A young man called a pastor late at night and asked if he would meet with him the next morning. They made arrangements to have breakfast at a nearby restaurant.

The next morning the young man told his pastor that on a recent business trip he had stayed too late at the hotel bar with a woman colleague. The alcohol, distance from home, and easy laughter the two shared had led to the obvious. They ended up in bed together. "Now what?" asked the man.

The pastor took a deep breath. He thought of the young wife and small children whose lives could be so terribly affected by a night of indiscretion. To preserve the family, he briefly considered advising the young man to cover up the error, but then the eternal consequences of establishing such a spiritual pattern convinced him that honesty was the path to follow. To make the young man think biblically about what he must do, the minister asked him a series of questions:

• Had he prayed to ask God's forgiveness and pardon?
• Had he confessed his sin to the young woman involved and told her that the intimacy would never happen again?
• Had he confessed his wrong to his wife and asked her forgiveness?
• And, if he was not yet ready to do this, had he at least arranged to have an AIDS test? For until he had been tested, he could not approach the marriage bed without endangering his wife and the child she was expecting.

The young man listened to each of the questions without expression or comment. When the pastor finished, the young man pushed his breakfast plate away from him, leaned back in his seat, and said, "I came for grace, not for discipline. You disappoint me, Pastor."

The words cut the pastor to the heart. He did not wonder if what he had said on this occasion was wrong. He wondered, rather, what he had said in the past that would lead an intelligent, capable man such as this to believe the promises of grace mean we will never have to face any consequences of wrongdoing.