The Sinfulness of Sin
Romans 7:13
© Mike Riccardi
Introduction
Late this past week, I found myself wrestling with whether I should preach what I had planned to preach—which was “The Truth about Suffering,” from Philippians chapter 1, as the bulletin says. But after much prayer, I believe the need of the moment has called for something else. So would you turn with me in your Bibles to Romans chapter 7.
You and I don’t hate sin enough. Sure, when we hear report of some scandal—in which sin has ruined lives on a grand scale—we’re shocked, we’re grieved, we’re heartbroken, even outraged at the havoc sin can wreak. In those moments, it seems easy to hate sin. But then time passes, we return to our lives, sin seems to crawl back under the rock that it came from, and we forget that sin still lives in each one of us. As much as believers in Jesus have been freed from the penalty of sin in justification, as much as we’ve been freed from the power of sin in definitive sanctification, nevertheless we have not yet been freed from the presence of sin. Sin remains in us. And if we don’t go to war with it—if we make peace with the presence of sin in our flesh—we become vulnerable to the very deception and destruction that we lament when we see it in others.
None of us is above being beguiled by the deceitfulness of sin. Sin has devoured better men and women than you and me. King David—the man after God’s own heart—commits adultery, and then commits murder to cover up his adultery. Solomon—the wisest man who ever lived—allows his heart to be drawn away after pagan women. How could any of us think that we’re immune to sin’s deception? No, the Apostle Peter warns us all in 1 Peter 5:8: “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” And so, we must remember Paul’s admonition to Timothy, that we are to watch our life and doctrine closely (1 Tim 4:16). We must remember Paul’s warning in 1 Corinthians 10:12: “Let him who thinks he stands firm take heed that he does not fall.”
Indwelling sin remains in all of us, friends. And if not for the sheer grace of God, sin would absolutely ruin each and every one of us. And so we must beg God for grace! “O, God! Keep me! Please, keep me! Don’t give me over to my fleshly desires! Give so much grace, that I might not dishonor You, that I might finish my race faithfully!” Without our attending to the means of grace, without bringing our hearts into subjection to the searching, life-giving light of Scripture, without our being ruthless with our flesh and giving it no quarter, without our constant attention to putting to death the deeds of the body, sin would have its way with us as well. Each of you is vulnerable to falling prey to this devious devourer that still resides in your flesh. How will you avoid the devastation and destruction that sin desires to inflict upon your life?
We don’t hate sin enough. We treat sin as if it’s a trifle to be dallied with, rather than a cancer to be killed. Sin looks pleasant to us, or at least it seems not to be such a big deal. We tolerate it so much in our lives. But when the Lord sees fit to show us the great destruction that sin can inflict, in those times sin appears more clearly to us in all its naked deformity, all its unmasked ugliness. And it’s at those times that we have to leverage that. We have to take advantage of the fact that sin has come out from its hiding place and has shown us how hateful, and vile, and miserable a thing that it is. Because in the hour of temptation—when sin presents itself to our souls—it entices us with its painted beauty, with its false pleasures, with the lies that it can satisfy us; that it is more to be desired than holiness and integrity.
And in that moment of temptation, the only way to fight, is to refute those lies—to flood our minds with the truth of the wretchedness of sin: that underneath the mask, sin is not delightful; that is perfectly miserable; and that holiness and faithfulness to the Lord and communion with Him is more beautiful, and satisfying, and glorious than anything sin could offer us. To successfully battle temptation, and not fall prey to the deceitfulness of sin, we must look upon and think of sin not how Satan presents it to us, but the way we’ll eventually be forced to look at it, when it’s had its opportunity to devastate and destroy.
No one has captured that thought more helpfully than Thomas Brooks, in his masterful work, Precious Remedies against Satan’s Devices. He writes, “Look on sin with that eye with which within a few hours we shall see it. Ah, souls! when you shall lie upon a dying bed, and stand before a judgment-seat, sin shall be unmasked, and its dress and robes shall then be taken off, and then it shall appear more vile, filthy, and terrible than hell itself; then, that which formerly appeared most sweet will appear most bitter, and that which appeared most beautiful will appear most ugly, and that which appeared most delightful will then appear most dreadful to the soul. Ah, the shame, the pain, the gall, the bitterness, the horror, the hell that the sight of sin, when its dress is taken off, will raise in poor souls! [...] O souls! the day is at hand when the devil will pull off the paint and garnish that he has put upon sin, and present that monster, sin, in such a monstrous shape to your souls, that will cause your thoughts to be troubled, your countenance to be changed, the joints of your loins to be loosed, your knees to be dashed one against another, and your hearts to be so terrified, that you will be ready, with Ahithophel and Judas, to strangle and hang your bodies on the earth, and your souls in hell, if the Lord has not more mercy on you than he had on them. Oh! therefore, look upon sin now as you must look upon it to all eternity, and as God, conscience, and Satan will present it to you another day!”
