The early Christians did not say in dismay: "Look what the world has come to," but in delight, "Look what has come to the world." They saw not merely the ruin, but the Resource for the reconstruction of that ruin. They saw not merely that sin did abound, but that grace did much more abound. On that assurance the pivot of history swung from blank despair, loss of moral nerve, and fatalism, to faith and confidence that at last sin had met its match.

Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass. There is no such thing as concealment.

I have found (to my regret) that the degrees of shame and disgust which I actually feel at my own sins do not at all correspond to what my reason tells me about their comparative gravity. Just as the degree to which, in daily life, I feel the emotion of fear has little to do with my rational judgement of the danger. I'd sooner have really nasty seas when I'm in an open boat than look down in perfect (actual) safety from the edge of a cliff. Similarly, I have confessed ghastly uncharities with less relucatance than small unmentionables--or those sins which happen to be ungentlemanly as well as unchristian. Our emotional reactions to our own behavior are of limited ethical significance.

I found myself completely stripped of everything that impeded the movement of my own will to do as it pleased. I imagined that I was free. And it would take me five or six years to discover what a frightful captivity I had got myself into.

I made the terrible mistake of entering upon the Christian life as if it were merely the natural life invested with a kind of supernatural mode by grace. I thought that all I had to do was to continue living as I had lived before, thinking and acting as I did before, with the one exception of avoiding mortal sin. It never occurred to me that if I continued to live as I had lived before, I would be simply incapable of avoiding mortal sin.

We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones.

We're too tolerant of sin in the church and not tolerant enough of sin in society.

Bum: Could you spare a couple of bucks? Man: Will you buy booze? Bum: No. Man: Will you gamble it away? Bum: No. Man: Okay, but you gotta come home with me so my wife can see what happens to a man who doesn't drink or gamble…

Ball State University 15-Jan-99 Ex-Convicts, MBA Grads Have Similar Ethical Standards MUNCIE, Ind. -- When it comes to ethical standards, convicts and MBA students rate about even, says a Ball State University researcher. A survey of a group of convicts found their ethical standards compare favorably to those of MBA students. But, when it comes to loyalty, convicted felons may have the edge, said Shaheen Borna, a marketing professor. A survey found that inmates were more loyal to their employers, placed higher priority on customer service and worked better in groups. The survey's participants were from three minimum security prisons located in three Midwestern states. Participants were mostly male (90 percent), white (80 percent), and young (48 percent were between 20-25 and 32 percent between 25-30). The average sentence served by respondents was 4.5 years. All respondents were convicted felons participating in some capacity in the prison education system. None were a Ball State student. The survey found: About 73 percent of MBA students and 60 percent of convicts would hire, if it was legal, a competitor's employees who knew the details of a profitable discovery. Both groups believe their own ethical standards are about the same as or superior to peers, past supervisors and business executives. When it came to priorities, convicts put customers first while students favored stockholders and customers second. Inmates were more "loyal" than their student counterparts. Convicts were more likely to do what was asked of them in ethically difficult or ethically doubtful situations. Students were more likely to quit when faced with obviously unethical behavior while inmates were more likely to leave when the behavior involved a deal with the government. Inmates placed greater importance on group trust and loyality. "With respect to priorities, little difference was found between the two groups," Borna said. "The differences that were found in response to questions had to do with inmates' loyalty or with inmates' high priority for customers -- hardly undesirable characteristics for a potential employee." Despite public perception, inmates in the prison education system, many convicts have the potential to become productive members of society if business executives are willing to provide opportunities, he said. "If a potential employer believes that the values and ethics of inmates in the prison education system are not that different from the values and ethics of students in graduate higher education, that manager might be much more willing to take a chance on an ex-con," Borna said. The research provides some evidence that organizations are missing out on the dual opportunity to lessen the correctional burden on society and add a valuable and loyal source of productivity, he said. The survey also emphasizes that university faculty should increase awareness of ethics in business decisions by having students participate in live situations instead of learn them from books or lectures. "Most groups, including convicted felons, know ethics and will usually do the right thing," Borna said. "The key issue in education may be getting students to recognize that most decisions have a moral dimension." (NOTE TO EDITORS: For more information, contact Borna at sborna@bsu.edu or at (765) 285-5191. For more stories visit the Ball State University News Center at newscenter.bsu.edu on the World Wide Web.)

