The devil ambushes the road of life through worldly pleasures

I thought, beloved, that by pressing the sting of my words harder each time I would seem harsh to you—as though I were putting on a display of boldness that was excessive, and fitting neither for a stranger nor for a man caught up in similar accusations. But you have been stirred by my reproofs toward goodwill, and you have made the blows from my tongue into kindling for a greater longing. And that is no surprise, for you are wise in the things of the Spirit. “Reprove a wise man, and he will love you,” says Solomon somewhere in his words (Proverbs 9:8).

For this reason, brothers and sisters, I have come now to the same exhortation, wanting, as far as I am able, to draw you away from the nets of the devil. For the enemy of truth wages a great and varied war against us every day, beloved. And he wages it, as you know, by making our own desires into arrows against us, always drawing from us the strength to harm us. For since the Master bound most of that enemy’s power with unbreakable laws and did not permit him to rush in all at once and wipe out the race of the earth, the envious one now steals his victory over us from our own folly.

Just as wicked and greedy people—whose work and deliberate choice it is to grow rich from what belongs to others, but who lack the power to use open force—are accustomed to lie in wait along the roads; and if they see a spot beside them, either broken by deep ravines or shaded by a thick growth of trees, they sink down into it, cutting off the travelers’ view from afar with such screens, and then leap on them all at once, so that no one can see the snares of danger before falling into them—so too our hostile enemy from above runs beneath the shadows of worldly pleasures. These shadows grow along the road of this life, and they are terrible at hiding a robber and making the one who plots against us escape notice. From there he sows the traps of destruction for us unseen.

Therefore, if we want to run safely along the road of life that lies before us, and to present to Christ our soul and body together free from the shame of wounds, and to receive the crowns of victory, we must always keep the eyes of the soul awake and turning in every direction. We must be wary of everything pleasant and run past it at once, fixing our mind on nothing—not even if gold appears poured out before us, ready to come into the hands of anyone who wants it. For Scripture says, “If wealth flows in, do not set your heart on it” (Psalm 62:10). Not even if the earth sprouts every luxury and displays costly tents, for “our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also await a Savior, Christ” (Philippians 3:20). Not even if there are dances and revels and drunkenness and tables accompanied by flutes, for “vanity of vanities,” it says, “all things are vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:2). Not even if beautiful bodies are held out to you, inhabited by wicked souls, for “flee from a woman’s face as from the face of a serpent,” says the Wise One (Sirach 21:2). Not even if there are powers and tyrannies and swarms of bodyguards or flatterers. Not even if there is a high and shining throne that has yoked nations and cities into willing slavery, for “all flesh is like grass, and all human glory like the flower of grass; the grass withers, and the flower falls” (Isaiah 40:6-7).