by Thomas Goodwin
in ePub, .mobi & .pdf format
Was that then which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which it good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.—ROM. 7:13.
WE find our apostle in the 9th verse to have been alive, but struck upon the sudden dead, by an apparition presented to him in the glass of the law, of 'the sinfulness of sin.' 'Sin revived,' says the 9th verse, 'appeared to be sin,' says the 13th verse, looks but like itself, 'above measure sinful;' and he falls down dead at the very sight of it; 'I died,' says he in the 9th; 'it wrought death in me,' says the 13th, that is, an apprehension of death and hell, as due to that estate I was then in. But yet as the life of sin was the death of Paul, so this death of his was but a preparation to a new life, 'I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live to God,' Gal. 2:19. And here he likewise speaks of God's work upon him at his first conversion; for then it was that he relates how sin became in his esteem, so 'above measure sinful.'
The subject then to be insisted on is the sinfulness of sin, a subject therefore as necessary as any other, because if ever we be saved, sin must first appear to us all, as it did here to him, 'above measure sinful.'
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Table of Contents
Aggravation of Sin
Aggravation of Sinning Against Knowledge
Aggravations of Sinning Against Mercy