RUN FOR YOUR LIFE
The Bible provides clear guidance on how believers should respond to sin, emphasising the importance of fleeing from it and seeking righteousness.
"Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.” 1 Corinthians 6:18 (NIV)
This verse explicitly instructs believers to flee from sexual immorality, highlighting the severe impact it has on one's own body.
"No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it. Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry.” 1 Corinthians 10:13-14 (NIV)
Believers are reminded that God provides a way to escape temptation and are urged to flee from idolatry.
Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” 2 Timothy 2:22 (NIV)
Chuck Swindoll: ‘Where there is no temptation, there can be little claim to virtue’.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer: ‘With irresistible power desire seizes mastery over the flesh. It makes no difference whether it is sexual desire, or ambition, or vanity, or desire for revenge, or love of fame and power, or greed for money. Joy in God is extinguished in us and we seek all our joy in the creature. At this moment God is quite unreal to us, he loses all reality, and only desire for the creature is real; Satan does not fill us with hatred of God, but with forgetfulness of God. The lust thus aroused envelops the mind and will of man in deepest darkness. The powers of clear discrimination and of decision are taken from us. The questions present themselves: “Is what the flesh desires really sin in this case?” “Is it really not permitted to me, yes—expected of me, now, here, in my particular situation, to appease desire?” It is here that everything within me rises up against the Word of God ‘(Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Temptation)
John Piper says that sin "gets its power by persuading me to believe that I will be more happy if I follow it. The power of all temptation is the prospect that it will make me happier."