You shall not give consent to him or listen to him; nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him or conceal him. But you shall surely kill him; your hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hands of all the people. – Deuteronomy 13:8-9, Amplified Bible (AMP)

In Deuteronomy 13, God (through Moses) made one thing perfectly clear to the Israelites: they were to allow nothing and no one to come between them and their relationship with God. If even the dearest of people – brother, sisters, mothers, sons, daughters, wives, husbands, or friends – attempted to entice a person to serve some other god but The Lord, the tempter or temptress was to be executed. 

Of course, The Lord did not reiterate such measures in His instructions to the New Testament church, but He did reiterate His expectation that we separate ourselves from people and from things that draw our attention away from Him. In passages like 2 Corinthians 6:14-18, where God (through Paul) commands us to separate ourselves from the ways of the world and from the world’s people, we find that God is still just as serious about us eradicating corrupting influences from our lives as He was about the Israelites doing the same. 

It’s so easy to complacently allow corrupting influences into our lives, but with each permissive moment we risk God’s strong chastisement. Of course, when the chastisement comes, we deserve every bit of it. Although we will loathe it, at least we can take comfort in the fact that is has a wonderful purpose – to restore our relationship with God. The irony is that, if we had just clung to our God rather than our sin in the first place, we would not have needed the chastisement at all. 

Shop hundreds of Christian-themed products at our new store! A portion of each purchase goes to support the work of Today’s Quote From God. To visit the Today’s Quote From God Store, please click here.