The Last Doughnut?

I usually skip breakfast on Sundays, but one Sunday morning I found a box of doughnuts on the countertop in the kitchen. I am a ‘meat and potatoes’ kind of guy, so I can pass up doughnuts. But there it stared at me through the clear cellophane panel, my favorite.

I indulged.

Bite after bite I enjoyed the sweetness; the perfect combination of frosting, filling, and fried dough...washed down with an ice-cold glass of milk. Ahh.

I don’t usually sit around thinking about what I’ve eaten, but that day I did. All morning long the doughnut sat in my stomach like a rock. It was tasty but only for a moment. It was filling, but not satisfying. My system was just not used to so much sugar, so the doughnut kept distracting me.

I thought about how compelling the taste was, yet how disappointing the overall result. In fact, the only benefit was the immediate and temporary taste experience.

I thought about how impulsive I had been. It often seems exciting to be impulsive. Yet, being impulsive is really nothing more than feeding an inner desire without thinking.

The more I reflected, the more disgusted I was with myself for lacking self-control. I came to a point in my thinking where the very thought of a jelly-filled doughnut was distasteful!

I am not angry with myself (or doughnuts), but I am determined not to allow myself to be fooled again. My decision is not rash or impulsive, but I don’t want to feel that way again. That might have been my last doughnut.

You can probably guess where this is going. Replace the word doughnut with sin and adjust some of the details.

Do you see the connection to the sweet desirable taste of sin? The sweet taste masks the deception. The taste is often very real and very sweet and very gratifying. Yet, the taste promises that the sweetness of sin WILL last, WILL bring happiness, WILL provide some kind of benefit. Yet, it is a deception. Sin destroys...always!

Satan wants us to focus on the taste and act on impulse. He doesn’t want us to think about the emptiness of sin. He doesn’t want us to remember past shame and guilt. He doesn't want us to think, just act.

Which past sin truly satisfied you? For which past sin did you later look back and find yourself thrilled with your impulsiveness?

If you sat and thought about a particular sin, I wonder if it would begin to make you feel sick to the stomach. I wonder if you would begin to find it repulsive. I wonder if the sweetness would lose its lure.

I wonder if it is possible for us to see sin for what it really is and come to the point that there truly is ‘the last sin’; not because we ran out of time in life, but that our desire for the sweet taste of sin has died.

Do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires.

What benefit did you then reap from those things that you are now ashamed of? For the end of those things is death.

For the payoff for sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

--Romans 6:12, 21, 23 (The NET Bible)

Mark Stinnett

April 20, 2025