Proverbs 24:15-16

A warning to the wicked man plotting against a godly man's home and peace: do not bother — you cannot keep him down. And here is verse 16, one of the most misread sentences in the Bible. It does not mean "even a righteous man sins seven times a day, so relax about sin." The "falling" here is falling into trouble, not into sin — and that changes everything. The just man may be knocked down again and again, seven times over, by affliction, loss, slander, sickness — and he rises every time, because the springs of his life are fed from an invisible, unfailing source; you cannot kill a tree by lopping the branches. The salvations of the Lord are never exhausted: "in six troubles he shall deliver thee; yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee" (Job 5:19). So look your trouble in the face and say with the prophet, "Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise" (Micah 7:8). The wicked man's fall is the opposite — when calamity finally hits him he lies where he falls and perishes where he lies, with no hand to lift him. Seven falls and seven risings is not a license to sin; it is a promise to the battered believer that the count of God's rescues never runs out.