Proverbs 15:27 ESV
Whoever is greedy for unjust gain troubles his own household, but he who hates bribes will live.
[https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=proverbs+15%3A27&version=ESV]
Evildoing starts at home. In fact, evildoing starts evil closer, in the heart. We have a tendency to tell ourselves we can just do this slightly wrong thing over here and not let it leak over into our other business. We can slack off over here, take that slightly dubious payment over there, and come back home without ever letting that stuff touch the rest of our lives, no matter how the guilt seems to cling to our souls. This idea, though, is a lie. We cannot separate sin by where we commit it, who we commit it around. We can suppress it, but in time it will cross the barrier.
See, sin isn’t skin-deep. When I sin, it’s not a splash of paint on my face or a mark from a pen on my hand. Sin comes from the heart. Sin is rebellion against God. Sin at its core is a declaration that what I want matters more than the law of God. Every evil deed has this same character, from a stolen paperclip to flat out murder; this is the essence of every commandment.
God’s law, you see, is a single whole. Oh, I can break one commandment without directly breaking another. I can steal a five dollar bill on Friday without violating the smallest possible interpretation of the fourth commandment (Deut. 5:12-15). Note the caveat though: the smallest possible interpretation. Each law of God comes from the same basic foundation, and so breaking one eventually declares a contempt for them all, eventually breaks the principle within each.
How does it declare contempt? The law of God is an outworking of His very nature: “God is a righteous judge” (Psalm 7:11). The law, as found most simply in the moral law (the Decalogue particularly) and more obscurely (in principle) in the civil and ceremonial law, as found in the consistent moral duty laid upon His people and all mankind throughout Scripture (Rom. 3:5-8), is the correspondence to His character which our nature as His image (Gen. 1:26-27) demands of us. For the believer, a double duty has been made, for we are His heirs by faith (Gal. 4:1-7), so that to the duty of nature is added the duty of love (2 Tim. 1:13).
How does it break the principle of each? In the most reductive way, this is simply answered: a sin is a transgression against His nature, and because God is not divided in nature (Deut. 6:4), to act against Him in any way is to declare war against Him entirely. We can see the interrelation even before this fundamental resonance, though, in the example I gave above. The fifth commandment, when we read it in full, commands us to in the six days “labor and do all [our] work” (Deut. 5:13). By implication, this work is to be honoring to God, as all parts of our life are to honor Him (1 Cor. 10:31). Thus, in sinning against him during the work-week, I have violated the Fifth Commandment. God’s law is God’s, and so as God is one, so His law is one, even if like a well-cut gem we may see only a few of its facets at a time.
All this could be a bit of a wild goose chase, I admit, but there is a point: sin is deeper in us than our bones. When I sin- the particular sin of this proverb’s concern is greed, covetousness-, I sin with my soul and my body both, not merely with some exterior thing. That sin becomes a part of my history. For God’s child, it is a sin covered by Christ’s blood, yes, but that makes it worse, in the moment, for it becomes a statement of disregard, even momentary, for His sacrifice (Heb. 9:26), which same sacrifice took the guilt of that sin.
Further, we are inclined to sin; to sin, even for a child of God, is to relapse into (or continue in) a habit. So if I sin in my work-life or in recreation or while I’m on vacation or when I’m in church or when I’m completely alone, I build in myself a tendency to keep sinning, particularly in similar ways. This sin, then, follows me. At first, my dishonesty, the little lies I tell to make myself more prosperous in business, it stays at work. Then, one day, I wonder about how useful that dishonesty could be at home, in getting a loved one to do what I want. I don’t lie, but I think about it. A thousand similar thoughts later, I break. I tell a lie, a small lie, just enough. It gets me something I want; I resolve not to do it again. But we all know where it’s going.
We have, however, a great weapon against this, if we know God as our father (Is. 63:16). The slippery slope of sin is partially predicated on human habits, on the sinful desires which pollute the believer in this life, but its real strength is the ineluctable depravity of heart which the believer has been redeemed from. The believer will sin, but he will not love sin. It will be a stench to him, and by God’s grace he will turn from it, though the process of repentance may be long and painful. This is the hand of God in Him, the new heart of flesh which He promised, and to us it is a great and glorious comfort.
God bless.
Written by Colson Potter
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
