Sunday, November 25, 2018

The Destructiveness of Sin

by Dr. Paul Chappell

“Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled; Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.”

Hebrews 12:15–17

The devil is a deceiver, and one of his most effective lies is to tell us that sin is not really that dangerous. In the Garden of Eden he used this lie to persuade Eve to take the forbidden fruit. “And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die” (Genesis 3:4). But sin is deadly, and it has consequences that reach far beyond what we expect. Indeed if we saw those consequences clearly, we would never yield to temptation. But sin is deceitful, and we must remain on guard.

Dr. John Rice said, “Sin always leads to a hardened heart. You cannot sin and be the same. You think you can play with sin and when you are ready, leave sin alone. When you are ready to leave sin alone, sin is not ready to leave you alone. Sin of itself, necessarily and always, changes the character, hardens the heart, dulls the sensibilities to right and wrong, sears the conscience as with a hot iron, makes it so you do not want to do right, though you once did. Sin itself hardens the heart. It always turns out that way.”

We do not develop immunity to sin by being exposed to small doses of it. Instead small doses of sin damage our conscience and our sensibilities, and leave us vulnerable to even deeper sin. We must treat every sin, even the “little” ones, as the deadly poison that it is.

Today’s Growth Principle: 

One of the best protections against temptation is a clear understanding of the destructiveness of sin.

The apostle Paul warns of "another Jesus whom we have not preached... a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted" (2 Corinthians 11:4).