… ¹¹ for sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.

Kills—that’s what sin does! How foolish Adam and Eve were, and everyone else, to buy the line that acting outside of God’s design will be “good … a delight to the eyes … to make one wise” (Gen 3:6). Apart from God we cannot think straight. And the eternal irony of the deception of sin is that a person doesn’t know when he is being deceived! Like a person with Alzheimer’s disease forgets that he has Alzheimer’s disease—he has no capacity to keep that thought in his mind—so a sinning person is incapable of understanding that he is being deceived. The benefit of the sin, in his own mind, is worth the separation from God. That is the false thinking he has accepted as true.

Sin is like the worm on the hook. The fish sees it as good for food, and after giving in to the temptation, the fish will eventually get the real point, but not until it is too late! Proverbs pictures the contrast between wisdom and folly, where folly is personified as a seductive woman enticing a foolish young man:

And I saw among the naive, and discerned among the youths a young man lacking sense … And behold, a woman comes to meet him, dressed as a harlot and cunning of heart … Suddenly he follows her as an ox goes to the slaughter, or as one in fetters to the discipline of a fool, until an arrow pierces through his liver; as a bird hastens to the snare, so he does not know that it will cost him his life. (Prov 7:7, 10, 22–23)

But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. (James 1:14–16)

Sin is opportunistic. It promises us fulfillment and enjoyment. It is not interested in our well-being, but instead desires to destroy us. Paul, in our passage today, personifies sin as though it were a free agent that tempts us. In reality, the force behind sin is the great deceiver himself: “[The devil] was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). And the law gives sin (and the deceiver) ammunition to make our death sentence clear. There is no arguing, under the Law’s jurisdiction we were “dead in [our] trespasses and sins” (Eph 2:1).

Praise God that I am now “alive together with Christ” because of His grace.