Before a man is born again, his conflict is with Jesus Christ; but after a man is born again, his conflict is with his sins. Sin gives a sinner pleasure, but after the New Birth sin only brings him pain and misery. Do not harbor sins in your bosom. Will you have your sins and go on to Hell where you belong, or will you give them up, and trust Christ’s Blood, and go to Heaven? There is no other alternative. Part with your sins and be joined to Christ, or you will die and perish in your sins. At Christ’s feet, come and lay down your love of sin. Christ’s Gospel medicine, once swallowed, that is, received down into the heart, goes to work immediately within a man’s heart The Gospel medicine takes possession of the affections, delivers from the love of sin, and from sin’s power and condemnation. Men refuse Christ, and choose the pleasures of their sin. God is weighing your thoughts and intents and motives every moment. Popular opinion and worldly success is a vain show.
Gold, earthly honor, and degrees are dust to a dying man. Your sins must be abandoned, for Christ will never dwell in a heart that loves sin. Eternal damnation awaits the Christ rejecter - that is a fact. Men in their own conceits think they are better than others, and secretly trust in their own works. If you want Christ, you must let all that nonsense go. Living a life of sin is a life that is in opposition to Christ. If you're not doing right, you're doing wrong. Abhor the evil, empty pleasures of sin, fight against them. War against your sins, or they will kill you. Consistently pursue the Lord through scripture reading and prayer. Diligently pursue your spouse - love, protect, respect them. Don't let persistent and consistent patterns of sin remain in your life. Take the axe to root of your greatest idol - self. Take steps to fight against the besetting sin you are struggling with. Before you give in to a particular sin, remember the Lord's goodness, and your badness.
The Lord hears and sees your thought life. God’s all-seeing eye should be a check to your evil acts. The Holy Spirit convinces the sinner of his guilt, danger, inability, and causes the sinner to hear the voice of the Law and judgment, and leads the sinner to ask for mercy and pardon through Christ's Blood. Salvation by self is the natural man’s sole hope; salvation by your own doings, feelings, or something or other of your own, this is the favorite delusion of self-righteous sinners. The fear of the Lord gives a man a horror of his sin, a conflict with inward evil, a striving against his sin, a struggle against sin, and a longing for inward purity for Christ's sake. The mere imagination of sin is Sin. Nothing darkens the eye of the soul more than the love of sin. Unless a man lives and fellowships with God in secret, he forgets the inward life, and goes about cleaning the outside of the cup, but within he is remains full of filth and wickedness. You must first see to the inward, and you will fail to do so unless you seek to live near Christ.
Thank God for His simple Gospel. Christ Jesus is All; Jesus is God manifest in the flesh; He died for the ungodly, suffered for His enemies; He is the well-beloved Son of God, and the one Great Propitiation for human sin. Receive Christ Himself now into your innermost being and be at peace with God. The only reason you won't is because you are very fond of sin and a slave to it. You have no wish to escape from sin, you have become comfortable in your sin. Be wise - Never take sin lightly. Shrink away from impurity and moral pollution of any kind, be disgusted with the wretchedness of sin. Never coddle, embrace, defend, promote, cover, accommodate, or delight in sin. Follow after what is clean and pure and right in your thoughts, words, and actions. Guard your appetites. It is a great iniquity to rebel against a God so good, against a Law so just, against a Savior so merciful, against the Holy Spirit so longsuffering, against the Gospel so free. A divine pardon of sin bought by Blood is freely given to every sinner who believes in Jesus. A peace which leaves you still loving sin is a dangerous peace. Secret conflicts with sin will come; but secret fellowship with Christ is the only way to overcome secret sin. Sin pricks the very eyeballs of the human mind and blinds the soul of man. Repent of sin as against God, no longer toy with your sins. Self-righteousness is a deadly delusion. The common spiritual delusion of religionists is of like kind. They imagine they can, by an effort of their own, satisfy their conscience, appease God’s divine justice, help make themselves pure, and produce a righteousness acceptable to a holy God. But Remission is the cancelling of your sin by God freely for Jesus’ sake. The forgiveness of sins is absolutely free; Jesus paid the whole bill for you. Did you get that?
The Precious Blood of Christ saves you completely within as well as without. The burden of guilt, the bondage of evil habits, the slavery of sin, the alarm of conscience, and the dreading of the wrath to come can only be extinguished by the Blood of Jesus Christ. Sin will reign over you until Christ reigns over you. Stop loving sin, self, error, and worldly wealth, honor, and pleasure – your sins are way too strong to be subdued by you - trust yourself with Him who died upon the Cross for your sins. Come to Christ by confessing your sinfulness, and trusting His blood. Come with all your sins and leave your deadly load of sin at the Cross. Faith is the eye we see God with, and the hand we grasp Christ with. All men have evil hearts and are alienated from God, forget God, love sin, and dislike Christ. No man can make his own heart clean. Respectable lady or debauched wretch, all hearts must be changed the same way; it requires the work of the Spirit of God. Honest man or practiced thief – there is no difference; all men must be born again. Stripped naked before God, or clothed in the glorious and regal righteousness of Jesus Christ. The need of the Gospel is the same for every sinner in the world. The king and the pauper are both saved the same way. There is no difference as to the need of salvation. Man not only sins, but he loves to sin, and will not come to Christ. The intense love of sin comes from neglecting Christ for days, months, and years. The paths of sin are pleasant to the natural man. He loves both the way and wages of iniquity.
