Our Lives Are Directed by Our Hungers

A reminder that human desire or human hunger is not the problem, but what our sin causes us to hunger for:

From the beginning, then, Scripture affirms the reality and goodness of human hunger. Sin, of course, perverts our hunger, so that we seek to taste forbidden fruit rather than grasp the fruit of of the tree of life, but sin does not change the fundamental realities of human desire. Our hearts follow where our treasure is; if what we value above all is in heaven, we will desire Christ who is above, but if what we find most desirable are earthly things, our hearts will be focused on things below. Our lives are directed by our hungers, and we find rest only when we hunger for the One who opens His hand to satisfy the desire of every living thing more than we hunger for the things in His hand.

--Peter Leithart, Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper

Talking Back with the Truth

A great reminder to talk back to sin with the truth of the gospel:

Nobody sins because they want to be deceived.  We sin because we believe what sin offers is true....Sin lies to us.  We need to get in the habit of talking back with the truth.

--Jonathan Dodson, Gospel-Centered Discipleship

The Depths of Our Depravity

From a conversation between Christian and Hopeful in The Pilgrim's Progress (where Hopeful explains how he began to be convicted of his sin):

Hopeful: "I have committed enough sin in one of my most recent good duties to send me to Hell."

The Beginning of Knowledge

"The beginning of knowledge is to know oneself to be a sinner."

--Augustine

The Stain of Guilt, the Weight of Sin

"Terribly black must that guilt be for which nothing but the blood of the Son of God could make satisfaction. Heavy must that weight of human sin be which made Jesus groan and sweat drops of blood in agony at Gethsemane and cry at Golgotha, 'My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?'"

--J.C. Ryle

The Thing That Empties Churches

The following quote is from a letter written by a British missionary in 1941 in response to an article published in the British Weekly as to why churches were generally empty in England. Her answer rings true today as much as it did in 1941.

No, the thing which has emptied churches is lack of need of God. A man conscious of the sin of his soul seeks God and does not wait to be attracted by church stunts. But the knowledge of good and evil has been lost in a welter of words....What must be rediscovered is God's attitude to sin.

Mary Burton

--Quoted in D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The Fight of Faith (1939-1981), Vol. 2, Iain Murray

The First Link Between My Soul and Christ

"The first link between my soul and Christ is not my goodness, but my badness; not my merit, but my misery; not my standing, but my falling; not my riches, but my need."

--Kent Hughes

A Little Mirror of My Own Depravity

Lessons in Parenting, Lessons in Theology
M. Justin Wainscott, 2011

How humbling it is
to see my own depravity -
my own stubborn defiance
toward You, O Lord -
reflected back to me
in the defiance of my child.
What patience You have!
And what fools we are!

Truly, how foolish of me
to think that You have anything
but my best interests at heart.
All my rebellion is but
ignorance and unbelief -
ignorance of Your wisdom
and a lack of trust
in Your steadfast goodness.

The Bottom of Every Sin

"The desire to be God rather than to serve God lies at the bottom of every sin that anyone has ever committed. Sin isn't first rooted in a philosophical debate of the appropriateness or healthiness of a certain ethic. No, sin is rooted in my unwillingness to find joy in living my life under the authority of, and for the glory of, Another. Sin is rooted in my desire to live for me. It's driven by my propensity to indulge my every feeling, satisfy my every desire, and meet my every need."

--Paul David Tripp, Whiter than Snow: Meditations on Sin and Mercy

A Mirror Into Which We See Ourselves

The following poem may look a bit lengthy, but I assure you it reads quickly and it is well worth the time it may take you to get through it. Let it be a balm for your soul; drink deeply from it; and rejoice in the grace of the gospel.

Aren't You Glad You're Not Like David?
Paul David Tripp, in Whiter than Snow: Meditations on Sin and Mercy

Aren't you glad you're not like David,
Such blazoned sin, how could he?
Aren't you glad you're not like Saul,
Making up his own rules; what was he thinking?
Aren't you glad you're not like Cain,
Violence against his own brother?
Aren't you glad you're not like Rebekah,
Such planned deceit?
Aren't you glad you're not like the Israelites,
So easily seduced by idols?
Aren't you glad you're not like Absalom;
How could he be so jealous?
Aren't you glad you're not like Elijah;
How could he forget God, be so depressed?
Aren't you glad you're not like Nebuchadnezzar;
How could he be so obsessed with power?
Aren't you glad you're not like Samson;
How could he be so easily deceived?
Aren't you glad you're not like Jonah;
How could he run from the Father's call?
Aren't you glad you're not like the Pharisees,
So religiously right yet spiritually wrong?
Aren't you glad you're not like Judas,
Selling the Messiah for a little bit of silver?
Aren't you glad you're not like the Corinthians,
So much better at division than at serving the Lord?
But wait.
You are like them, and so am I.
There is simply no denying it.
Their stories are a mirror into which we see ourselves.
We too are jealous and easily deceived.
We too are proud and obsessed with power.
We are better at division while we run from God.
We too get angry and get seduced by idols.
In sorrow we must say,
We stand with David,
And Saul,
And Rebekah,
And Jonah,
And Elijah,
And the rest.
These stories are for us to look into and see us,
So that we are not able to buy into
The lie of our own righteousness.
But instead,
Run to His mercy,
Hold onto His unfailing love,
And finally rest
In His great compassion.
Aren't you glad you can step out of the darkness of self-deceit,
And admit who you are?

