Today we are covering Proverbs 5:1-6, which is about avoiding the adulterous woman. This chapter is essentially about obeying the seventh commandment: You shall not commit adultery. The young man is tempted by the seductive woman, drawing him to fall into wickedness. God has created man with the desire for intimacy. This is not an evil desire, but, placed in the wrong direction, or in the wrong way, it becomes sinful. It can become lust. In fact, every sinful impulse points to something good that it was originally intended for (for example, desiring to steal food is a corruption of a good: that food has been given by God to satisfy our hunger, also pointing to our daily need for God). These things are evil when done in disobedience to God’s commands and when they come to be sought and desired more than God Himself. We were originally created with certain desires through which we could glorify and reflect God’s glory. However, since the Fall, these good things become perverted and corrupted whenever they are done for anything other than obedience to God and to glorify God. God gets replaced by other things deemed by sinners to be more desirable than glorifying Him. This is why Jesus says in Matthew 5:28, “everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” It isn’t just the outward action that makes it sin, but also the thought entertained and the inclination of the heart.
This is where wisdom comes in. As we have seen in previous devotionals, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and this wisdom comes only from God. God is the only way out from the endless cycle of covetousness and adultery; a cycle of actions that can only be regarded as evil before Him continually; endless, that is, without the gift of His wisdom. God gives this wisdom to whomever He wills, and all those who receive it are those saved through Christ. Some neglect this gift, and this is to their great harm. Others, following the aim of Proverbs and the rest of the Scriptures, are careful to develop and grow in this wisdom, increasing their estimation of the Lord immensely in every area of their lives. In our passage, we too must apply wisdom to increase our estimation—or fear—of the Lord. He has given us the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit to aid us in this most-holy and desperately needed endeavour. The first segment of our passage says,
1 My son, be attentive to my wisdom; incline your ear to my understanding, 2 that you may keep discretion, and your lips may guard knowledge. 3 For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil, 4 but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. 5 Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to Sheol; 6 she does not ponder the path of life; her ways wander, and she does not know it.
Notice first the two commands in verse 1: be “attentive to my wisdom” (the wisdom of God) and be careful to understand it. What will be the result of obeying these commands? The result will be that we can “keep discretion” and “guard knowledge” (verse 2). This means that pursuing godly wisdom works to help prevent foolish choices and to help guard us against following the impulses of our flesh. The word “For” in verse 3 shows us why we must be diligent in pursuing and guarding wisdom: fleshly desires can be very seductive. This is especially true when we bypass the protection that wisdom affords and pursue evil. Paul aptly teaches, “I want you to be wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil.” (Rom. 16:19). Don’t become good at pursuing evil! Don’t even try to develop those skills, but leave them, as much as you are able, in disrepair, neglect, and contempt. Instead, we ought to pursue the machinations of godly wisdom.
Let wisdom be more to be desired than anything that the world can offer, for the world and its desires lead only to death (verse 5). Why is that? Because of God, of course! God is the source of all goodness, joy, happiness, and yes, He is even the source of all life. Sin is what works to rend us from the source of life itself, and living in our sinful desires is itself a willful rejection of God as our source of life. So, why kill ourselves? Why work out our own destruction? Some are so skilled at plotting their own demise, having never known the way of life (verse 6). Yes, some may even know of the way of life, but that path will forever elude them without the Gospel and grace of Christ. Cling to what godly wisdom you have obtained by Christ, and grow in that wisdom, doing all that you can to avoid the seductive woman, for God in His wisdom supplies us all that we need to do that and much more. There are still consequences for sin for believers—even terrible consequences, yet His grace is abundant for all that we will ever need.
Next time we will be looking at verses 7-14