Sinful nature

“ But sinning is one thing and a sinful nature is another; and we see no evidence in Scripture that the latter is ever eradicated completely while we are in the body. If we could see ourselves with God's eye, we should doubtless discover sinfulness lying beneath our most joyful moments of unsinning conduct, and the stain of our old and fallen nature so discoloring our whitest actions as to convince us that we are not yet faultless in his presence. ”

“ We pass from his statement that sin, in its ultimate form, is a nature, to his statement that this nature is guilt.” If we have done justice to the writer's arguments,—and it has been our object to state them fairly, though briefly,—we submit that the fact of a sinful nature has not been established by them. He has shown that in man there is a tendency to evil running below the conscious, distinct volitions—that there is a permanent character, good or evil, which manifests itself, and becomes first apparent to ourselves, or to others, in these separate, spiritual exercises or actions. ”

“ I do not thereby mean that their nature is itself sinful, nor that their nature is the physical or efficient cause of their sinning; but I mean that their nature is the occasion or reason of their sinning—that such is their nature, that in all the appropriate circumstances of their being they will sin and only sin. ”

“ We are by nature and practice strangers to God, [Pg 81] even the new-born babe having wrapped up within its tiny bosom a sinful heritage and bias. And the soul that sinneth shall die. But sin can be put away, and its dreadful penalty escaped. ”

“ The veil has fallen, and you perceive that sin is the stigma of your heavenly nature, of your supernatural calling, wherewith the Eternal has marked the chosen one. It was only when you set yourself to offer resistance to sinful impulse, to contend with the Eternal Power, that you were abandoned in your blindness and degeneracy. ”

“ He shows that it is not by committing a particular sin that we become sinners, but that the sin is committed because our nature is still sinful, and that the poisonous tree has grown from roots deeply imbedded in the soil. ”

“ Dealing with the whole problem of sin [8] , he destroyed sin in human nature. 4In this way we could fulfill the right requirements of the law as we follow the Spirit and not our human nature. 5Those who follow their sinful human nature are preoccupied with sinful things, but those who follow the Spirit concentrate on spiritual things. 6The sinful human way of thinking results in death, but thinking as the Spirit does leads to life and peace. ”

“ In a word, when I reflect on my most specious attainments, I have reason to suspect that they are all but the effects of nature; and sin is so powerful and so deeply rooted in me, that I can never hope to be delivered from it. ”

“ But see another effect of sin. “The earth moaneth.” That is a frequent note in Bible teaching. The forces of nature are mysteriously conditioned by the character of man. When man is degraded, nature is despoiled. The beauty of the garden is checked when man has lost his crown. “The whole creation groaneth in pain,” waiting for the manifestation of the children of God.
Sin spreads desolation everywhere. When I sin, I become the centre of demoralizing forces which influence the universe. ”

“ Our secret sins in the light of thy countenance” = man's inner sinfulness is hidden from himself, until it is contrasted with the holiness of God. Light = a luminary or sun, which shines down into the depths of the heart and brings out its hidden evil into painful relief. See Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:248-259; Edwards, Works, 2:326; John Caird, Reasons for Men's Unconsciousness of their Sins, in Sermons, 33.
II. Every member of the human race, without exception, possesses a corrupted nature, which is a source of actual sin, and is itself sin. ”

“ O Lord my God, who hast created me after thine own image and similitude, grant me this grace, which Thou hast shown to be so great and so necessary for salvation, that I may conquer my wicked nature, which draweth me to sin and to perdition. For I feel in my flesh the law of sin, contradicting the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the obedience of sensuality in many things ”

“ Brethren, let us read the history of sin from the beginning, and judge of its nature from its awful effects. What have been the effects of sin in heaven? We go back in spirit to the time prior to this earth's creation, when naught existed but God and His angels. We see in paradise those millions and billions of angelic spirits, second to God alone in the beauty of their natures, reflecting in their glorious attributes the perfections of the Divinity, basking in the full splendor of the beatific vision, and inconceivably happy in the possession of the All-Good. ”

