Reformed, Book Reading, Apple Loving, Beverage Snob, 23 Year-Old Husband, In Need of Grace.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
The facts of life, the story of history, proclaim the wrath of God against all ungodliness and unrighteousness. That is our first problem. We have sinned against God. We are in the wrong relationship to Him. His wrath is upon us. We have made it impossible for Him to bless us. His Holy nature demands that He must punish our transgression. What can we do about it? Nothing! Our tears, our sorrows, our works and strivings, can avail nothing. We cannot atone for our past or undo our misdeeds, or make recompense. None can keep the law. ‘There is non righteous, no not one’ (Rom. 3:10). ‘Every mouth may be stopped.’ The whole world is guilty before God (Rom. 3:19). Is there no hope, therefore? Can nothing be done? God be thanked, the Gospel of Christ provides the answer, as we have already seen. God has dealt with our sins in Christ. The demands of holiness and justice have been satisfied—Christ has been ‘delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification’ (Rom. 4:25). God in Christ is prepared to receive us. In Him, who has ‘been made a curse for us’ (Gal. 3:13), the curse pronounced against sin is removed and there is hope for all. The law of God which decrees travail and sorrow and misery as the result of sin, has been satisfied. God in Christ offers us pardon and forgiveness, and instead of cursing, blessing.
Therefore when a man feels this battle of the flesh, let him not be discouraged therewith, but let him resist in the Spirit, and say: I am a sinner, and I feel sin in me, for I have not yet put off the flesh, in which sin dwells so long as it lives; but I will obey the spirit and not the flesh: that is, I will by faith and hope lay hold upon Christ, and by his word I will raise up myself, and being so raised up, I will no fulfill the lust of the flesh.
Martin Luther, Commentary on Galations 5:17
We see then how greatly Christian doctrine helps the raising up and comforting of the weak consciences; which treat not of cowels, shavings, rosaries, and such-like toys, but of high and weighty matters, as how we may overcome the flesh, sin, death, and the devil.
Martin Luther, Commentary on Galations 5:17
The malice of the act was base and I loved it — that is to say I loved my own undoing, I loved the evil in me — not the thing for which I did the evil, simply the evil: my soul was depraved, and hurled itself down from security in You into utter destruction, seeking no profit from wickedness, but only to be wicked.
-Saint Augustine, Confessions
Augustine had a HUGE view of sin and a HUGE view of grace. We should see our sin as a huge problem and God’s grace (through Christ’s atonement) as a HUGE answer.
For it is quite possible for a man to abstain from fleshly pleasures from the sake of idolatry or some heretical error; and yet, even when he does so, he is proved by the apostolic authority to be living after the flesh; and in abstaining from fleshly pleasure he is proved to be practicing damnable works of the flesh.
It is God that delivers from the domination of sin, cleanses us from our filthiness, and changes us from our deformity.
We, doubtless, are more evil than any if we continue to sin in the light of grace. I shall not insist that the sin itself of such persons is greater than others, even though they sin against more love, mercy, grace, assistance, relief, means, and deliverance. But do considered in your mind that the guilt of sinning against grace is more serious than if you did not have any grace at all.
John Owen, Mortification of Sin
