July 12 Devotional Thought
From John Bunyan:
Sin Comes by the Law
(Left: The "Green Eyed Monster of Envy")
“But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead”
Romans 7: 8.
The law is so far from giving life or strength to do it, that it doth quite the contrary.
[First:] It weakens, it discourages, and disheartens the sinner, especially when it shows itself in its glory. [And] . . . then it is the ministration of death and kills all the world. When Israel saw this, they fled from the face of God . . . [for] they could not endure that which was commanded (Exodus 20: 18-19). Yea, so terrible was the sight that Moses said, “I exceedingly fear and quake” (Hebrews 12: 20-21). Moses stood amazed to find himself and Israel yet alive, “Did ever [a] people,” he said, “hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, and live?” (Deuteronomy 4: 32-33). When that speaks, it shakes Mount Sinai, and writes death upon all faces, and makes the church itself cry out, A mediator! else we die (Exodus 20: 19).
[Second:] It . . . abundantly increases every sin. Sin takes the advantage of being by the law; [i.e.] the motions of sin are by the law. Where no law is there is no transgression (Romans 4: 15, 7: 5) “When the commandment came, sin revived; for without the law, sin was dead” (Romans 7: 8-9). Sin takes an occasion to multiply by the law: “The law entered, that the offence might abound” (Romans 5: 20). “What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, ‘Thou shalt not covet.’ But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law, sin was dead.”
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