A Scriptural View of Sin

2014-11-12-exchange1 (1)ALLEINE: O miserable man, what a deformed monster has sin made you! God made you “little lower than the angels”–but sin has made you little better than the devils!

BEART: There is a certain infiniteness in sin, because it is against an infinite God, which therefore brings a punishment of infinite duration, because it cannot be atoned for by finite creatures.

BROOKS: Did God leave us to act according to our sinful natures–we would all be incarnate devils, and this world would be an absolute Hell!
There is no little sin–because there is no little God to sin against.

EDWARDS: You contribute nothing to your salvation–but the sin which made it necessary!
Never did God so manifest His hatred of sin, as in the death and suffering of His only begotten Son.

FLAVEL: Christ is not sweet–until sin is made bitter to us!
If God should damn you to all eternity–your eternal sufferings could not satisfy for the evil that is in one vain thought! O the depth of the evil of sin!

HODGE: Original sin is the only rational solution of the undeniable fact of the deep, universal and early manifested sinfulness of men in all ages, of every class, and in every part of the world.

JAMES: The torments of the bottomless pit are not so dreadful a demonstration of God’s hatred of sin, as the agonies of the cross!

LOVE: Sin is worse than Hell, because sin made Hell to be Hell.

MANTON: Sin is sweet in commission, but bitter in its wages!
The more affected we are with our sinful misery–the fitter we are for Christ’s marvelous mercy.

MASON: Sin digs graves for bodies, and kindles Hell for souls!
A man can never leave sin thoroughly, until he loathes it heartily.
Go to Golgotha and see what sin did there!
Christ did not die for sin, that we might live in sin.
The sins of the wicked anger Christ, the sins of His people grieve Him.

NEWTON: The more vile we are in our own eyes–the more precious Christ will be to us!
Sin cannot be hated for itself–until we have seen the malignity of it in Christ’s sufferings!

OWEN: The seed of every sin–is in every heart!
Christ’s blood is the great sovereign remedy for sin-sick souls!
I do not understand how a man can be a true believer–in whom sin is not the greatest burden, sorrow and trouble!

PRICE: We drown our sins in the Red Sea of Christ’s blood!

RYLE: Christ is never fully valued, until sin is clearly seen.

SIBBES: The depths of our misery–can never fall below the depths of God’s mercy!
Sin is not so sweet in the committing of it–as it is bitter in the reckoning of it.
It is evident that our conversion is sound–when we loathe and hate sin from the heart.

SPURGEON: If Christ has died for me–then I cannot trifle with the sin which killed my best Friend!
What sin is worth being damned for?
If you have lived like the wicked–then you will die like the wicked, and be damned like the wicked!
Look to the cross, and hate your sin–for sin nailed your Well-Beloved to the cruel tree!
Sin is self-damnation!
As salt tinges every drop in the ocean–so does sin affect every atom of man’s nature!
There is no cure for the love of sin–like the blood of Christ!

WATSON: Sin has the devil for its father, shame for its companion, and death and damnation for its wages!

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Deuteronomy 32:35 (King James Version) 35. To me belongeth vengeance and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.

I read throughout the Bible where God punished Israel (and even other heathen countries) for their rebellion against Him and His laws. And I also read where eventually they cry out to God for repentance. They come to the place where they realize that they have wronged God and turn back and beg for mercy. Of course, God stays His hand and gives them relief from their punishment and all is rosy for a while.

I look at society today and see a completely different sort. I see a people who are so intelligent and logical that they can explain the most horrendous events away and never be none the wiser as to their origins.

I see a people who not only have the greatest hate for God, but seem to get offended at the drop of a hat when He is mentioned.

I see a society that sneers at the Christian and detests his existence.

If you mention that pandemics and suffering originate from the sovereign hand of God, they laugh you to scorn and pity your ignorance (Eph. 4.18).

What has changed? Why don’t people throw themselves to their knees in remorse and cry out for mercy anymore?