On a recent trip to Haiti, I heard a Haitian pastor illustrate to his congregation the need for total commitment to Christ. His parable: A certain man wanted to sell his house for $2,000. Another man wanted very badly to buy it, but because he was poor, he couldn't afford the full price. After much bargaining, the owner agreed to sell the house for half the original price with just one stipulation: He would retain ownership of one small nail protruding from just over the door. After several years, the original owner wanted the house back, but the new owner was unwilling to sell. So the first owner went out, found the carcass of a dead dog, and hung it from the single nail he still owned. Soon the house became unlivable, and the family was forced to sell the house to the owner of the nail. The Haitian pastor's conclusion: "If we leave the Devil with even one small peg in our life, he will return to hang his rotting garbage on it, making it unfit for Christ's habitation."

Frightful this is in a sense, but it is true, and every one who has merely some little knowledge of the human heart can verify it: there is nothing to which a man holds so desperately as to his sin.

What, after all, are the world's deepest problems? They are what they always have been, the individual's problems -- the meaning of life and death, the mastery of self, the quest for value and worth-whileness and freedom within, the transcending of loneliness, the longing for love and a sense of significance, and for peace. Society's problems are deep, but the individual's problems go deeper; Solzhenitsyn, Dostoyevsky, or Shakespeare will show us that, if we hesitate to take it from the Bible.

CHASING AFTER HAPPINESS In New York City, there are eight million cats and eleven million dogs. New York City is basically just concrete and steel, so when you have a pet in New York City and it dies, you can't just go out in the back yard and bury it. The city authorities decided that for $50 they would dispose of your deceased pet for you. One lady was enterprising. She thought, I can render a service to people in the city and save them money. She placed an ad in the newspaper that said, "When your pet dies, I will come and take care of the carcass for you for $25." This lady would go to the local Salvation Army and buy an old suitcase for two dollars. Then when someone would call about his or her pet, she would go to the home and put the deceased pet in the suitcase. She would then take a ride on the subway, where there are thieves. She would set the suitcase down, and she would act like she wasn't watching. A thief would come by and steal her suitcase. She'd look up and say, "Wait. Stop. Thief." My guess is the people who stole those suitcases got a real surprise when they got home. A lot of us are like those New York thieves. We're chasing after happiness, and we grab what we think will give us happiness; however, when we get it, it doesn't quite deliver.

Genuine outrage is not just a permissible reaction to the hard-pressed Christian; God himself feels it, and so should the Christian in the presence of pain, cruelty, violence, and injustice. God, who is the Father of Jesus Christ, is neither impersonal nor beyond good and evil. By the absolute immutability of His character, He is implacably opposed to evil and outraged by it.

If you want to go to Hell for stealing minnows, I'll furnish the minnows. -Miz Tackett (Sign over unattended minnow tank, Red River County, Texas)

use as: "be sure your sin will find you out" Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies arrested Steven Smiley, 39, in March and charged him as thee one who, just acting on his "fascination with explosives" (as one deputy described it), released plastic trash bags filled with helium into the air, with burning flares and explosive powder attached, so that when the flare burned out, the bag would explode like a small bomb. Smiley apparently had no idea where the bags would land and, according to deputies, didn't seem to care. One, however, landed on the roof of a sheriff's substation three miles from Smiley's home and exploded, but no one was hurt. [Edmonton Journal-AP, 3-17-01]

Men who trap animals in Africa for zoos in America say that one of the hardest animals to catch is the vervet monkey. For the Zulus of that continent, however, it's simple. They've been catching this agile little animal with ease for years. The method the Zulus use is based on knowledge of the animal. Their trap is nothing more than a melon growing on a vine. The seeds of this melon are a favorite of the monkey. Knowing this, the Zulus simply cut a hole in the melon, just large enough for the monkey to insert his hand to reach the seeds inside. The monkey will stick his hand in, grab as many seeds as he can, then withdraw it. This he cannot do. His fist is now larger than the hole. The monkey will pull and tug, screech and fight the melon for hours. But he can't get free of the trap unless he gives up the seeds, which he refuses to do. Meanwhile, the Zulus sneak up and nab him.

