September 19
The Continual Burnt Offering" B ecause the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God."
What the law forbids, the heart of the unrenewed man produces. It is like a field full of noxious weeds which thrive despite all effort to curb or destroy them. By the new birth men become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4) and so learn to delight in those things which please God, for the new life imparted is heavenly in origin and uncontaminated by lust. Nevertheless, the old nature abides until the day when the returning Christ shall transform these bodies of our humiliation. Hence the importance of the exhortations to uprightness, honesty, and integrity that abound in the Epistles, where true Christian life is set forth in all its fullness.
The Lord looked down upon the earth,
But what did He behold?—
A groaning, wretched, sinful world
By Satan’s will controlled.
He saw corruption like a flood
Roll o’er His fair domain,
Rebellion, lust, and wickedness
Possessing hill and plain.
He saw man’s heart, He knew his will,
He saw sin’s full extent—
The whole creation rife with wrong—
Man’s race on evil bent.
—C. C. Crowston