“You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Genesis 3:4-7 (NIV)
The Father of Lies is very good at what he does. He has had much practice from Adam and Eve to the present day. He loves to entice with the bait yet bites with the hook. And there is always, always a hook. He hides the poison in the golden cup and the wrath and misery which proceeds from wrongful pleasures and sinful actions. All wrong doing is sin and all sin carries with it consequences and a death to something - be it trust, love, friendship, joy, peace or whatever. Every sin is costly. Indeed, sin cost the Savior His life as He willingly died wrongfully for us so that we in turn - those who would believe in Him - could be saved. He fulfilled God’s righteous requirements of the Law for the sins of the world. God’s Word puts it this way in 2 Corinthians 5:21 (NIV): “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Corinthians 5:21 (NIV). All who would believe in Him. Otherwise, the death sentence remains as we cannot save ourselves. To be a perfect sacrifice one must be perfect and our Jesus is the only One Who fulfills that requirement.
Indeed, Jesus took all our sins upon His sinless, perfect body – every.sin - and nailed them to the cross. Paul writes in Colossians 2:13-15 (NIV): “When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” It does us well to remember that there is always a death sentence to every sin. Every.sin. Sin never leads to life and freedom as the adversary would have us believe. Rather, sin opens up shame, loss and regret. To be sure, it is not our friend, Jesus is. He is the Friend Who sticks closer than a brother.
Few of us tremble at sin and seek to keep a distance from it as the wooing of the siren song draws us yet quickly vanishes leaving shame and sorrow in its wake. The poison of the asp gets to the heart little by little as does sin – it starts small but brings pain and death in the end. If we dance with the devil we bring upon ourselves some of the greatest, gravest and saddest losses that can consume a soul, not the least of which is the Divine favor that is better than life. Do yourselves a favor and flee from sin as you would a serpent.
When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6:20-23 (NIV)