Whilst you are divided betwixt God and the world, you have neither the pleasures of Religion, nor the pleasures of the world, but are always in the uneasiness of a divided state of heart. You have only so much Religion as serves to disquiet you, to show you a handwriting on the wall, to interrupt your pleasures, and to appear as a death's-head at all your feasts, but not Religion enough to give you a taste and feeling of its pleasures. You dare not wholly neglect Religion, but then you take no more than is just sufficient to keep you from being a terror to yourself, and you are as loth to be very good as you are fearful to be very bad.

To say of an act done, "My conscience is quite clear", sounds smug and satisfactory. It does not by any means follow that the speaker's conscience ought to be clear. It may simply show that [it] is sadly unenlightened.

Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.

FIGHTING SIN IS LIKE FIGHTING FOREST FIRE In June 2002, in the worst wildfire in Arizona history, more than 350,000 acres were burned and upwards of 400 homes destroyed. As a 50 mile wall of flames approached the little town of Show Low (150 miles northeast of Phoenix), townspeople braced for the worst and hoped for the best. More than 3,000 inhabitants of Show Low were evacuated while firefighters tried to save the town by carving a fire line around the community. With gas-fueled blow torches, the firefighters actually set fire to the cactus-ridden underbrush on the outskirts of town. According to Jim Paxon, fire crew spokesman, the controlled burn would serve as a preventive measure so the advancing blaze wouldn't have anything to ignite. "It's what you call fighting fire with fire," Paxon said. As a result of the measures taken, Show Low, Arizona, was spared. Jesus recognized the importance of taking drastic action to protect oneself against disaster. He said if your right hand puts you at risk, cut it off to escape the flames of judgment. "It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for you whole body to go into hell" (Matthew 5:30). Citation: Greg Asimakoupoulos, Naperville, IL; source: "NBC Today Show" (6-25-02)

Four kinds of trouble in life "You should expect four kinds of problems in life: Trials are designed by God to draw us closer to him and build our character. Temptations are designed by the Devil to draw us away from God and destroy our character. Trespasses are hurts caused by the sins of others. Troubles are usually, but not always, the consequences our own sinful choices. Proverbs gives us a long list of sins that get us into trouble, such as impatience, dishonesty, selfishness, a hot temper, and even talking too much. It also tells us that wisdom will keep us out of trouble. Anytime we ignore God’s principles, we eventually suffer the consequences. We always reap what we sow. God has given us the freedom to make choices, but we are not free to choose the consequences of those choices. David prayed, "I am surrounded by many troubles ... My sins have caught up with me." People often confuse these four types of problems, blaming God for the natural consequences of their poor choices or blaming the Devil for circumstances that were actually planned by God. God never tempts us to sin, but he tests our character and faith continually. When you face a problem, try to determine the source first. Jonah encountered a storm because he disobeyed God. Paul encountered a storm because others disobeyed God. But the disciples got into a storm because they obeyed God! The storms in your life can be a trial, a temptation, a trespass, or a troubling consequence, and each one requires a different respons."

A game warden pulls his motorboat up along side a man sitting quietly with a pole in his hand. "Doing a little fishing, are we?" The man, painfully aware of his lack of a fishing license answered, "No sir. Just drowning worms."

When Jesus taught His disciples how to pray, His last petition was, "Deliver us from evil." In a time when wars and rumors of wars abound, His sentiment is echoed countless times. Yet we tend to view evil as the characters of the X-Files view truth: it is "out there." The problem, friend, is that evil is not just "out there." It is also "in here." A universal epidemic exists, and it is one of evil in the heart. Almost just as universal is the human tendency to deny this. I have never defended the existence of God at a university campus without being asked about the question of evil in the world, yet only on one occasion have I been asked how to cope with the evil within. And this is where the real issue lies.

