boss's wife to have sex. His whole future stood still for the answer.
Such temptation isn't novel. Yet this particular man's decision deserves our scrutiny. His moral choice to reject the woman's enticements was made more than three hundred years before Moses wrote God's command, "Thou shalt not commit adultery."
Ex. 20:14 The young man was Joseph.
Without aid of either the Decalogue or the Sermon on the Mount, this patriarch caught the spirit of Truth common to both. To Potiphar's wife he said, "How . . . can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?"
Gen. 39:9 The gleam of eternal Truth—the immaculate idea of God—must have shone in Joseph's consciousness. How else could he have been saved from sinning against God?
