Required reading
All of grace by C. H. Spurgeon (available from Amazon or free on the internet, here for example) - Read Chapters 4 and 5.
My summary
Now Spurgeon looks at the deliverance from sin that Christ offers: 'Remember that the Lord Jesus came to take away sin in three ways. He came to remove the penalty of sin, the power of sin, and last, the presence of sin. At once you may reach the second part - the power of sin may immediately be broken - and so you will be on the road to the third-the removal of the presence of sin.' The rest of the Chapter looks at this third removal of sin through sanctification.
What grabbed me
Gotta love his illustrations, even borrowed ones: 'To put the matter very simply, did you ever hear of Rowland Hill's illustration of the cat and the sow?...Do you see that cat? What a clean animal she is! How cleverly she washes herself with her tongue and her paws! It is quite a pretty sight! Did you ever see a sow do that? No, you never did. It is contrary to its nature. It prefers to wallow in the mud. Go and teach a sow to wash itself, and see how little success you would have. It would be a great sanitary improvement if swine would be clean. Teach them to wash and clean themselves as the cat has been doing! It is a useless task. You may by force wash that sow, but it quickly runs to the mud and is soon as foul as ever. The only way in which you can get a sow to wash itself is to transform it into a cat. But not until then will it wash and be clean...So it is with an ungodly man; you cannot force him to do what a renewed man does most willingly. You may teach him and set him a good example, but he cannot learnt he art of holiness because he does not want to. His nature leads him another way. When the Lord makes a new man of him, then all things bear a different mark.' A complete change in nature needs to happen to the sinful man, not an education plan on how to be clean.
Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.
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