"There's a time and a place for everything, and it's called college." -- Chef

Sin Cyle of David: Sloth-seeing-sensuality-shame-sorrow-solution

One sagging electrical line near Cleveland, Ohio, connected with a tree branch at 3:32 p.m. on August 14, 2003, beginning a chain of events which led to the largest blackout in American history. According to the most comprehensive study yet, the failure of this single transmission line caused a utility company in southern Ohio to overload and seal itself off from the now infamous power grid. To the north, this created a huge need for power, and Cleveland began sucking an unsustainable amount of electricity from Michigan and Ontario…knocking out more transmission lines and generating plants. When the need for more power reached New York, power plants there sealed themselves from the grid in order to protect their own systems. This, however, created a new problem when New York, ironically, had too much electricity and overloaded its own system. The result: history's largest shutdown. Similarly, seemingly small actions and choices can end with devastating personal consequences. Sin often starts with one small choice, but the end result is ruined families, ruined churches, ruined lives. Citation: Robert Daneker, Jr., Allentown, PA

New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof chose two Cambodian prostitutes and attempted to buy their freedom from their brothel owners. He selected young women who were there against their will, willing to tell their story, and actually wanted to leave prostitution. The first woman, Srey Neth, was a simple transaction. For $150, Kristof left with the girl and a receipt. Srey Mom's situation proved more difficult, since the brothel owner demanded more money. Kristof writes: After some grumpy negotiation, the owner accepted $203 as the price for Srey Mom's freedom. But then Srey Mom told me that she had pawned her cellphone and needed $55 to get it back. "Forget about your cellphone," I said. "We've got to get out of here." Srey Mom started crying. I told her that she had to choose her cellphone or her freedom, and she ran back to her tiny room in the brothel and locked the door. With Srey Mom sobbing in her room and refusing to be freed without her cellphone, the other prostitutes—her closest friends—began pleading with her to be reasonable. Even the owner of the brothel begged her to "Grab this chance while you can," but Srey Mom hysterically refused to leave. Srey Mom only stopped crying when Kristov agreed to buy back the cellphone too. Then she asked for her pawned jewelry to be part of the deal. Kristof reflected upon the complex emotions making the decision to leave the brothel so difficult. I have purchased the freedom of two human beings so I can return them to their villages. But will emancipation help them? Will their families and villages accept them? Or will they, like some other girls rescued from sexual servitude, find freedom so unsettling that they slink back to slavery in the brothels? We'll see. Sometimes we may resemble this woman. Though Christ sets us free from sin and death, how often we choose to live in slavery rather than newness of life. Citation: Nicholas Kristof, "Bargaining for Freedom," NYTimes.com http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/21/opinion/21KRIS.html?th (1-21-04); submitted by John Beukema, Western Springs, Illinois

Little Emily ran into the house, crying as though her heart would break. "What's wrong, dear?" asked her mother. "My doll! Billy broke it!" she sobbed. "How did he break it, Emily?" "I hit him over the head with it."

Brian Warner once said: Initially I was drawn into the darker side of life. But it's really just human nature. I started to learn that everything that's considered a sin is what makes you a human being. All the seven deadly sins are man's true nature—to be greedy, to be hateful, to have lust. Of course you have to control them; but if you're made to feel guilty for being human, then you're going to be trapped in a never-ending sin-and-repent cycle that you can't escape from, and you're going to be miserable. Ultimately you'll be living in your own hell. So there's no need to worry about going to hell, because hell will be on earth. Now, I don't agree with everything Brian Warner says—you might know him as Marilyn Manson—but he says a couple of interesting things. He says there's a certain naturalness to sin. He says feeling guilty for being human can lead to misery. He talks about a cycle of sin and shame many of us know something about. He's right when he says you have to learn to control sin even though it feels so natural. I think he's wrong in what he says about having hell on earth, because there are a lot of ways to experience a hell on earth. One is to be plagued by guilt and shame for sin, to live in what he called a never-ending cycle of sin and shame, but the other is to fail to control sin, to let sin take over your life or take over our culture and our world.

Being contrary to God's nature, sin is repulsive to him. He is allergic to sin, so to speak.

