06.01. Sin
Sin
"All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God."
Romans 3:23.
Father! Thy sovereign love has sought
Captives to sin, gone far from Thee;
The work that Thine Own Son hath wrought,
Has brought us back — in peace and free!
First Week A single sin is more horrible to God than a thousand sins — nay, than all the sins in the world — are to us.
It is the action of an independent will which is the principle of sin.
God can let nothing pass; He can forgive all and cleanse from all, but let nothing pass.
Christ is love; the greater sinner I am, the more need I have of Him.
If all the sins that ever were committed in the world were congregated in your persons and were your own act, this need not prevent your believing in Christ and coming unto God through Him.
Look at the state man is really in as regards the trust he puts in man rather than God. If his neighbour should ask him to do anything, though his conscience may tell him God hates what his neighbour wants him to do, still, rather than disoblige his companion, he will sin against God.
Sinning and religiousness go on together. . . . Where the power of godliness is not, nearness to godly things is only the more dangerous.
If our hearts . . . feel not sin, Christ felt it when He drank the cup and bore sin for us. If the heart does not feel the gravity of sin, not to the same point as Jesus knew it, but at least in some degree — if, feeble as it may be, the feeling of sin is a stranger to us — we have not at all entered into the mind of Jesus.
Adam sinned and left God, because he thought more of what Satan offered him; he thought the devil a better friend to him than God: but he has since found out to his cost that the devil was a liar; that he never had the power of giving him what he promised, and that by catching at the devil’s bait; he has received his hook, and that "the wages of sin is death." On the cross hung the one spotless, blessed Man, yet forsaken of God. What a fact before the world! No wonder the sun was darkened — the central and splendid witness to God’s glory in nature, when the Faithful and True Witness cried to His God and was not heard. Forsaken of God! What does this mean? What part have I in the cross? One single part — my sins. . . . It baffles thought, that most solemn lonely hour which stands aloof from all before or after.
Christ . . . died rather than allow sin to subsist before God.
Directly grace acts in the heart, it gives the consciousness of sin; but, at the same time, the love of Christ reaches the conscience, deepening the consciousness of sin; but if this is deep, it is because the consciousness of the love of Christ is also deep.