I grew up in rural Wisconsin. It’s far from rural these days, but I-90 was almost brand new and the freeway from Onalaska to Holmen was in the earliest planning stages.
When I was a kid I went about with bare feet as much as I could. I hated wearing shoes (I still do), and every spring I couldn’t wait to dispense with footwear. But wow, did gravel hurt my feet!
Eventually the soles of my feet hardened to the point where I could run on those sharp-edged bits of stone and not get hurt. It takes callouses to do that, and only by repeated exposure to painful rocks would I build up enough tolerance to walk that way.
Sin is the same as gravel. A person can walk carefully on the sharp edges of sin for a while, and after enough time they’ll build up a tolerance. They’ll grow callouses, and eventually the feet get hardened to the point where the sin means nothing. It’s just another surface to walk on, no different than the soft loam of righteousness.
James writes we should resist the devil. Don’t even start down that path, Paul wrote to the Christian in Ephesus. We should be ready to protect ourselves from that sinful path so we can be righteous before God.
In this culture it’s easy to take that first step down the gravel path of sin. “Everyone’s doing it.” So you take your first beer, your first hit of marijuana, your first snort of cocaine, your first sexual partner. If everyone’s doing it, and nothing bad happens to them, what’s the big deal, right?
Paul wrote that we shouldn’t measure ourselves by what is acceptable to society, but to conform to what God has in mind for us. Every step we take down that gravel path of sin makes it easier to take the next.
Nobody ever took their first sip of beer and thought, “Someday I’m going to be a raging alcoholic. I’m going to beat my spouse, abandon my children, lose my job, and end up living on the street.” But it happens. Not to everyone, but to some.
Your first time with MJ doesn’t mean you’ll turn into a pothead, but it will happen to some. The same principle applies with cocaine, pornography, shoplifting, and every sin mankind has come up with. One or another of them will eventually ensnare and doom the unwary.
That’s why we should resist at the outset. Don’t build up those callouses.
That gravel path is wide and leads to destruction.
Narrow is the path that leads to life.
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