7 SINS

Seven Deadly Sins in the Bible

“These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.”

Proverbs 6:16-19 KJV

There are serious consequences to these seven deadly sins:

Pride is considered the reservoir of all sin and there are two requirements, one is spiritual blindness and two is that each challenge to our pride will drive us to improve our illusion of productivity, sanctity and/or compassion. Spiritual blindness will blind us from actually catching any glimpse of God because that glimpse will reveal our frailty and sinfulness. We may be running away from ourselves as well as God and this is dangerous for our spiritual soul. Upon hearing a sermon about pride we are tempted to think of all the people we know who may need to hear this sermon but in reality it is us, we all need to read it. Pride is about us, and we retain our illusions by pointing to others.

Greed is a fear of failure or need. Some forms of greed:

1. an obsessive desire for ever more material goods and the attendant power.
2. a fearful need to store up surplus goods for a vaguely defined time of want.
3. a desire for more earthly goods for their own sake.

Envy is the love of other people’s possessions rather than what is good, beautiful and true and is often portrayed as eating away the heart of the envious person.

Wrath/Anger is the emotion of the falsely righteous. Some say we can’t control our emotions, but we choose our emotions. If anger is in our heart already, events will bring it out. Once the anger wells up and starts to spill out, we have a decision to let it out or refuse to participate.

Lust dulls the spiritual senses but there is one good thing about the sin of Lust: it cannot persist into eternity. Sins of the flesh tend to burn themselves out over time. After a while lust becomes a habit and what pleasure it brought diminishes until we wonder what the attraction is. Lust is not limited to sexuality and may also be wanting the best food and wine; best looking car etc. In marriage, enjoyment is not the problem. Lust enters into marriage when sex is not a mutual expression of love, but rather the use of one person by another. This, of course, breeds resentment and eventual alienation, even if the couple do not separate.

Gluttony asks the question, “How Much Pleasure Is Enough”? Some forms of gluttony are:

1. Wanting more pleasure from something than it was made for.
2. Wanting it exactly our way also known as delicacy.
3. Demanding too much from people.

There is a certain amount of discomfort to be expected in life, but the Glutton will have none of it. Instead of becoming strong by suffering the minor inconveniences of life, the Glutton insists on being pampered.

Sloth is a kind of spiritual laziness. It means not making it a priority to do what we should, or change what we should in ourselves. Some people might call it apathy, which is a lack of feeling. Christians sometimes don’t really want to know what the Bible teaches about something, so we put off reading or asking about it. Sloth is quite possibly the main reason why people don’t read good spiritual books. They will read Christian fiction or some odd Gnostic gospel instead that “tickles their ears,” but never the ones that could call them to action: loving their neighbor, helping the poor, telling the truth.