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The very thought is appalling!
(J. C. Philpot, "Alienation
and Reconciliation")
"Once you were alienated from God and were
His enemies, separated from Him by your
evil thoughts and actions." Colossians 1:21
All man's sins, comparatively speaking, are but
'motes in the sunbeam' compared with this giant
sin of enmity against God. A man may be given
up to fleshly indulgences; he may sin against his
fellow creature—may rob, plunder, oppress, even
kill his fellow man. But viewed in a spiritual light,
what are they compared with the dreadful, the
damnable sin of enmity against the great and
glorious Majesty of heaven?
This is a sin that lives beyond the grave!
Many sins, though not their consequences, die
with man's body, because they are bodily sins.
But this is a sin that goes into eternity with him,
and flares up like a mighty volcano from the very
depths of the bottomless pit! Yes, it is the very
sin of devils, which therefore binds guilty man
down with them in the same eternal chains, and
consigns him to the same place of torment!
O the unutterable enmity of the heart against
the living God! The very thought is appalling!
How utterly ruined, then, how wholly lost must
that man's state and case be, who lives and
dies as he comes into the world . . .
unchanged,
unrenewed,
unregenerated!
I will not dwell longer upon this gloomy subject,
on this sad exhibition of human wickedness and
misery, though it is needful we should know it for
ourselves, that we should have a taste of this bitter
cup in our own most painful experience, that we may
know the sweetness of the cup of salvation when
presented to our lips by free and sovereign grace.
Nothing but the mighty power of God Himself
can ever turn this enemy into a friend!
"Once you were alienated from God and were
His enemies, separated from Him by your
evil thoughts and actions, yet now He has
brought you back as His friends. He has done
this through His death on the cross in His own
human body. As a result, He has brought you
into the very presence of God, and you are holy
and blameless as you stand before Him without
a single fault." Colossians 1:21-22
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