J C Ryle says that “the plain truth is that a right knowledge of sin lies at the root of all saving Christianity.”
(Holiness, p. 1)
What Every Sin Offers
Geerhardus Vos says in his Biblical Theology that “every sin offers to God what ought not to be offered, an offence, and at the same time, it withholds from God what ought to have been given to Him, obedience.”
(Biblical Theology, p. 171)
Temptation
John Owen makes this great statement about temptation:
“All sin is from temptation. Sin is a fruit that comes only from that root.”
(Works, Vol. 6, p. 117)
Absence of Religion
Calvin says (Inst. I.2.3) that “if religion is absent from the life of men, they are then in no wise superior to brute beasts, but are in many respects far more miserable. Subject, then, to so many forms of wickedness, they drag out their lives in ceaseless tumult and disquiet. Therefore, it is worship of God alone that renders men higher than the brutes, and through it alone they aspire to immortality.”
Ought we not to pity the unbeliever then all the more and beg God to save sinners (such as we once were)?
Suffering & Evil
We distinguish between our sufferings in general and evil or wickedness. The persecution of the believer is constituted ‘sufferings.’ The killing of many people in Las Vegas is evil. It is the evil of man . It has always been so. We recognize the difficulty in saying that God knew of such an evil and did nothing to prevent it. We do not know, first of all, how much God did actually prevent, so it is pointless to speculate. We must acknowledge that God is on control of all things, even the evil of man. If God did not then he is not God. To say that God does not care or God did nothing is to seriously misrepresent all that Scripture reveals about God. [Read more…]