Two Attractive But Dangerous Lies

"All fallen human beings tend to buy into two attractive but dangerous lies. These are the lies that were on the tongue of the serpent on that fateful day of manipulation and disobedience in the garden. The first lie is the lie of autonomy, which tells me that I am an independent human being with the right to invest my life however I choose. The second lie is the lie of self-sufficiency, which declares that I have everything I need within myself to be what I am supposed to be and do what I am supposed to do. Because we do not want to live for God, but for ourselves, we are easily seduced, at the mundane, everyday level, by these lies."

--Paul David Tripp, Whiter Than Snow: Meditations on Sin and Mercy

Don't Think Lightly of Sin

These remarks by Spurgeon in 1897 are just as true today:

Too many think lightly of sin, and therefore think lightly of the Savior. He who has stood before his God, convicted and condemned, with the rope about his neck, is the man to weep for joy when he is pardoned, to hate the evil which has been forgiven him, and to live to the honor of the Redeemer by whose blood he has been cleansed.

--Charles Spurgeon, C.H. Spurgeon Autobiography, Volume 1

The Death of Sin, The Death of Christ

"There is no death of sin without the death of Christ."

--John Owen, Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers

God's Purpose in Showing Us the Evil of Our Own Hearts

"The purpose of God in showing believers the evil of their own hearts is to make them prize more highly the grace and all-sufficiency of Jesus."

--From the Introduction to Letters of John Newton

The Usefulness of the Doctrine of Sin

“…[It] cannot but be extremely useful to let men see what sin is: how prodigiously vile, how deadly mischievous, and therefore how monstrously ugly and odious a thing sin is. Thus a way may be made: (1) For admiring the free and rich grace of God (2) For believing in our Lord Jesus Christ (3) For vindicating the holy, just and good law of God, and his condemnation of sinners for breaking it (4) For hating sin, and repenting for and from it, thereby taking a holy, just and good revenge on it and ourselves (5) That we may love and serve God at a better rate than we ever did in the little and short time of innocence itself (6) And, lastly, that this black spot may serve to set off the admirable, incomparable and transcendent beauty of holiness.”

--Ralph Venning, The Sinfulness of Sin

Tasting Grace, Hating Sin

A sobering quote by J.C. Ryle:

The man who professes to know Christ and trust Him, while he cleaves to sin and the world, is going down to hell with a lie in his right hand. The heart that has really tasted the grace of Christ, will instinctively hate sin.

HT: J.C. Ryle Quotes

The Depths of Our Depravity

From a conversation between Christian and Hopeful in The Pilgrim's Progress (where Hopeful explains how he began to be convicted of his sin):

Hopeful: "I have committed enough sin in one of my most recent good duties to send me to Hell."

Thank God for Feeling Your Sinfulness

Ponder the glorious truth of this quote from J.C. Ryle:

He that has any feeling of his own sinfulness, ought to thank God for it. That very sense of weakness, wickedness, and corruption, which perhaps makes you uncomfortable, is in reality a token for good, and a cause for praise. The first step towards being really good is to feel bad. The preparation for heaven is to know that we deserve hell. Before we can be counted righteous we must know ourselves to be miserable sinners. Before we can have inward happiness and peace with God, we must learn to be ashamed and confounded because of our manifold transgressions. Before we can rejoice in a well-grounded hope, we must be taught to say, “Unclean, unclean! God, be merciful to me a sinner!”

HT: Eric Kowalker

Companions in a Common Misery

Ray Ortlund has an excellent quote on his blog from Luther's Lectures on Romans about how we sinners ought to view one another:

Who then can pride himself over against someone else and claim to be better than he? Especially in view of the fact that he is always capable of doing exactly the same as the other does and, indeed, that he does secretly in his heart before God what the other does openly before men. And so we must never despise anyone who sins but must generously bear with him as a companion in a common misery. We must help one another just as two people caught in the same swamp assist each other. Thus we must "bear one another’s burdens and fulfill the law of Christ" (Galatians 6:2). But if we despise the other, we shall both perish in the same swamp.

--Wilhelm Pauck, translator, Luther: Lectures on Romans (Philadelphia, 1961), page 115.

The Funeral We All Want to Attend

"Some day we'll be invited to the one funeral that we all will want to attend: the funeral of sin. The promise of the gospel is that sin will die and we will be with Christ and will be like him in holiness forever and ever and ever."

--From Paul David Tripp's chapter in The Power of Words and the Wonder of God, edited by John Piper and Justin Taylor