The other day I poured myself a delicious glass of grape juice. I don’t indulge often because it is so high in calories, but that day I decided to have some for breakfast. I enjoyed each swallow, until I was down to the last. As I put the cup up to my mouth, the ice came with it. And with the ice came the taste of…uugh…soap. It was so unexpected and so disgusting. Yuck!
I never really did figure out how that taste got in there. Perhaps it was left in the cup and I just missed seeing it there.
Sin can often be like that soapy grape juice. It tastes so good going down, but the last swallow is tainted, not with soap, but with death.
If sin wasn’t attractive and enjoyable, it would be easy to live a righteous and holy life. If the grape juice was…say…carrot juice, I would have never even picked up the glass. In fact, I wouldn’t have even bought it at the store. But it wasn’t carrot juice, it was grape juice. And grape juice tastes so yummy.
In this current age, so many things look like grape juice–harmless and appealing.
But if we follow our choice to sin out to the end of its progression, we will see that, instead of harmless and appealing, it is destructive and painful.
Interestingly enough, as I write, I think about some of the sins in my own life. Many times us “good Christians” think we have it all together. But, oh, the danger of that thought!
You see, we are tempted by grape juice, too. It’s just of a different sort than some other people.
We are often tempted with “acceptable” sins…things like over-eating, gossip, pride, lack of discernment, anger…just to name a few of the many. But no good fruit ever comes from any sin, whether it is accepted in our Christian world or not.
We need to seriously consider what’s at the bottom of that glass we are about to sip.
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.