When Senator Howard Baker was a candidate in the 1980 presidential election, he ran across strong criticism of his support for Jimmy Carter's return of the Panama Canal to Panama from a Republican woman in Vermont. "Well, madam," replied the senator with sweet reasonableness, "I must have cast thousands of votes during my time in the Senate. You probably agree with almost all of them. Why focus on the one issue where we disagree?" "Pontius Pilate probably made lots of good decisions too," responded the lady. "But we only remember one." http://www.nationalreview.com/issue/jos200403021503.asp

* If life is a machine, then sin is a bad gear that makes the machine malfunction. * If life is a kingdom, then sin is a terrorist movement in the kingdom. * If life is a family, then sin is a feud between family members. * If life is a body, then sin is an untreated disease that poisons the whole system. * If life is a river, then sin is mercury or arsenic that pollutes it. * If life is a garden, then sin is the army of slugs that eat your tomatoes. * If life is a computer, then sin is a virus that destroys your hard drive.

Two men in a truck, neither one very bright, were passing through a small town. They came to an overpass with a sign which read, "Clearance: 11'3". They got out and measured their rig. It was 12'4" tall. As they climbed back into the cab, one of them asked, "What do you think we should do?" The driver looked around, then shifted into gear saying, "Not a cop in sight. Let's take a chance." Many people regard God as some kind of cosmic cop whose rules are designed to cramp our style and cheat us out of good times. So if they get a chance to beat the rap, they go for it. But the opposite is really true. God is a loving heavenly Father whose rules are designed to protect us from harm and to guide us toward the good life. If we violate God's rules, we do so at our own peril.

The most destructive habit..............................Worry The greatest Joy.......................................Giving The greatest loss........................Loss of self-respect The most satisfying work.......................Helping others The ugliest personality trait.....................Selfishness The most endangered species........Dedicated leaders Our greatest natural resource..........Our youth The greatest "shot in the arm".................Encouragement The greatest problem to overcome.......................Fear The most effective sleeping pill................Peace of mind The most crippling failure disease....................Excuses The most powerful force in life.........................Love The most dangerous pariah.........................A gossiper The world's most incredible computer................The brain The worst thing to be without.... . Hope The deadliest weapon..........................The tongue The two most power-filled words......................"I Can" The greatest asset.....................................Faith The most worthless emotion..........................Self-pity The most beautiful attire..............................SMILE! The most prized possession......................... Integrity The most powerful channel of communication.............Prayer The most contagious spirit.........................Enthusiasm

All men are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.

I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.

No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it. There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness. There can be no reasoning with an incendiary bomb.

The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it’s just sort of a tired feeling.

When I heard about Alice Pike's arrest, two questions came to mind. Alice is the woman who tried to pay for her Wal-Mart purchases with a $1 million bill. My two questions: "There isn't really a $1 million bill, is there?" and, "What was she thinking?" The answer to the first question is no, silly. The U.S. Treasury doesn't make a bank note with that many zeros. I don't know how high they do go, but thanks to Alice, nobody is going to con me on the million dollar one now. As far as what Alice was thinking, I don't believe she was. Alice went to the register with $1,675 worth of stuff. What is amazing is that she expected change. Math is not my strong suit, but by my calculation, that's a lot of change. Was Alice really expecting that the cashier not only would, but actually could, hand over $998,325.00? Did she envision the cashier on the loudspeaker saying, "We need 10's and 20's on aisle 5?" Did she even bring a vehicle big enough to handle her purchases and the mountain of change? Alice helps remind us of the irrationality of sin. Most sin doesn't make sense. We lie and expect good results. We overindulge in food or alcohol or entertainment and expect to feel better. We take what isn't ours and expect satisfaction. We refuse to resist temptation and expect peace. We act selfishly and expect stronger relationships. We ignore repentance and expect forgiveness. We hand over a fake and expect change.

In Nikos Kazantzakis's novel Christ Recrucified, there is a scene in which four village men confess their sins to one another in the presence of the Pope. One of the men, Michelis, cries out, "How can God let us live on the earth? Why doesn't he kill us to purify creation?" "Because, Michelis," the Pope answered, "God is a potter; he works in mud."

A South African man surprised nine men robbing his home. Eight of the robbers ran away, but the homeowner managed to shove one into his backyard pool. After realizing the robber couldn't swim, the homeowner jumped in to save him. The Cape Times reports that once out of the pool, the wet thief called to his friends to come back. Then he pulled a knife and threatened the man who had just rescued him. The homeowner said "We were still standing near the pool and when I saw the knife I just threw him back in. But he was gasping for air and was drowning. So I rescued him again. I thought he had a cheek trying to stab me after I had just saved his life." Citation: Kashiefa Ajam, "Homeowner Threatened by the Robber He Saved," The Cape Times (3-23-04);

And now, a list: The Nine Ways of Being an Accessory to Another's Sin 1. By counsel. 2. By command. 3. By consent. 4. By provocation. 5. By praise or flattery. 6. By concealment. 7. By partaking. 8. By silence. 9. By defense of the ill done. Anybody feel like keeping score?

