At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
The mouth of strange women is a deep pit:
Proverbs 22:14
He that is abhorred of the Lord shall fall therein
The beating heart of the essential sinful attitude is the conviction that somehow, some way, God is not in charge. The standard and natural assumption does try to give God His due, and acknowledges that there is this thing called the Last Judgment. Okay, we say, at the end of the whole program God will come in, break out His grade book and tell everybody how they did. He is in control at the very last, when He tells us how sinful we were being. In short, we think we control events by sinning, and then God seizes control at the very last moment by judging us for that sinning.
But there is another sense in which God’s control is much more profound than this. For example, in Romans 1, homosexual deviance is not simply a sin for which God will execute wrath. Paul goes even farther and says that the sinning itself, the rebellion itself, is an instance of the wrath of God. Because men did not honor God as God, and because they would not give Him thanks, therefore God has given them up to disgraceful passions (Rom. 1:24). This judicial action of giving them up to their passions is described as the wrath of God (Rom. 1:18). Homosexual behavior will certainly incur the wrath of God, but it must also be seen as the wrath of God.
We find something very similar here—a heterosexual version of the same thing. The mouth of a seductive woman is a deep pit, it says. But notice that it does not say that if someone falls into it, then as a consequence God will abhor them. Rather it says that if God abhors them, then as a consequence they will fall into that deep pit. An adulterer ought certainly to be concerned about the judgment God will bring down upon the adultery. People who live in that way will not inherit the kingdom (1 Cor. 6:9; Gal. 5:19-21). But it is also important for someone who has fallen into that pit to examine himself to determine what sins he was committing beforehand that brought about the judgment of adultery.
