Reformed Baptist Congregation Exaltation | Edification | Evangelism
“I ought to flee temptation – avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it and pass away. I ought constantly to pour out my heart to God praying for entire conformity to Christ – for the whole law to be written on my heart.”
R M M’Cheyne (Memoirs by A Bonar, p. 155)
It is as Augustine says in his “City of God” that the only cause for the perishing of Rome was that she chose to have guardians that could also perish. Is this not the same for Jerusalem in the days of our Lord? She chose not the Lord to save her, and thus because she trusted in herself and her righteousness – she likewise perished (AD 70). In the same way, what is our country entrusting herself to? Do we not see the influence of pagan idolatry raising once again its ugly head? God has been banished like a naughty schoolboy, but He shall take His vengeance because He is a consuming fire. Great nations perish unless their people (like ancient Nineveh) repent. May we learn this lesson well as Augustine understood it.
It is a duty incumbent upon every Christian all the days of their lives to mortify the flesh. Either we kill sin or sin will kill us as the Puritans liked to say. Paul instructs us to not let sin reign in our bodies to make you obey its passions. In verse 13, he tells us that we must not present the members of our bodies to sin so as to be the instruments of sin, but rather to present our bodies to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and we are to yield our members as instruments for righteousness. [Read more…]