Sin is a waste. It destroys your potential. It cripples your opportunities. It devastates your soul. There is a very high price paid by those who choose the low life.
With these words, Proverbs 5:9-14 graphically depicts the horrific and bitter consequences of fornication: “Lest you give your honor to others, and your years to the cruel one; lest aliens be filled with your wealth, and your labors go to the house of a foreigner; and you mourn at last, when your flesh and your body are consumed and say: ‘How I have hated instruction, and my heart despised correction! I have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined my ear to those who instructed me! I was on the verge of total ruin in the midst of the assembly and congregation.’”
As you look around at your local community take note that the high cost of low living includes:
- Financial loss. Child support is so accurately described in verse ten. Aliens are filled with your wealth, because offspring which you barely know and their half siblings which you do not know receive a generous portion of your labors.
- Physical loss. Gonorrhea. Herpes. Syphilis. HPV. STDs. HIV. Each painful disease documents the sobering truth that defiling the marriage bed will result in your flesh and body being consumed.
- Emotional loss. The haunting echo of regret’s verdict is “How I have hated instruction, and my heart despised correction! I have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined my ear to those who instructed me!” A lifetime of remorse always replaces the momentary pleasure of sinful indulgence. Virginity’s innocence and monogamy’s trust can never be regained once lost.
- Spiritual loss. Religious duties are quickly transformed from heartfelt and sincere to rote and hypocritical. David’s aching spirit beseeched God for mercy to wash thoroughly, cleanse, and purge his wretched soul (Psalm 51:2, 7).
The wise man firmly grasps the high cost of low living and choses the wonderful blessedness of holy living instead.