<table> <tr><td><b>Vice</b></td><td><b>Virtue against which it sins</b></td><td><b>Brief description</b></td></tr> <tr><td>Pride (1) </td><td>Humility </td><td>Seeing ourselves as we are and not comparing ourselves to others is humility. Pride and vanity are competitive. If someone else's pride really bothers you, you have a lot of pride.</td></tr> <tr><td>Avarice/Greed (5) </td><td>Generosity </td><td>This is about more than money. Generosity means letting others get the credit or praise. It is giving without having expectations of the other person. Greed wants to get its "fair share" or a bit more.</td></tr> <tr><td>Envy (2) </td><td>Love </td><td>"Love is patient, love is kind…" Love actively seeks the good of others for their sake. Envy resents the good others receive or even might receive. Envy is almost indistinguishable from pride at times.</td></tr> <tr><td>Wrath/Anger (3) </td><td>Kindness </td><td>Kindness means taking the tender approach, with patience and compassion. Anger is often our first reaction to the problems of others. Impatience with the faults of others is related to this.</td></tr> <tr><td>Lust (7) </td><td>Self control </td><td>Self control and self mastery prevent pleasure from killing the soul by suffocation. Legitimate pleasures are controlled in the same way an athlete's muscles are: for maximum efficiency without damage. Lust is the self-destructive drive for pleasure out of proportion to its worth. Sex, power, or image can be used well, but they tend to go out of control.</td></tr> <tr><td>Gluttony (6) </td><td>Faith and Temperance </td><td>Temperance accepts the natural limits of pleasures and preserves this natural balance. This does not pertain only to food, but to entertainment and other legitimate goods, and even the company of others.</td></tr> <tr><td>Sloth (4) </td><td>Zeal </td><td>Zeal is the energetic response of the heart to God's commands. The other sins work together to deaden the spiritual senses so we first become slow to respond to God and then drift completely into the sleep of complacency.</td></tr> </table>

<img src="http://glenandpaula.com/quotes/uploads/1107371951bosch7sins.jpg" width="653" height="544" /> c.1485 (50 Kb); Prado, Madrid The Seven Deadly Sins is a painted rectangle with a central image of the eye of God, with Christ watching the world. The Seven Deadly Sins, depicted through scenes of worldly transgression, are arranged around the circular shape. The circular layout with god in the centre represents gods all seeing eye No sin goes unnoticed. In the corners of the image appear the "Four Last Things" mentioned in late medieval spiritual handbooks: Deathbed, the Last Judgment, Heaven, and Hell, all of which are favorite themes of separate Bosch panels.

Other passions have objects to flatter them, and which seem to content and satisfy them for a while. There is power in ambition, pleasure in luxury, and pelf in covetousness; but envy can gain nothing but vexation.

Hell in the Bible... is either very hot or very cold, depending on whether the sinner is perceived as a rebel or an alien. In either case hell is not a divine creation. Hell is made by those who climb the holy mountain and try to unseat the Holy One who, ablaze with glory, dwells in the light unapproachable. Those who mount an attack on God and cross the barrier of his exclusive divinity die like moths in the flame of him who will not and cannot be displaced. And hell is made by those who, turning their backs on God, flee the light and move toward the eternal blackness that marks God's absence. Hell, then, is unarrested sin's natural and programmatic end. Sin is either rebellion or flight, and, when persisted in, leads either to the fiery furnace or to the cold and desolate night. <i>as told in Cornelius Plantinga, Not The Way It's Supposed To Be: A Breviary Of Sin p 154-155</i>

http://www.notproud.com/confessed.php a website that groups confessions according to the seven deadly sins. Pretty remarkable stuff.

