The Sinfulness Of Sin - Preach The Word

The Sinfulness Of SinRalph Venningby the death of Christ, there is no danger or cause of fear (Hebrews 2.14,15).When the Apostle Paul looked at the Prince of Peace, he was not afraid of the Kingof Terrors, but to challenge and upbraid it (1 Corinthians 15.55).3. Death is killing, but sin much more so. Death deprives of natural and temporallife, but sin deprives us of spiritual and eternal life. Death kills only the body, butsin kills the soul and brings upon it a worse death than the first death, that is, thesecond death. Men may kill us but only God can destroy us, that is damn us, andhe never does that except for sin. Thus sin is more killing than death is killing.4. Death is corrupting. It brings the body to corruption, and makes it so loathsomethat we say of our dearest relations, as Abraham did of Sarah when she was dead,'Bury her out of my sight'. Death makes every man say to the worm, 'Thou art mymother', and to corruption and putrefaction, 'Thou art my father' (Job 17.14). Butsin corrupts us more than death, for he who died without sin saw no corruption. Itdefiles us and makes us stink in the nostrils of God and man (Genesis 34.30). Theold man and his lusts are corrupt and do corrupt us (Ephesians 4.22). They corruptour souls, and that which corrupts the soul, the principal man of the man, is muchworse than that which corrupts the body only. Sin, however, corrupts the body too,while it is alive; intemperance and uncleanness corrupt soul and body. So sin iseven in this worse than death.Our Saviour tells the Jews that their great misery was not that they should die, butthat they should die in their sins (John 8.21). By this he intimated that sin wasworse than death, and was that which made death a misery. Better die in ahospital or a ditch than in sin. It is better to die anyhow than to sin and die in sin.Therefore the Church Father told Eudodia the Empress, when she threatened him,nil nisi peccatum timeo (I fear nothing but sinning). And that Queen spoke royallywho said that she would rather hear of her children's death than that they hadsinned. They of whom the world was not worthy, being too good to live long, choserather to die than sin (Hebrews 11).(3) Sin is worse than the DevilThe Devil is indeed a terrible enemy, the evil and envious one, the hater ofmankind. Yet he knows that he can neither damn nor hurt men without sin. Sin cando, without the Devil, that which the Devil cannot do without sin, and that is, undomen. God and the Devil are not so contrary as God and sin; for the Devil hassomething left which was of God, that is, his being. Sin, however, never was norcan be of God; he is neither the author of it nor the tempter to it (James 1.13). Sinmade the Devil what he is. For the Devil was not made as a devil by God. It is truethat the Devil now seeks to devour man, that he cannot do it apart from sin, andthat he cannot compel any man to sin.1. Though the Devil tempts, it is man who sins. Satan's temptations to sin are notsins, nor are they the way to hell; but the very temptations of sin are sins, and theway to more sins and so to hell. A man's own lusts are more and worse temptersthan the Devil. The Scripture speaks as if a man were not tempted, nor indeed ishe effectually, until his lusts do it (James 1.14). If a man were tempted by theDevil forty days and yet remained without sin as did Christ, if he were tempted all102