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James 1:13 When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; 14 but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. 15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. 16 Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters.  NIV 

 

Do you remember anatomy class? I was never a huge science fan in school. Maybe it was because I burned a big hole in my shirt with a Bunsen burner. But that is another story for another devotional. I did however, enjoy anatomy, about how the body worked, how muscles and bones, ligaments and tendons responded to messages from the brain as the heart pumped oxygenated blood through the veins to keep us going.

 

When I lived in Sudbury, the Northern Ontario Science Center had a temporary exhibit of human bodies without the skin which allowed you to see the bones and muscles organs to show how they work. And being the type of father that likes to gross his children out, I desired to take them. The bottom line is that anatomy is important. It allows us to know how the body works.

 

In this passage, James talks about anatomy; not the anatomy of the human body but the anatomy of sin. He says that many times sin doesn’t just happen; there is often a process. The anatomy of sin is important to understand because if you can understand this process you have an opportunity to prevent the devastation that sin can bring in your life.

 

James starts off by saying it doesn’t start with God. Although it is convenient to incorporate God in the picture, James assures us that we get into this problem solely by ourselves, and it is a threefold process:

  • Inclination, the thought in our head. 
  •  Incubation, the development of the evil desire in our heart.  
  • And finally Incorporation, the working out of that desire in our life and the lives of others.

James tops it off with the final process which ends in Incapacitation, or Incarceration which is death.

 

James completes the thought with the statement, “Don’t be deceived”. By allowing Christ to continually rule in our lives, the process of sin can be caught at the beginning to keep it from germinating and growing. Through all of this I have come to realize that it is not the thoughts that may come to my head that will kill me but the thoughts that I choose to entertain. Once they enter that realm, the anatomy of sin begins to take place.

 

How is that for a science lesson? Who says all those anatomy classes were a waste of time?