Proverbs 4:27. turn your foot away from evil.
Turn around! Run! Get out of there! Move it! Watch out!
These are the kinds of things you yell at someone when they are headed toward danger. Have you ever been headed toward danger? Maybe you’ve seen a small child headed toward the street but then you caught them and turned them around safely? In that moment you turned their foot away from evil.
Solomon clearly wants his children to be able to do two things: 1) Know evil when they see it, and 2) Turn and walk away from it. What about you? Do you know evil when you see it? Do you flee when you see it coming? Are you like Joseph in Mrs. Potiphar’s bedroom? Running for your life when the seductress comes?
Even as Christians, far too many of us are just wandering through life. We take temptations as they come. Sure, we’re not looking for trouble. We don’t get out of bed thinking about how we can lose our temper today, or sully someone’s reputation, or gossip, or act controlling, or be passive aggressive. In general, we don’t try to sin (that is unless we have an addiction to something – we all have an addiction to something – that keeps drawing us back to it over and over again). But somehow each day sin seems to find us. Why is that?
Maybe we are tiptoeing closer to temptation than we care to admit. We haven’t truly turned our foot away from evil. We’re not trying to sin, but we’re also not trying not to sin.
And how do we do that? How do we try not to sin? Here’s the paradox – you can’t avoid sin by trying to avoid sin. You avoid sin by trying to pursue, know, behold, and trust Christ. You don’t know what evil is by looking around for evil. You know what evil is by looking at Jesus and his goodness.
2 Corinthians 3:18. And we all, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image.
When you spend your time beholding Christ everything else looks dim. When you spend your time beholding the glory of his grace, everything looks sharable. When you behold his love on the cross, everyone else looks lovable. When you behold his kindness, everything else looks forgivable. And evil? Evil looks disgustingly disappointing.
So let’s stop wandering through life hoping we don’t stumble into sin, and instead let’s purposefully pursue Jesus, beholding his glorious grace in the cross.
You: Are you wandering through your spiritual life, or do you have a plan for avoiding evil?
You in Christ: Does your plan for avoiding evil include beholding Christ and his cross?
Christ in you: Is there any specific sin or evil that you need Christ to help you turn away from today? How can focusing on him allow you to purposefully choose good over evil?
Pray: Jesus, I want to behold you to the point where evil becomes pointless to me. Help me to turn from evil by turning to you. Amen.
To Live is Christ 