Gone Astray

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(Proverbs 5:23)

"He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray." Proverbs 5:23

Perhaps the most timeless and precious classic of a child's Sunday School education is that of the lost sheep. "How think ye? if a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray? And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine which went not astray" (Matthew 18:12-13). Regardless of any context for which they are ignorant, children are taught quite clearly that the Lord cares deeply for the lost. The great Shepherd, in their familiar story, will leave all the other sheep behind in order to find the one that's gone astray.

Biblical estrangement, as the parable dictates, can simply be a matter of one's wandering off the beaten path. Shepherds are a guide to the mindless sheep who follow, but any who have witnessed these grazing animals in a field can attest to the fact that they are easily distracted by every wind and floating blade of grass. No matter how much the Shepherd guides His sheep, it doesn't take much for just one of them to end up in the jaws of a predator or the thicket of a prickly brush. But for the dispensational reader, questions arise about how generic or specific this lesson really is for the modern age. Can members of the Body of Christ really be compared to the ninety-nine plus one if they are sealed in the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13)?

If ever there was an example of someone in Paul's epistles who had "gone astray" in a theological sense, we need look no further than I Corinthians 5:1-5. Here was a man who slept with his father's wife and made an excessive mockery of an already carnal church in Corinth. Yet, when Paul laid out his judgment, he said, "deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus" (I Corinthians 5:5). In other words, here was a believer who had turned his back on anything godly, yet there is no implication that Paul, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, has any interest in helping him get back to the rest of the group (1 + 99). On what grounds would we compare this to the sweeter sound of a Shepherd coming for His lost sheep? Our message is rather clear. None of us are lost, but some are more destructive than others. For today's believer in the Body of Christ, we are a single unit saved by grace and seated in heavenly realms (Ephesians 2:6). We are not spiritually divided as though some were safe and others were lost. When one is down, it affects the whole, but the spiritual Body is still intact (I Corinthians 12:20-27).

This present reminder of our place in Christ is not, however, a reason to disregard a proper understanding of Solomon's closing message in Proverbs 5. After all the discipline, after all the instruction, and after all the wisdom he teaches to his children about fidelity, those who become entangled with the "cords of sin" (5:22) will "die" as though they had never been instructed in righteousness. And for a child raised under the wisdom of God, going down the road of an adulterous stranger is the ultimate "folly." Unless someone comes for him, he has "gone astray" from all that was once familiar. And without a Savior, the lost man will never find his way back.