|
A fallen, degenerate creature!
Spurgeon, "Real Grace for Real Need" #889.
Lost man, you are a fallen, degenerate creature!
You are daily living in sin. Your sins are speeding
as messengers up to the record office in heaven,
and there you shall find written down every idle
word, every sinful thought, and every guilty
action of your whole life. You are scarlet, you are
crimson, you are double dyed with your iniquities.
Your overpowering disposition is towards that
which is evil. Your nature, like an evil tree,
brings forth evil fruit. Your love to sin is engraven,
as with a diamond, into your heart of stone.
Your heart seems to be made of hell hardened
steel, and to be like the nether millstone.
Vain are your filmings over of your deadly
sore; your heart is in itself vile and deceitful
above all things, and desperately wicked.
You may wash the platter as you may, you
may make the outside of the cup as clean
as you will, but your inward parts are replete
with wickedness. The imaginations of the
thoughts of your heart are evil, only evil,
and that continually.
"You must be born again."
Your nature is too depraved for mending.
All Christians confess their natural depravity.
There is a sad bias in us all towards sin.
We are compelled to own that David's
confession must be ours, "Behold, I was
born a sinner; yes, from the moment my
mother conceived me."
Our nature was corrupted at its fountain head.
We tend towards evil.
We loved darkness naturally rather than light.
Our sin was of the heart, not of the
surface, "The leprosy was deep within."
The taint was in our vital blood.
The disease had corrupted our essential
being, and rendered us hopelessly unclean.
The Son of Man came to seek and to save
us when we were lost, dreadfully lost.
He has healed us, but it has not been of a
superficial disease; he has healed us of
a disease that was most deadly, and most
damnable!
See the Savior as his shoulders are crimsoned
with streams of gore for sinners who were his
enemies. Stand beneath the cross and view the
hands, and feet, and side, all pouring forth his
life blood. These are the drops that take our
sins away! These are the griefs of him who
took our guilt, that our guilt might be forgiven.
|