Required reading
A treatise on Satan's temptations by Richard Gilpin (Available from Amazon or free here) - Read Chapter 22 and 23 of Part 3.
My summary
This week Gilpin begins to look at Christ's answers in general.
He suggests two directions this week (next week he will give another three). Gilpin tells us:
(i) that he that would successfully resist temptations, must not fly, but with a courageous resolve set himself to oppose;
(ii) that temptations to sin are to be opposed by peremptory denials rather than by disputings.
What grabbed me
I liked the encouragement to abhor sin: 'By refusing to dispute temptations, we raise up in our hearts an active abhorrency of them, and by that abhorrency we are cautioned and strengthened against them. It must needs awaken our hatred into a present activity against that sin, which our consideration at first view presents to us so abominable, that it deserves no other answer but to be whipped out of our sight. And when our heart is thus alarmed, it cannot but stand upon its guard. It is a course that holy men have taken to keep men at a greater distance from sin, to present it as a thing of greatest abhorrency ; and that is the intendment of that expression, Rom. vi. 1, ' Shall we sin, that grace may abound ? God forbid.' The vileness of that abuse of gospel grace he shews by setting it below the merit of any serious thought ; he sharpens their apprehensions against it by an outcry of detestation. The like he doth, Eph. v. 3, where he endeavours to set their hearts against uncleanness and coveteousness, by telling them that it was unbecoming saintship that such things should be 'so much as once named by them.' '
The very thought of sin should alarm us.
Next week's reading
Read Chapter 24, 25 and 26 of Part 3.
Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.
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