Fleeing from Sin...

This week as I have read the various statements put out by various churches, state conferences and even singular members of the United Methodist Church, I have been thinking a lot about what it means to "Flee from sin..."

Last year, I came home from work. It was early evening, around 7:30pm, the sun hadn’t set yet but was going down. I walked into my house, changed clothing, walked back out to the mailbox…then it happened! I was walking back up my driveway and I see a stick near my flower bed, I went to step over it and it moved! Let me just tell you, this fat, white girl can dance! It was a black snake, a black racer to be exact. And it was laying there looking at me, and I was still in the driveway dancing up a blue streak and my neighbors were outside watching and laughing. Evidently, I scared the snake because after a few flicks of it’s tongue it ran…and I ran into my house. When I recounted it to my friend at work she laughed and said “Rachel, the snake just wanted to see you and say hello! It stared at you because it thought you were beautiful!” Needless to say I didn’t think that snake was too beautiful. And when my pastor decided to quote John Wesley, quoting Sirach “Flee from sin as from a snake.” He decided to follow it up with “Rachel, can tell you all about fleeing!” I tend to think my dad would agree…when he got to my house, I was standing on my coffee table shaking uncontrollably with fear. 

This story is funny. Hopefully, it made you laugh. However, there is a lot of truth contained in what the Apocryphal book Sirach is teaching. Sirach 21:2 says Flee from sin as from a snake; for if you approach sin, it will bite you. Its teeth are lion’s teeth, and destroy the souls of men.

How often do we take seriously the need to flee from sin? Do we really take seriously the fact that sin can destroy our souls? Or do we tend to think because we are saved, it’s okay to continue in sin? Many Christians would tell you “I believe I am saved; I know what I do is wrong, but I am saved, so God will forgive me.” However, is sin really worth losing your soul for? But what does it mean to flee?

There are several places in the Bible where you, Christian, are commanded to flee, to turn tail and run from an enemy far more vicious than any bear. You are told to flee from sin. Some sins are so strong and so dangerous that you simply cannot mess around with them. 

“Flee” is a strong word. The Bible does not tell you to amble, meander, lope, or trot from your sin. It tells you to flee. Fleeing involves effort. It involves straining. It involves speed. You flee when you need to find and experience safety from a threat—a threat like a bear. You flee when it is too dangerous to remain where you are, when standing still would put you in mortal peril. 

While fleeing sin isn’t complicated, that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Proverbs 22:6 says that if we train up a child in the way he should go, when he is old “he will not depart from it.” That works both ways, for good or evil. If you’ve been partaking in the same sin again and again, you’ve “trained” yourself – you’ve carved some deep ruts that will be hard to get out of, and easy to fall back into. 

That means fleeing from sin may be hard to do. But it isn’t hard to figure out what to do. It is a matter of placing God as first and throwing off everything that hinders (Hebrews 12:1). The reason we fall into sin, then, is because we count everything as too high a cost.

Interestingly, the command to flee is sometimes accompanied by an opposite command—the command to pursue. This, too, is a word that implies effort. 

If fleeing is fast and purposeful, so is pursuing—it is moving quickly and purposefully toward instead of away from. If fleeing involves determination and effort in sprinting away from a vice, pursuing involves determination and effort in racing toward a virtue. “But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness” (1 Timothy 6:11). These are four crucial marks of every true Christian. “So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart” (2 Timothy 2:22). Here, too, Paul tells you, through Timothy, to strive for the key Christian virtues. “Pursue love” (1 Corinthians 14:1), that greatest of all virtues. “So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding” (Romans 14:19). Peace and mutual upbuilding come through the very virtues Paul elsewhere commands you to pursue.

Let me conclude with these questions, What are you pursuing? Are you pursuing your own desires and your own self-satisfaction or are you pursuing God's desires and His satisfaction?