S136P5 – Pervasive sin: leading away from truth and life
2 Tim. 3:1-7
But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: for men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away! For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Some will say that we are now poised for the show to begin, but the show has been around for centuries. Two thousand years ago, just as Christ had then recently left the Earth, Peter indicated that the last days already had arrived by explaining the manifestation of the Holy Spirit at Pentacost through last days prophecy. [Acts 2:14-21] The first days passed away when the time of Christ ended, and we have been in the last days ever since then. The teachings of these days were not memorialized just for us to uncover and utilize now. They meant something to those who received the words of these original speeches and letters back then and to those who received them through oral tradition thereafter.
The sin that leads us from truth and those who would weild it as a tool for deception have been at work these few millennia. Paul distinguishes these people and their deceptive sin by how they compare to the truth. There is a godliness founded on the word of God, and there is another kind of godliness that is not godly at all. These people seek not after the Lord but after their own satisfaction. Those who would be deceived by them already are following their own sinful desires and are ready to receive another’s word without discernment. Their gullible nature starts with the distraction and infiltration of sin in their lives, and it leads to their accepting what seems right to them instead of what is proven by the word of God.
We would be wise to take this list and remember its terms. These are the signs of those who would use sin to guide us away from truth and from the Lord. Those who love themselves and their riches, who boast of themselves and blaspheme God, will try to take the foolish and vulnerable with them through the broad gate. Their fruit will be obvious to us if we are wise. Those who cannot discern the bad fruit in these bad trees will not be able to discern the bad fruit in themselves, and they will be led astray accordingly. Father, give us eyes to see the wicked sin in those pretending to be godly and the sin in ourselves that would tempt us to follow them instead of You.