The Sinfulness Of Sin - Preach The Word

The Sinfulness Of SinRalph Venningon to obey) the truth?' They had begun to obey, and so he adds: 'Are ye so foolish?having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?' (Galatians 3.1-3)This is folly with a witness! An apostate is a double fool, a tree twice dead. Hislatter end is worse than his beginning. Thus we see how sin has duped men. Butthis is not all:(iv) Sin has degraded man and made him a beast. It is true, he has the shape of aman, but, alas! he is degenerated into a bestial and beastly nature. I may begin, asOvid began his Metamorphoses: 'In nova fert animus' (Strange things come tomind). I must show you a monster, indeed, many monsters in one: a dog-man, agoat-man, a wolf-man, a fox-man and so on. It would be better to be a beast thanto be like a beast, living and dying like one. It would be better to be Balaam's assthan such an ass as Balaam himself was. But to set this degeneration anddegradation of man by sin before you more clearly and fully, I shall deal with itunder three headings: Sin has made man (a) like a beast, (b) like the worst ofbeasts, (c) worse than the beasts.a. Sin has made man like a beast, and not only like one, but, indeed, a very beast!The Man of Sin, the great Antichrist, is called a beast, and the great ones thatDaniel saw in his vision are called beasts. In Scripture, sinners are ten or eleventimes called brutish; and what some men are all would be if left to themselves, ifcommon or special, restraining or renewing grace did not interpose and prevent.Three things will indicate this likeness:(1) Sinful man is like the beasts in ignorance and stupidity. 'So foolish was I, andignorant: I was as a beast before thee' (Psalm 73.22). Man, though a man inhonour, that understandeth not, is like the beast that perishes (Psalm 49:20); he isof no more value or honour, though he sits at the upper end of the world as theAntichristian beast does. 0 ye brutish, when will ye understand? O ye fools, whenwill ye be wise? (Psalm 94.8). Brutish and foolish are synonymous and parallelexpressions, as was hinted before. A heart void of understanding is the heart of abeast, as is clear from Daniel 4.16 with 34-36.(2) Sinful man is like the beasts in sensuality, as if he were only belly-wise, andhad no soul to mind, or a soul only to mind his body. He places his happiness onlyin sensual and bodily enjoyments and satisfactions. In this sense some understandthat saying: 'I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, thatGod might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves arebeasts' (Ecclesiastes 3.18). Solomon does not use a gentle or courtly compliment,but calls them (in downright and plain English) beasts. They live and die likebeasts, make no provision for eternity, and have no mind for the world to come,which is the world of eternal good or evil.(3) Sinful man's likeness to the beasts consists in, and is apparent from hisunfitness and unsuitableness for society and communion with God and man. Thesinner's society is but societas belluina, the society of beasts, and good men are asshy of it as of conversing with beasts. In the state of innocence among all thebeasts there was not found a meet help, anyone for man to associate himself toand keep company with; and ever since, sinful man is as unfit for pleasing andprofitable converse as the beasts were then. Job's friends took it as great scorn and28