Proverbs 5:3-6. 3For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil, 4but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. 5Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to Sheol; 6she does not ponder the path of life; her ways wander, and she does not know it.
Solomon now turns his attention to warnings about the forbidden woman. The seductress. The adulteress. The deception of the forbidden woman is that what she displays in the present is not where she is leading us in the future. Her lips are honey, and her speech oil, but her end is bitterness and death. Hers is the path to Sheol, the grave. And sadly, she doesn’t even know it. That’s how all sin operates. Sweet in the mouth, poison in the stomach. Pleasure in the moment, death in the end.
The warning is clear – you can’t judge things only by how they appear or feel in the moment. You must remember the path principle. Pornography seems harmless in the moment, but what is at the end of its path? Fantasizing about a co-worker may seem to satisfy an unmet desire, but what is the end of the path? How many lives will be destroyed if it takes you where it is headed? Remember, the strongest man who ever lived, Samson, the wisest man who ever lived, Solomon, and the most spiritual man who ever lived, David, were all seduced by sexual pleasures to their own destruction.
Sex that serves one’s spouse is a gift from God, but sexuality that seduces its neighbor is a self-serving act of manipulation from the depths of Hell. And God says that all sex outside of a life-long covenant commitment is seductive and manipulative. It is a path to relational death. Why? Because the door is always kept cracked open. Without a covenant commitment either person can leave at any time. Now sex is a performance, an audition, the greatest emotional investment a person can make, but without a promise to protect it. Either someone’s going to be deeply hurt, or both persons will deeply hurt themselves.
When Paul confronts the sexual immorality of the church at Corinth he does so by reminding them of their union with Christ.
1 Corinthians 6:16-20. 16Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.” 17But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.
Paul doesn’t quote one of the many laws forbidding prostitution or adultery. He reminds these beloved saints of who they are in Christ. That they are joined to Jesus. That they share a body with Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit, and they share a spirit with Christ. A spirit that will bring greater joy and pleasure than any sexual sin might offer.
Overcoming sexual temptation may seem impossible to many of us, but in Christ it is always possible. The covenant promise Christ makes to us is to never leave us, never forsake us, and to bring us into his figurative marriage bed with every pleasure of the heart felt in his presence. When we know that we won’t be missing out on joy and pleasure forever, maybe we can begin to feel the joy of self-sacrifice and obedience now.
You: In what ways has your sexuality become seduction and manipulation?What seductions of sin do you give in to?
You in Christ: How can meditating on Christ’s covenant commitment to you keep you from the path of the “forbidden woman?”
Christ in you: How can you allow Christ in you to satisfy you more than sexual sin today?
Pray: Father, let me know the joy and pleasure of your presence through my union with Christ, and may this replace my short-sighted desires for illicit sexual pleasures. Amen.
To Live is Christ 