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OUR SINNERSHIP!
-Spurgeon, "Breaking the Long Silence"
Sins of omission are those which trouble me most.
I look back, and remember what I might have done, and
have not done; what opportunities of usefulness I have not
seized; what sins I have allowed to pass unrebuked;
what struggling beginners in grace I have failed to help.
I cannot but grieve that what I have done was not done
better, or attended with a humbler dependence upon God.
I now perceive, even in my 'holy things', faults in their
beginning, faults in their carrying on, and faults in their ending.
Delay to initiate, slackness in the act, and pride after it,
defile our best service.
What an endless list our faults and
failings our best services are!
Oh, friends, when we examine one year of life carefully,
looking into the thoughts and motives and secret imaginings
of the soul, how humbled we ought to be!
Yet, my faith places her hand upon the head of Him who
was our Substitute and Scapegoat, and I see all my sins and
all the sins of all believers forever put away by Him who
stood in the sinner's place.
Let your tears fall because of sin; but, at the same time,
let the eye of faith steadily behold the Son of man lifted up,
as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
that those who are bitten by the old serpent may look unto
Jesus and live.
Our sinnership is that emptiness into which
the Lord pours his mercy.
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