True faith and godly repentance weeps over sin. Gaze upon His wounds, and you will be wounded, feel your heart bleed on account of Him, and all that He endured on your behalf. A sight of Christ crucifies sin. A sight of His death will be the death of your love for sin. His stripes will cure you of your love for sin now, and your pursuit of sin in the future. You must be cured first of the desire to sin. Long to be sober, chaste, pure, truthful, honest, and gracious. Don’t be forgetful of God, hard-hearted toward Him. Ask God to give you a new heart and right spirit. Sin is the very essence of hell. The fire that is not quenched is a heart burning with iniquity; the worm is the conscience that shall torture the mind forever for its rebellion against God's love. You must be saved by Christ. Don’t excuse human sin. Jesus can make you happy, holy, and safe. Forsake your evil ways. If you keep your sins, you'll have go to Hell. Part company with your sins. Be divorced from sin, break off your sins. No man can serve two masters. You are either a servant of the Savior, or the servant of your sin. The wounds and blood of Jesus cure us of the love of sin. By nature every man loves sin. Your sins cost Christ His life’s blood. Sin cut Jesus Christ to the very soul, sin made Jesus bleed on Calvary. There is no cure for the love of sin like the blood of Christ. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked who love their sins. Don't die in your natural state separated from the life of God. There can be no real peace where there is unpardoned sin. God is at war with you, and you are at war with Him. Give up your darling sins, fight against your inward evil, break off your filthy habits by Christ's Righteousness and Blood. When the love of God in Christ comes into your soul, you will no longer have a heart for sin.
No pardon means no purity, no purity means no peace. God has no peace with sin, and He never can have. Our nature must be changed; the love of sin must be killed in us by the blood of the Cross. Put your trust in Christ alone, He is worthy of all the trust of your heart. Have done with all other confidences, and with the love of sin, lay hold on eternal life. The love of God in Christ drives out the love of sin from our dark hearts. Every act of sin arises out of the absence and decline of the love of God. If you keep messing around, the terrible evil of sin will eventually damn you. Only the wounds of Jesus can cure your desperate love for sin. You must be saved from following after sin. The Law says to the blind man, See! To the lame man, Walk! But only the Gospel can enable you to See and Walk. There is an evil tendency in us all to disobey the Law of God. Jesus, the Divine Archer, shoots His arrows of conviction into the unbelieving, hard, sin-loving heart. Only the Gospel can save you from your old filthy habits of thought and word and deed. Men can only enjoy fellowship with God in proportion as they give up their love of sin. You cannot walk in love to Christ and still live in the love of sin. Strong temper, a forceful will, obstinate disposition, wayward habits must be forsaken. When the love of God is shed abroad in our heart, then the love of sin will take its flight, the love of sin dies, lusts and corruptions wither. The love of sin and the neglect of holiness go hand in hand. You think yourself too good for Christ.
Here's some good news - If you trust Christ, your sins shall not destroy you. Lean fully on Jesus, fling away your love for sin and the love for your self-righteousness. The reason for all opposition to Christ is the love of sin. Track it back to its den and lair and you will find every time that it is the love of sin that breeds hatred to Christ. Men do not see because they refuse to see. They don’t want to see too much, for that would make them uneasy in their present lost state. Men couldn’t tolerate God in human flesh when He was here on earth. Men kick against Christ, and try to put out the light of His gospel, lest they be reproved by it. Human wisdom and philosophy must go. Bats and moles can see better than lost sinners. Man wants to get away from God, because he wants to do wrong.
At the bottom of all infidelity there lies a love of sin. Men quarrel with the Gospel, because the Gospel quarrels with them. Pardon, change of heart, and Righteousness – Christ has it all for you. You can purged from the love of sin – Christ can do it. Wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption is all found in Christ. Only Christ Himself can satisfy your spiritual appetite. The Gospel explodes human traditions, opinions, superstitions, and cherished religious ceremonies and rituals. The Gospel will not let you live on comfortably in your sin. Fall on your face right now, and trust the blood of the Lamb. Rest in His atoning sacrifice. God will be merciful to any sinner who forsakes his own righteousness and receives Christ's Righteousness. Ask God for mercy through the blood of Jesus Christ. Trust now Christ’s sin-forgiving blood and His sin-forgetting grace.
