The Sinfulness Of Sin - Preach The Word

The Sinfulness Of SinRalph Venningsome set up projects and trades of new sins, being inventors of evil things(Romans 1.30). How spreading and catching is this infection, for others will verysoon follow these newly-found fashions of sin and sinning.(iii) The infection of sin is almost incurable. The cure is impossible to us and onlypossible with God, and that, at a costly rate, by the blood of Christ himself. Thereason why it is very hard to be cured is that sin is within us and dwelleth in us(Romans 7.17,20). An ulcer in the flesh is more easily cured than one in the lungs.A disease that is within cannot be so well reached. Indeed, sin is not only in us butis riveted in us; it has got into the flesh and spirit as if it were one with us, like theleopard's spots and the Ethiopian's blackness. Under the law there was a leprosy soinveterate that though they scraped a house outside and inside and threw out thedust, though they took other stones and mortar, yet it returned again (Leviticus14.42-44). When diseases become, as it were, natural, they are hard to be cured.It is not easy to obliterate that which is written with a pen of iron and the point of adiamond. It is difficult to soften a heart of stone.Besides, this filthiness has long been in possession, even time out of mind. Itpleads prescription: a custom of such long standing has become a law and, as itwere, the course of nature (Jeremiah 13.23). To show how hard it is for sin to becured and rooted out, we now observe that very forcible means have been used forcleansing it, and even so, it has not been removed. God poured out a whole floodof water which washed away most sinners; yet sin, as I may say, kept abovewater, and was found alive and strong after the flood. When God sent fire andbrimstone or Hell, as one old writer put it, from Heaven, on Sodom, that centre ofsin, still sin escaped with Lot and his daughters. Now fire and water are verycleansing and purifying things, and yet you see that even they cannot do it. Whensome others sinned, the earth swallowed them up, yet sin remained, it did not die.After all these judgments the same sins are still in the world. Even in the saintsthemselves, with all the forces that faith can muster, sin is scarcely kept under, butthe flesh will be lusting against the spirit. The victory is by Christ Jesus; it is deathwhich kills sin.(iv) Sin lives in its effects when we are dead and gone. It follows us to the graveand there rots our bodies. When it can no longer reach our souls to make themvile, still it does not refrain from making our bodies putrid and vile. He who did nosin saw no corruption, but we who have sinned see corruption, and stink within afew days as Lazarus did, so sinful and infectious is sin!Thus we have seen the names of sin and how they witness against it. Thereremains only a second aspect--the witness of sin against itself, namely,(2) The arts that sin uses to disguise itself. If sin were not an ugly thing, would itwear a mask? If it did not have evil designs, would it walk in disguise and changeits name? Truth is not ashamed of its name or nakedness; it can walk openly andboldly. Sin, on the contrary, is a cheat, a lie, and therefore lurks privily and puts onfalse names and colours; for if it were to appear like itself--as it sooner or later willdo to all, either for conversion or confusion--it would frighten men into dying fits,as it did the Apostle, and when they come to themselves they would abhor andhate it, as Paul and the Prodigal did. Men would never be so hardy in sinning but92