The worst result of popular evolutionism has been this. It has substituted the Beast for the Devil. It has made us think that our enemy is what they call our "lower nature", which means our mere lusts and appetites, things entirely innocent in themselves. Pigs are not corrupted with Imperialism. Tigers have no spiritual pride. Whales never sneer. Crocodiles are not in the least hypocritical. The worst sins of all are the purely spiritual sins. You may move upwards, working out the brute, and not work them out in the least. Indeed, you may work them in. The less beastly you grow, the more bad you may grow.

So we see that objectively the Blood deals with our sins. The Lord Jesus has borne them on the Cross for us as our Substitute and has thereby obtained for us forgiveness, justification and reconciliation. But we must now go a step further in the plan of God to understand how He deals with the sin principle in us. The Blood can wash away my sins, but it cannot wash away my `old man'. It needs the Cross to crucify me. The Blood deals with the sins, but the Cross must deal with the sinner.

Prevailing Sins A 1992 survey of Discipleship Journal readers ranked areas of greatest spiritual challenge to them: 1. Materialism 2. Pride 3. Self-centeredness 4. Laziness 5. (Tie) Anger/Bitterness 5. (Tie) Sexual lust. 7. Envy 8. Gluttony 9. Lying Survey respondents noted temptations were more potent when they had neglected their time with God (81 percent) and when they were physically tired (57 percent). Resisting temptation was accomplished by prayer (84 percent), avoiding compromising situations (76 percent), Bible study (66 percent), and being accountable to someone (52 percent).

How does God state that deliverance is effected? Well, in the first place, we are not told that sin as a principle in us is rooted out or removed. To reckon on that will be to miscalculate altogether and find ourselves in the false position of the man we considered earlier, who tried to put down the twelve shillings in his pocket as fifteen shillings in his account-book. No, sin is not eradicated. It is very much there, and, given the opportunity, will overpower us and cause us to commit sins again, whether consciously or unconsciously. That is why we shall always need to know the operation of the precious Blood. But whereas we know that, in dealing with sins committed, God's method is direct, to blot them out of remembrance by means of the Blood, when we come to the principle of sin and the matter of deliverance from its power, we find instead that God deals with this indirectly. He does not remove the sin but the sinner. Our old man was crucified with Him, and because of this the body, which before had been a vehicle of sin, is unemployed (Romans 6:6).[5] Sin, the old master, is still about, but the slave who served him has been put to death and so is out of reach and his members are unemployed. The gambler's hand is unemployed, the swearer's tongue is unemployed, and these members are now available to be used instead "as instruments of righteousness unto God" (Romans 6:13). Thus we can say that `deliverance from sin' is a more scriptural idea than `victory over sin'. The expressions "freed from sin" and "dead unto sin" in Romans 6:7 and 11 imply deliverance from a power that is still very present and very real -- not from something that no longer exists. Sin is still there, but we are knowing deliverance from its power in increasing measure day by day.

"Well, dear friends, you know that some men can do to the glory of God what to other men would be sin. And notwithstanding what brother Pentecost has said, I intend to smoke a good cigar to the glory of God before I go to bed to-night. If anybody can show me in the Bible the command, 'Thou shalt not smoke,' I am ready to keep it; but I haven't found it yet. I find ten commandments, and it's as much as I can do to keep them; and I've no desire to make them into eleven or twelve. "The fact is, I have been speaking to you about real sins, not about listening to mere quibbles and scruples. At the same time, I know that what a man believes to be sin becomes a sin to him, and he must give it up. 'Whatsoever is not of faith is sin' [Rom. 14:23], and that is the real point of what my brother Pentecost has been saying. "Why, a man may think it a sin to have his boots blacked. Well, then, let him give it up, and have them whitewashed. I wish to say that I'm not ashamed of anything whatever that I do, and I don't feel that smoking makes me ashamed, and therefore I mean to smoke to the glory of God."

Many people are immersed in sin and don't even notice its great weight - just like a diver may be covered by tons of water without feeling its load. But if when the diver emerges from the water he tries to carry even a small bucket full, he will feel how heavy it is.

Did you notice that everything obeyed God except humans. He told the birds to fly and they're still doing it. The fish are still swimming. The sun and the moon still dominate the sky. But not us. We're the only created things that disobeyed. {paraphrased}