Have you ever wondered what sin looks like to God? How does he see those things that so entice us? I’ve been thinking – and praying – about that subject lately. And it was on my mind when I was reading this passage in Scripture:
The sixth angel sounded his trumpet, and I heard a voice coming from the four horns of the golden altar that is before God. It said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind (Revelation 9:13-15).
The four angels in this scene are clearly powerful enemies of God. But they were not bound to protect him; God needs no protection. They were bound to protect humanity. But the people God has protected for so long have also been his enemies the entire time. Now, at last, God withdraws his protection. He gives the people exactly what they have demanded all along, both in their actions and with words; independence. It is undeniably fair; the people who will not recognize or obey God are not entitled to his protection. There are no grounds for complaint, but only for horror and mourning, when God, at last, gives the world exactly what it’s been demanding.
The result is horrific. Rebellious humanity could never have imagined that the false gods they’ve been worshiping would turn on them with such fury the moment they are allowed to. And the horror is magnified when we see the result:
The rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood – idols that cannot see or hear or walk. Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality or their thefts (Revelation 9:20-21).
Even when faced with the consequences of their rebellion, the people will not repent. They will not give up worshiping the very demons that are killing them.
This, honestly, looks like addiction. An addiction to idols. The list of sins that follows; murder, magic arts, sexual immorality and theft, are presented here as additions to the main sin, which is the worship of idols “that cannot see or hear or walk.” The primary sin in John’s vision is idolatry; treating something that is not God as though it were. The idols we worship today are called by different names, but they are not fundamentally any different.
In this passage the mask is coming off. The true nature of the so-called “gods” that people worship is being revealed. And yet, the survivors continue in their rebellion, clinging to their hope in the false gods that are torturing and killing them. Badly abused slaves, they are, nevertheless, holding desperately on to their slavery.
And make no mistake: sin is slavery. It is, in the words of author J. Keith Miller, the ultimate deadly addiction. Hiding behind the promise of pleasure and power and riches are false gods who murder and destroy, and an addiction worse than heroin. This is what I need to see; the true nature of sin. It’s what we all need to see. There are no small sins. There are no sins that can safely be played with, or dabbled in, or entertained. Every time I choose sin, I choose a path that leads, in the end, to addiction, to slavery, and to death. Every time. And every time I choose sin, I’m rebelling against the only source in the universe of good, of truth, and of life itself. Every time. So I ask you to join me in praying that our eyes will stay open to see sin the way God does, as a deadly addiction.