Sin’s hook is painful. It injures, damages, enslaves, and sometimes disables. Sin leaves long-term (and occasionally life long) scars. Although God forgives sin, He frequently allows us to live with the consequences of our sins.

This is Satan’s most common scheme: He presents the bait and hides the hook. Satan presents sin as fun, satisfying, profitable, and pleasurable, while concealing the miseries and pain that always accompany sin.

Surely this is part of what Scripture calls the deceitfulness of sin (Hebrews 3:13). We are tempted to believe that our happiness and fulfillment require us to indulge some sin. The “passing pleasures of sin” (Hebrews 11:25) seem irresistible, in part because temptation presents to me only the alleged benefits of sin. Far from conferring benefits, however, sin is the very thing that cripples us. When we commit sin, as Brooks puts it, wrath, misery, shame, and loss are always close behind (p. 29).

Sin is bad for many reasons; one of them is that it wreaks havoc in a man’s soul. It promises satisfaction, but delivers emptiness. Sin leads to more and bigger sins. It either makes us feel guilty and ashamed (which is bad), or creates moral numbness in us so we no longer feel guilt and shame over our sin (which is worse). But Satan hides these hooks and presents only the bait.

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