“ Man's relation to nature was disturbed by sin; it will be rectified by his return to God. Such a doctrine of the effects of sin in perverting man's relation to creatures runs all through Scripture, and is not to be put aside as mere symbolism. ”

“ And they would have taught you that Sin is the debasing of Human Nature, as being a Derivation from that Purity, Rectitude, and Holiness, in which God created us, and that Virtue and Religion, and walking by the Laws of God, were altogether preferable to the Ways of Sin and Satan ”

“ We shall now consider what sins we are to confess before God; and these are, either the sin of our nature, or those actual transgressions that proceed from it.
1st, The sin of our nature. As fallen creatures, we are destitute of the image of God ”

“ The smallest sin hides God from us. A very, very little grain of dye stuff will darken miles of a river, and make it incapable of reflecting the blue sky and the sparkling stars. The least evil done and loved blurs and blots, if it does not eclipse, for us the doers the very Sun of Righteousness Himself. No sinful men can walk in the midst of that fiery furnace and not be consumed. ”

“ But daily and hourly, in every step that you take, see to the spirit that is within you, whether it be heaven, or earth that guides you. And judge every thing to be sin and Satan, in which your earthly nature, has any share of life in you; nor think that any goodness is in you, but so far as it is an actual death to the pride, the vanity, the wrath, and selfish tempers of your fallen, earthly life. ”

“ It should be remembered, moreover, that nature never existed in its pure form, and is now tainted by original sin.452 Surely a nature tainted by sin cannot possibly possess the power of meriting divine grace. ”

“ In a pure nature, the obedient Will would perfectly reveal God and the man's dependence on Him. We all know how sin weakens that.
Every sin diminishes our power of seeing Him in His external Revelation. Every sin ruffles the surface of the soul, which is a mirror reflecting the light that streams from Creation, from Providence, from History. A mass of black rock flung into a still lake shatters the images of the girdling woods and the overarching sky.
Every sin bribes us to forget God. It becomes our interest, as we fancy, to shut Him out of our thoughts. ”

“ For on almost every page of the Bible, the existence of a realm above nature—of a world peopled by spirits, good and evil—is clearly implied if not distinctly asserted. Angels and devils are spoken of as often, and with as much familiarity, as are any other objects whose reality no one ever dreamed of questioning. ”

“ It is common to all the anti-Christian views of sin that at the last resort they make sin natural, a part of nature. It is characteristic of Christ's view of sin—of the Scriptural view of it—that it makes it unnatural. ”

“ That which causes sin, as a power produces its act, is natural; and again, the movement of the sensitive part, from which sin follows, is natural sometimes, as, for instance, when anyone sins through appetite for food. Yet sin results in being unnatural from the very fact that the natural rule fails, which man, in accord with his nature, ought to observe. ”

“ Make them to know their abominations. The Spirit convinces of the fact of sin, that we have done so and so; of the fault of sin, that we have done ill in doing so; of the folly of sin, that we have acted against right reason, and our true interest; of the filth of sin, that by it we are become odious to God; of the fountain of sin, the corrupt nature; and lastly, of the fruit of sin, that the end thereof is death. The Spirit demonstrates the depravity and degeneracy of the whole world, that all the world is guilty before God. ”

“ Therefore the false light thinketh and declareth itself to be above all works, words, customs, laws, and order, and above that life which Christ led in the body which He possessed in His holy human nature. So likewise it professeth to remain unmoved by any of the creature's works; whether they be good or evil, against God or not, is all alike to it; and it keepeth itself apart from all things, like God in eternity ”

“ The conceptions of the world as fallen, of human nature as infected with a radical taint, of sin as a vicious circle which could be broken through only by supernatural action from outside—these were classed as outmoded fictions, and relegated to the scrap-heap of an antiquated theology. ”

