Sin Backfires

[The wicked] dig a deep pit to trap others, then fall into it themselves. The trouble they make for others backfires on them. The violence they plan falls on their own heads.

Psalm 7:15-16

We were not created for evil. Sin doesn’t suit us. When God created human beings, he included instruction about the behaviors and attitudes that would diminish us and eventually destroy us, and he called those destructive behaviors sin.

Sin’s punishment is built in. Going our own way, following our instincts without the restraining and protective wisdom of God’s law, leads us to destruction. His law is a gift of love to us. It creates a hedge of protection around our lives. His promise to us is that obedience to him will shield us from the heartache sin brings into our lives.

Do I really believe and embrace that promise? I can easily see how certain blatant and obvious sins backfire on the sinner. The evidence is indisputable. We have all seen the destructive effects of substance abuse or infidelity or pornography or other sins that are out front and rampant in our world. It would be easy to point to those and let those sins illustrate the deep pit that sinners fall into. And it would be true and accurate.

But when I look at my own life, do I let anger settle in? Do I allow myself to be easily offended? Do I repay a wrong with a wrong? Do I manipulate others? The list could go on and on. We may dress these up in excuses or call them something else, but they are still sins.

God has classified these attitudes as sins because, just like the blatant sins, they have destructive effects on our lives. In the moment, it might seem, for example, as if lashing out in anger will relieve our anger. But any momentary relief we experience soon changes to regret. Wounding words can’t be taken back. A relationship is tarnished, if not ruined. Our sin backfires on us, and we fall into the pit we have dug. Believe God’s promise that his law is our protection.

Lord, lead me in your ways.

Every Christian will readily allow that sin is insidious, but it is one thing to recognize this in theory and quite another to be regulated by it in practice.

A. W. Pink(1886–1952), English evangelist and Bible scholar