Free Post 4--Matt Brennan

My roommate and I were sitting around the other day talking about a verse one of the freshman guys were talking to us about. We forgot the specific reference but it said something about fleeing from sin. My friend gave us an interesting illustration for this. He says he finds often finds himself, when being tempted about something he’s not sure he can do, he asks “can I do this and still be a Christian?” He used the analogy of bringing two magnets together very slowly—when they start getting close to eachother, it is near impossible to restrain them from connecting before you realize it’s happening. He said he gets too close to temptation sometimes that it sucks him in before he realizes it. That is when he showed us the said verse. I took a long interest on the use of the word “flee.” It could have easily said “be aware of…,” or “don’t do…”, or a number of other things but I think there was a lot of thought into choosing this particular word. I began thinking of all the other times I have seen the word used. All I could come up with was when it was in regards to some form of immigration. Take for example John Locke. He was a member of the Rye House Plot, conspiring to kill (I believe it was) King James. The Plot was compromised and Locke had to flee to Holland. He fled because he was trying to escape death from those who stood for the king. In all other historical examples of people fleeing, there are literally running for their lives because they know if they do not, then they could very well die. This is the same for sin—we must flee from committing sin and falling into temptation. We must run from our lives, because as Paul tells us in Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death.”