Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed it poisons the whole being of a person. This can happen even in the midst of a pious community. In confession the light of the gospel breaks into the darkness and seclusion of the heart. The sin must be brought into the light. The unexpressed must be openly spoken and acknowledged. All that is secret and hidden is made manifest. It is a struggle until the sin is openly admitted, but God breaks gates of brass and bars of iron (Ps. 107:16). Since the confession of sin is made in the presence of a Christian brother, the last stronghold of self-justification is abandoned. The sinner surrenders; he gives up all his evil. He gives his heart to God, and he finds the forgiveness of all his sin in the fellowship of Jesus Christ and his brother. The expressed, acknowledged sin has lost all its power. It has been revealed and judged as sin. It can no longer tear the fellowship asunder. Now the fellowship bears the sin of the brother. He is no longer alone with his evil for he has cast off his sin in confession and handed it over to God. It has been taken away from him. Now he stands in the fellowship of sinners who live by the grace of God and the cross of Jesus Christ. The sin concealed separated him from the fellowship, made all his apparent fellowship a sham; the sin confessed has helped him define true fellowship with the brethren in Jesus Christ.
Sin
Steven Furtick
Our responsibility [is] to take our sin seriously. We’ll never cure condemnation by blowing off the internal warning signs when something in our hearts isn’t right. We’ll only give the accuser more ammunition.
Susannah Wesley
Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, and takes off the relish of spiritual things – that to you is sin.
Bill Johnson
Grace that does not lead us to becoming like Jesus is not grace. It’s something else and definitely not Biblical grace.
Graham Cooke
I think the biggest enemy in the church is not the devil. It’s our own passivity. At some point the Good News becomes okay news and Christianity is no longer life changing but merely life enhancing. If Jesus doesn’t change people into radicals anymore, just nice people, then the church becomes dull, predictable, and monotonous. Dullness is the absence of brightness in our soul. Sometimes I think that sin is not necessarily immorality or selfishness. Sometimes it just means we live drab, colorless, stale, and unimaginative lives before God.
Watchman Nee
Satan has in fact a plan against the saints of the Most High which is to wear them out. What is meant by this phrase, “wear out”? It has in it the idea of reducing a little this minute, then reducing a little further the next minute. Reduce a little today, reduce a little tomorrow. Thus the wearing out is almost imperceptible; nevertheless, it is a reducing. The wearing down is scarcely an activity of which one is conscious, yet the end result is that there is nothing left. He will take away your prayer life little by little, and cause you to trust God less and less and yourself more and more, a little at a time. He will make you feel somewhat cleverer than before. Step by step, you are misled to rely more on your own gift, and step by step your heart is enticed away from the Lord. Now, were Satan to strike the children of God with great force at one time, they would know exactly how to resist the enemy since they would immediately recognize his work. He uses the method of gradualism to wear down the people of God.
Jack Frost
When Christians value the Father more for what He can do for them than for intimacy and love, they eventually begin to seek to fulfill their own selfish desires rather than enjoy the relationship they have with God. Then, in order to fill the void that has been created, they seek comfort or identity in one or more of the counterfeit affections—power, possessions, position, people, places, performance, or passions of the flesh. This vicious cycle can continue until they realize that what they are lusting for will not satisfy them and that they have an unmet need for love and intimacy that only Father God’s embrace can fulfill.
Dawna De Silva
Many Christians today are told that their biblical views are intolerant and unloving. This, however, is itself intolerance. Tolerance does not mean that individual values are rejected. The dictionary says that tolerance is “the ability to tolerate something, in particular the existence of opinions or behavior that one does not necessarily agree with.” That word, by definition, means that both worldly and Christian views get to coexist.
John G. Lake
That is the resurrection life, you have to die to get it. You have to die to enter there, we die to our sin, we die to ourselves, we die to the opinions of man. And we die to the old world, we die to fear of spooks and demons and devils, and prove the truth of the text. Greater is He that is in you, Then he that is in the world.
Catherine Marshall
When your heart is ablaze with the love of God, when you love other people – especially the ripsnorting sinners – so much that you dare to tell them about Jesus with no apologies, then never fear, there will be results.