Russell Moore’s words about temptation are striking–what begins as a promise to fulfill a “burning” can become a bondage to sin that will never truly satisfy. May you and I heed this warning today:
The pull of the passions always promises a resolution of the “burning.” I will manipulate my coworker with a morsel of office gossip, just once. I will view the pornographic image, just to see what it’s like. But the passions are a lure. Unless they find resolution in the way God designed the universe by his wisdom, they are perpetually unsatisfied.
Ultimately, then, the desires—always in search of fulfillment, never finding it—gain mastery over you (2 Pet. 2:19). Your passions, James warned the churches, “are at war within you” because you “desire and do not have,” you “covet and cannot obtain” (James 4:1–2). There is no upper limit of fame that can ever satisfy those who crave it. There is no monetary figure at which those who long for financial success will ever be willing to say, “That’s enough.” There is no orgasm that feels good enough to last you a lifetime. As temptation moves onward and inward, you become “insatiable for sin” (2 Pet. 2:14). You’re caught.
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Russell Moore, Tempted and Tried (p. 47). Crossway. Kindle Edition.
