According to Your Ways

Samson and Israel stand together today as warnings written in flesh and fire. Samson was set apart, yet he handed his strength over to lust. Israel was chosen, yet filled the land with violence, idols, and pride. In both readings, God is not mocked. Secret sin ripens into public ruin; what is done with the body, the eyes, and the hands returns at last upon the head of the doer. As Irenaeus says, “For thus, according to the holy apostle, the sin of fornication is perpetrated against the body, as involving also sin against the temple of God.”

Yet even here judgment does not silence the call to repentance. Samson, blinded and brought low, speaks at last not in boasting but in plea. Origen says, “Samson in my opinion said in intercession: ‘Let me die with the foreigners’—when he bent in his strength and the house fell upon the princes and all the people that were there.” A man may waste much by folly, and yet in the end turn his last strength toward the enemies of God rather than toward his own pleasure.

Ezekiel declares the same hard truth to the whole land: “I will judge every one of you according to his ways, O house of Israel, says the Lord God.” Therefore let no one presume on yesterday’s calling while serving today’s passions. If your eye has wandered, bridle it. If your body has been made an instrument of uncleanness, cleanse it with fasting, prayer, and confession. If your house has prospered while the poor have been forgotten, open your hand before the day when silver is cast into the streets. God’s mercy receives the penitent; God’s judgment overtakes the stubborn.