And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed… – Proverbs 5:11

One of my dear brothers-in law passed away two days ago. Only in his late 50s, he was still young, and he leaves behind a wife and two teenage children. The tragedy of it all is that he didn’t have to die so early, for the reason he died is this: he drunk himself to death.

My brother-in-law was an intelligent, hard-working man. A mechanical engineer by training, he had worked his way high up into the ranks of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He was smart with his money, he was dedicated to his family, and he was quick to lend a helping hand when he could. On the surface, he lived a successful life, but behind the scenes, he was tortured by his addiction to alcohol. Even though his family pleaded with him to stop drinking, he wouldn’t. He was a slave to the power of the bottle, and not even warnings from his doctor more than a year ago stopped him. Near the end, however, he had finally tried to stop, but by then, it was too late. After a three-week battle for his life in the hospital, his body shut down, and his soul left for eternity.

We take comfort in his profession of faith in Christ, but we chafe over the life-dominating sin that took him. Like Proverbs 5 tells us, riotous living, in all of its various forms, will consume the body ahead of its time. And, like Romans 7 teaches us, we don’t have the power to overcome sin’s bondage apart from the enabling strength of the Holy Spirit.

Despite the efforts of many to show him how, my brother-in-law never chose to cast all of his cares upon Christ. He never chose to yield control of his problems to the Lord. Therefore, he was no match for the sin that finally took him, and by his death we can be reminded that the same fate awaits us if we don’t choose to let God be Lord of our lives.