It’s the same God that runs the show. It’s the same God that is growing angrier by the day over man’s rebellion. It’s the same God that keeps the fires of hell stoked for the day of Judgment.

Yet, man as a whole, just carries on as if life is bliss and all is well in heaven and earth.

I like how Jonathan Edwards relates the picture of a spider being held over the fire. My wife hates spiders with a passion. She would rather put up with thousands of mosquitoes rather than live with one spider. I picture her having to hold a big, juicy, squirming spider by the leg as it frantically tries to crawl back onto her hand. I know for a fact that it wouldn’t be too long before she hurled that vial creature into the consuming flames.

Man is indeed walking through life with a countdown timer ticking. Second by second, tick by tick, man is creeping ever closer to the day he will stand before God and give account for his life on earth. Yet, life seems to continue as normal. Yes, we have quarantines, isolation, social distancing, etc., but how many of us have had genuine thoughts of repentance, reform or revival these last weeks? How many of us have literally been stopped in our tracks by this whole trial and looked up?

Not very many I’m afraid. If the church isn’t turning to God and crying out for reform, then why should the world? All the world sees is a disobedient church rebelling against the orders from our local governments and doing what they can to skirt the rules. How does this make Christ look, seeing as we are supposed to represent Him?

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God should be listened to by all, saved and unsaved. At this time of year, as we inch closer to remembering Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection, shouldn’t we be focusing on allowing this wake-up call to cut through the cobwebs and mental fog and really shake us up?

What’s so different between this calamity and those we read about in the Bible? Same God. Same sin. Yet, we seem to feel like this is just a virus and it doesn’t really concern us (Prov. 28. 14).

At no other time in history are we as a society faced with so much that can confuse, deceive and destroy us. Some between 40 to 60% of everything we’re told online is fake. The problem is, which part? It is virtually impossible to figure out what’s true and what’s false. And in doing so, you will run into many sources that make their stance sound like the real one. Argh! Even when it comes to Scripture. If you look online you will literally find hundreds or even thousands of interpretations regarding Revelations and eschatology. How on earth can anyone find the truth anymore?

I have had many conversations with Christians in person and online and I have only found a very small few that I can actually talk too and agree on most everything. Notice I said, ‘most everything’. But then there’s those who call themselves Christians and believe such erroneous ideas that you stand back and shake your head in disbelief. Just because one calls himself ‘Christian’, doesn’t mean he’s saved. That’s for sure!

In my experience, one truth seems to outweigh everything else when it comes to God. That truth is His absolute sovereignty. God is supreme and all-powerful and in control of the good and the bad. Every creature is on a leash and He controls them all. There is no such things as free will and there is no such thing as some sort of battle between good and evil. God controls the devil and allows him to do His bidding just as He does everyone else, and no one, no matter how powerful he is, can operate outside His sovereignty.

This truth separates the true believer from the false convert. The true believer will embrace God’s sovereignty and rest in its comforting shadow, while the false convert will fight and struggle against it.

This deception has all but ruined the church, but it has done something amazing. It has revealed the tares and separated them off from the wheat. Now we can tell them apart! Now we can know who’s genuinely saved and who’s faking it.

Unfortunately the world doesn’t care about the wheat and the tares and all they see is a bunch of hypocrites.

At this time of year, when we celebrate God’s wrath passing us over and the the beautiful work of Jesus Christ washing us clean from all sin, we must ensure that we act in such a way that brings glory to Jesus Christ and makes the world take notice. They do watch us and they are aware of the fakery of the church. I see this all the time in satires and jokes.

Jesus deserves to be held in such high regard that any notion of sin would be so abhorrent that we would run away from the temptation faster than a COVID-19 symptom party. Paul speaks of carrying around the dying body of Jesus Christ in his daily life. How would that change your way of doing things if you were given the task of carrying the bleeding Lamb of God around all day? Everytime you went to sin, you saw Him staring at you through swollen eyes? Everytime you wanted to sin, you would hear a whisper from bleeding cracked lips, “Don’t”.

