Proverbs 5:8 (ESV)
Keep your way far from her,
and do not go near the door of her house,
In the first chapters of Proverbs the "adulterous" is a picture of folly and foolishness. However, it is also a a real warning about the sin and dangers of adultery. The warning we have here is to stay away from any thing that may attempt to compromise your values. It is a warning to stay away from something that will take you away from Wisdom (Christ). We don't really think in the way this verse speaks. In our society, today, most believers, and certainly unbelievers, try to get as close as they can to sin. We actually try to play with it and we try to mix with it. But Solomon's warning is to stay away from sin. Sin is to be avoided. We are to not even go near its door. Keep away from her and her house. So, we are to stay away from the person and the passage (the thing that carries or stores the sin or portrays sin.). The above proverb is Solomon’s directive in the midst of the adulterous temptation. Notice that he leaves no room for compromise. He does not want us to explore it. He does not want us to investigate it. He does not want us ignore it. He wants us to keep “far from her.” We are not even supposed to go “near” her door. Staying away from her house is the only way to avoid sin’s charms ... personified by the picture of adultery. Staying close to sin will hurt you. Being far from sin will keep your way safe. That is Solomon’s message. One way to do this is to “guard” the “entrances” for sin. Sin likes to enter via our eye-gate, our ear-gate, our mind-gate. Jesus told the disciples that if their “eye” offended them to “pluck it out:”
Matthew 5:29 (ESV)
If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.
We are not to play close to sin. We are to stand guard over the entrances of our lives and make sure sin cannot sneak into our lives and bring certain destruction.
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