Temptation & Sorrow
“One day Jesus said to his disciples, “There will always be temptations to sin, but what sorrow awaits the person who does the tempting!” (Luke 17:1 NLT) There are days when I’ve come to suspect that Satan himself is running ahead of me, whispering into the minds of those I’m destined to encounter, something to the effect of “give this guy an opportunity to cheat on something, he’ll go for it!”. There are far too many people around looking to slice their piece of the pie a little bigger, even if it means unethically or immorally cheating somebody else. This always reminds me of the differences between sin and law. Illegal leaves the door wide open for a near endless variety of self serving activities, that don’t cross over it’s legal limit. Sinful is more complicated, it’s essentially any immoral activity or consideration, which separates us from God. God is morally perfect, we are imperfect, except for the purposes God intended. In this article the subject of our imperfection is weakness. But for our weaknesses, temptation would be a sail without wind. Nobody can successfully tempt me to eat a food I dislike, unless they also offer me something very appealing. And so it begins.
Some people intentionally try and set us up, “I can give you a much better price if you’re willing to say that you or a family member works for … (somebody that you don’t)”. Other people set us up unintentionally. For example, we make a $3 dollar purchase, give the cashier a $10 bill and get back $17 in change? If we’re tempted (even thinking about it) to keep the extra $10 dollars, we are guilty of sin. I suspect the sorrow that Jesus is referring to is meant more for the salesman in these examples than the cashier. One is tempting us with intentional deceit for personal gain, the other a mistaken intention, which will probably result in a personal loss. We can also be an unwilling part of temptation. Let’s say we work for a huge company, which owns another, that owns still another seemingly innocent enterprise. But that last piece in the title chain, quietly derives most of it’s very notable profit from a reprehensible little piece of it’s otherwise acceptable business. All of it is legal, but that one valuable little segment of it’s otherwise acceptable business goes against everything God has ever taught us. Are we, by payroll, involved in this immoral tempting offer? Will we pay later? We do have choices and God knows that. Accepting or turning a blind eye to sin, while performing a service which supports that activity is NOT something God would do. Nor should we.
JC Calkins with COMMON SENSE 4 UNCOMMON PEOPLE
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