I think more of us need this daily reminder. We take life to flippantly. We waste way to much time and leave far too much behind us on a day to day basis. This, I suppose is the downside to eternal security. We don’t have to do anything to earn or secure our salvation, so most, if not all of us, become complacent and comfortable. This is indeed a tragedy. Instead we are suppose to be running the race, spreading the seed of the Gospel to all mankind, and being the ACTIVE ambassadors we were commissioned to be.

Yes, the sinner is in the hand of an angry God, and the more he sins the greater God’s hatred and disgust grows against him, but we as Christians are supposed to be the light that shines in the darkness that gives the lost a beacon of hope to latch onto. If we adopt the dimmer switch of compromise, then when the darkness thickens, the lost won’t see you.

 

Jonathan Edwards taught “Salvation by Works”!!!

All the “Easy-Believers®” who want to toss men like John MacArthur and Paul Washer under the bus for teaching that the life of a true Christian will be radically different from a Non-Christian because the believer’s life will be marked by repentance from sin, obedience to Christ, and “fruits worthy of repentance”–these “Easy-Believers®” will also have to consign the great Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards to the same fate.

***SARCASM ALERT!!!***

Quotes (754)

For so hath God contrived and constituted things, in his dispensations towards his own people, that when their love decays, and the exercises of it fail, or become weak, fear should arise; for then they need it to restrain them from sin, and to excite them to care for the good of their souls, and so to stir them up to watchfulness and diligence in religion: but God hath so ordered, that when love rises, and is in vigorous exercise, then fear should vanish, and be driven away ; for then they need it not, having a higher and more excellent principle in exercise, to restrain them from sin, and stir them up to their duty. There are no other principles, which human nature is under the influence of, that will ever make men conscientious, but one of these two: fear or love; and therefore, if one of these should not prevail as the other decays, God’s people, when fallen into dead and carnal frames, when love is asleep, would be lamentably exposed indeed.

And therefore God has wisely ordained, that these two opposite principles of love and fear should rise and fall, like the two opposite scales of a balance; when one rises the other sinks. As light and darkness necessarily and unavoidably succeed each other; if light prevails, so much does darkness cease, and no more; and if light decays, so much does darkness prevail; so it is in the heart of a child of God: if divine love decays and falls asleep, and lust prevails, the light and joy of hope go out, and dark fear and doubting arises; and if, on the contrary, divine love prevails and comes into lively exercise, this brings in the brightness of hope, and drives away black lust, and fear with it.

Jonathan Edwards
1703–1758

Christianity In Its True Colors

This really puts me to shame, and gave me much food for thought.

Jonathan EdwardsNow here appears Christianity in its true colors. To be of such a spirit as this is to be of such a spirit as Christ so often requires of us, if we would be His disciples. This is to sell all and give to the poor. This is to take up the cross daily and follow Christ. To have such a spirit as this is to have good evidence of being a Christian indeed, a thorough Christian, one who has given himself to Christ without reserve; one who hates father and mother and wife and children and sisters, yea, and his own life also; one who loses his life for Christ’s sake, and so shall find it.

And though it is not required of all that they should endure so great sufferings as [the Apostle] Paul did, yet is required and absolutely necessary that many Christians should be in a measure of this spirit, should be of a spirit to lose all things and suffer all things for Christ, rather than not obey His commands and seek His glory.

How well may our having such an example as this [speaking of the Apostle Paul] before our eyes make us ashamed, who are so backward now and then to lose little things, to put ourselves a little out of our way, to deny ourselves some convenience, to deny our sinful appetites, or to incur the displeasure of a neighbor.

Alas! What thought have we of Christianity to make much of such things as these; to make so many objections, to keep back, and contrive ways to excuse ourselves, when a little difficulty arises! What kind of thoughts had we of being Christians when we first undertook to be such, or first pretended a willingness to be Christians? Did we never sit down and count the cost, or did we cast it up at this rate, that we thought the whole sum would not amount to such little sufferings as lie in our way?

Edwards, Jonathan. Pursuing Holiness in the Lord.
P&R Publishing, 2005. 77-78.