The bitter aftertaste of sin

“but in the end she [the forbidden woman] is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.”
-Proverbs 5:4

There are a thousand temptations that greet me every day. Most don’t affect me that much. I may go by a billboard that tries to tempt me to buy some sort of food, but I’m not really hungry, so I pass it by. There is always a temptation at work to talk bad about others. Most of the time, I really just don’t want to.

Some temptations are a little tougher. By about 9:00 at night, the temptation to eat more will hit me. I don’t always succeed in that one.

In the long run, eating a late night snack isn’t going to hurt me that much. But when my wife isn’t treating me with respect, the temptation comes to yell at her to try to fix the situation. Of course, this wouldn’t be any sort of fix at all, and would end up costing me a lot more than I could possible gain by acting in such a way.

The most effective temptations make so much sense to us in that moment. When my wife gets mad at me, it makes sense to me that I need to defend myself and push the blame back on her.

Sexual temptation makes sense to us. We live in a society, in fact, that promotes it. Even adultery isn’t always condemned anymore. There are a hundred excuses for cheating on our spouse that are perfectly accepted by this world – “He doesn’t pay attention to me,” “She doesn’t meet my needs,” “Better to do this than to divorce!”

Christians are often thought of as prudes because we promote a more old-fashioned approach to sex. Well, it’s easy to dismiss the truth of the Scripture as “old-fashioned” when you’re faced with a temptation that seems justified. At least at the time.

Sometimes it makes sense to me too. And I have to heed Solomon’s warning here, because sex outside of marriage may make sense in the heart, but “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)

God is not a prude who is trying to ruin our fun. He’s the one who invented sex, after all, and He intends for us to enjoy it. But sex outside of marriage is a perversion of what He has created.

The double-edged sword here is not just disease, pregnancy, broken hearts, betrayal, etc. It’s something different. It’s about idolatry.

When we seek our own pleasure above worship of God, we have made an idol out of our pleasure. What we must understand is that an idol cannot ultimately give us anything, whether the idol is in the form of a golden calf, or just the darkness of our own hearts. Yes, bowing before it can produce a moment of pleasure, but the body is made for something much greater. It is His, and it is made for forever.

It is so easy to limit our vision to this moment and this place, to that wicked heart that is telling you to do something. If you narrow your view that much, fornication and adultery makes a lot of sense. If you understand the truth of this life, which is but a foretaste of eternity, things may seem a bit different.

It is only by Christ that we can see that. Because our hearts are wicked, only God Himself could lift our eyes enough to understand that much. By the Blood of Christ we can be forgiven of those mistakes of the past. By His Spirit we will be freed from slavery to sin. By His holy work in us, we will begin to be conformed to His image. It is not something you can accomplish yourself. It is by His Grace alone. Look to Him in faith, and He will show you what you have lacked so long.