Proverbs 2:18: The road more traveled

“for her house sinks down to death, and her paths to the departed;”
-Proverbs 2:18

Have you ever met one of those people who just blame everyone else for their problems? It doesn’t matter what it is, they have an answer about how it is someone else’s fault. You even see this is really serious sins, like the guy who gets caught in adultery and will blame his wife for not being attentive enough.

It may be true that someone put that person in a bad situation, but to hear this person talk, you would think the bad situation took over his nervous system and began walking him around like a puppet! An inattentive wife is surely a problem, and yet the husband makes it out like the inattention of a wife took away all choice from him, strapped him down, and forced him to commit adultery.

I hear this quite a bit when talking about God.

You’ve heard it too. “If God is good and loving, why would He send me to hell?”

But just because we blame someone else doesn’t mean we’re right. Ultimately, the cheating husband is completely in control of his own actions, and he is not justified because he can try to shift the blame.

This is how we have done it from the beginning. When our first parents ate of the forbidden fruit in the Garden, Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent. But God wasn’t fooled. He punished each for his own sin. He punished the serpent for the deceit, the woman for eating, and the man for eating. Each person answers for himself.

The answer to the common question posed above is not one we want to hear. We want to hear that God is so loving that He’ll just ignore anything you do and bring you into heaven, as though love ever acts this way. The answer is, “If you go to hell, it’s not because God sent you there, but because you got up and walked there yourself.”

That’s what this verse is talking about. We’ve been looking at the adulteress. Solomon advises his son to avoid her. Why? Because hers is a road that leads to death, and she’s not worth it.

When we sin, we rebel against God. We turn from Him and march directly in the other direction. We think we know a better way, a more fun way, and so we take the road that looks better to our selfish desires. But when we walk away from God, you are walking toward death.

I’ve been on that road before. We all have. We have all chased our own selfishness at times, our own greed and lusts. We have all sinned and run headlong toward destruction.

And here’s where God’s love comes in.

See, God is so loving that He sent His Son to die for us. He was not content to say, “Let them go! They deserve it!” Though we certainly do deserve whatever we get. No, He sent His Son, and in death, His Son is able to save us.

To keep the analogy of the road going, it’s like Jesus stepped onto the road to death when he was killed on the Cross. He walked onto our road, stood in front of us, and told us how to get back to the road to life. He even shows us the way, leading us by His Spirit.

But to get there, we have to answer His call. We have to reject the road we’re on and follow Him. In other words, we have to repent. In repentance we admit that we’ve been wrong, and we need to change.

In following Him, we are given the means to change. We are given eternal life.

The question is not whether God loves us so much that He will ignore our sin. The question is if you are wise enough to heed the warning of Jesus and turn away from your own destruction.