“ Though sin has extinguished, or silenced the divine life, yet it has not destroyed the faculties of reason and understanding, consideration and memory, which will serve the life which is most powerful. If, therefore, the vigorous attraction of the sensual nature be abated by a ceaseless pain, there powers may resume the seeds of a better life and nature. ”

“ Besides Scripture, God hath planted in nature a special pudor and modesty to restrain this sin; and they that commit it do violate the law of nature, and sin against a witness and condemner that is within them. And scarce any one of them ever committeth it boldly, quietly, and fearlessly, till first they have hardened their hearts, and seared their consciences, and overcome the light of nature, by frequent, wilful sinning. [449] Nature hideth the obscene parts, and teacheth man to blush at the mention of any thing that is beyond the bounds of modesty. ”

“ But 'tis probable, that some of the Parts being Creatures of Nature, may have a fuller Notion of GOD than others; which may cause some Creatures to be more Pious and Devout, than others: but, the Irregularity of Nature, is the cause of Sin. ”

“ Among the strangers, the power of God was no less wonderfully displayed in awakening them from the deep sleep of sin and death: they came and confessed their sins and their crimes, which, though formerly deemed light matters, now heavily burdened their consciences. "Human nature shudders and starts back," says the missionary diary, "on hearing the horrid detail of the abominations practised among the heathen;" ”

“ The material source of this uneasy self-consciousness which projects itself into Other World is twofold. One of these is the Nature of Man, formerly called Original Sin, God and Sin being in this regard convertible terms. ”

“ For original sin is born in us by nature, and temptation were offered. For original sin is born in us by nature, and may be checked, but not entirely uprooted, except through the death of the body; which for this reason is profitable and a thing to be desired. ”

“ Let him see the scope of his sin, and he will also see his need for his Savior. He hungers and thirsts, and nothing will satisfy him but the bread of life. The prominence of this form of formal and sensuous Christianity, I dare to say, would not exist if Christians were taught more often in fullness the nature, vileness and sinfulness of sin.
Antidote to human perfection 4. A right view of sin is one of the best antidotes to the overstrained theories of perfection of which we hear so much in these times. ”

“ But, when we pass from the punishment of sin to the pardon of it, when we go over to the merciful side of the Divine Nature, we can come to no certain conclusions, if we are shut up to the workings of our own minds, or to the teachings of the world of nature about us. ”

“ Sin should only be known, as the rocks at sea, that they may be avoided. It becomes us also to be contented with such a knowledge of the Divine nature, and the Divine administration, as we are capable of acquiring, and of future events so far as God hath seen fit to reveal them.—Jortin. ”

“ But if you could enumerate each sinful thought, word, and action committed during the past year and during your past life, there is something in you worse than sins, and that is sin itself, the evil heart, the wrong mind, out of which sins proceed; for the corrupt tree is worse than any definite quantity of fruit which it has produced; the ever-flowing bitter fountain is worse than any definite quantity of water which has come from it. But whatever you have been or done in time past, what do you intend to be and to do now? Is it your intention to continue in sin? ”

“ They are not condemned, thirdly, for inward sin, even tho’ it does now remain. That the corruption of nature does still remain, even in those who are the children of God by faith, that they have in them the seeds of pride and vanity, of anger, lust and evil desire, yea, sin of every kind, is too plain to be denied, being matter of daily experience. ”

“ They may be covered and concealed by the after developments of his harsher nature, but they remain, nevertheless, as the basis upon which an after life of heavenly character may be built, or as the fountain from whence, when sin has asserted itself, and the clouds of heart-evil hang thick and dark upon the outer surface of the nature, fresh inspirations of heavenly desire, and hope and effort, may be drawn. ”

“ All true believers, are not only saved from the dominion of sin, but from the being of inward as well as outward sin, so that it no longer, remains in them. And from them, about twenty years ago many of our countrymen imbibed the same opinion, that even the corruption of nature is no more, in those who believe in Christ. ”