Look upon sin now in the way you must look upon it for all eternity, if you do not heed these warnings. That is what I want to do in our time this morning. The title of this message is The Sinfulness of Sin. I want to force us all to do the unpleasant work of looking sin in the face, so that each of us would be stirred up to a hatred and antipathy for sin for the supreme evil that it is, so that when we are confronted with what seem to be minor temptations to sin day by day, those proposals of sin would look as ugly and undesirable to our souls as they actually are. And my prayer is that you will be stirred to hate sin and love Christ more than when you walked in this morning.
And we’ll do it by considering seven features of the sinfulness of sin.
I. The Supreme Wickedness of Sin
First, consider the supreme wickedness of sin. And we see this from Romans 7, which will serve as the scriptural anchor for all our thoughts this morning. In Romans 7, Paul is talking about how the law of God, though it cannot bring salvation, is nevertheless holy and righteous and good. And he talks about how sin takes advantage of us through the law to stir up more sin, rather than to produce the righteousness for which the law was given. And so Paul says, in Romans 7, starting in verse 8: “But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind.” Verse 10: “and this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me; for sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So then, the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. Therefore, did that which is good become a cause of death for me? May it never be! Rather it was sin, in order that it might be shown to be sin by effecting my death through that which is good, so that through the commandment sin would become utterly sinful.”
Now, the supreme wickedness of sin is seen from this passage particularly in the fact that its own name is the worst thing that Paul can think to say about it (Venning, 19). It’s not that sin would become utterly “repugnant,” or utterly “loathsome,” or utterly “malicious.” No, when Paul looks to paint sin in the worst colors he can find, he uses its own name to demean it: “so that sin would become utterly sinful.”.
Isaiah 57:15 speaks of God as “the high and exalted One who lives forever, whose name is Holy.” We spoke of that text last week. God’s name is Holy! It’s like His last name! The family name of God is Holy. When Isaiah wants to identify God, He uses His own name to define Him, and that name is, “Holy.” And just as God is, Isaiah 6:3, “Holy, Holy, Holy”—as one man said, “all holy, only holy, altogether holy, and always holy, so [also] sin is “sinful, all sinful, only sinful, altogether sinful, and always sinful. … As in God there is no evil, so in sin there is no good” (Venning, 31).
Sin is that which rent the blessed communion between God and man in the Garden of Paradise. When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, Genesis 3:7–8 says “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. They heard the sound of Yahweh God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Yahweh God among the trees of the garden.” I don’t know if there’s a sadder verse in all the Bible. If we apprehended all the implications of what happened in that moment, it would make us all weep. It used to be that Adam and Eve would hear the sound of God walking in the garden, and they would say, “Is Yahweh coming? Is now time for more face-to-face fellowship with our loving and bountiful Creator? Amen! “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; when shall I come and appear before God?” (Ps 42:2). And instead of that joyful, eager anticipation, man hid himself from the Delight of his eyes, the source of all satisfaction.
Sin is what made the first son murder his brother. Sin is what made God drown the entire planet in judgment. Sin is what built the Tower of Babel, and flung the whole world into confusion. Sin is what cast the holiest angel from heaven. Puritan George Swinnock wrote, “All misery calls sin mother.” And Thomas Watson said, “Sin has the devil for its father, shame for its companion, and death for its wages” (as in Horn, Puritan Remembrances, 86).
And in one of the most startling characterizations that I’ve ever read, John Bunyan wrote that “Sin is the dare of God’s justice, the rape of his mercy, the jeer of his patience, the slight of his power, the contempt of his love.” Sin dares God’s justice. It provokes Him to His holy face. It knows God is perfectly just, but it vaunts itself over the line of transgression anyway, and as it were dares God to respond with just punishment. Sin is the rape of God’s mercy—which is just an undoing thought. Sin takes the beautiful kindness of the mercy of God—the longsuffering of our kind Father—and it violates it. It takes advantage of it. It despoils it of its innocence and beauty. Sin is the jeer—the mockery—of God’s patience. “Oh, You’re going to punish me, are You? I’ve been doing this for years and I’m doing fine! ‘Be sure your sin will find you out’? ‘Time and truth go hand in hand’? Give me a break!” Sin is the contempt of God’s love. One dictionary defines “contempt” as “the feeling that a person or a thing is beneath consideration, worthless, or deserving scorn.” “O, love of God, how rich and pure, how measureless and strong!” “Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till I die!” There is nothing greater in the universe than the love of God! And sin treats it as if it’s beneath consideration, worthless, and deserving of scorn.
O, let your heart be stirred up to hate sin, for its supreme wickedness! When sin comes knocking on the door of your heart in the hour of temptation, you preach these thoughts to yourself! You load your mind and your conscience with the truth of how sinful—how supremely wicked—sin is, so that it looks as repulsive to you as it actually is.
II. The Loathsomeness of Sin
Second, consider the loathsomeness of sin. And sin’s loathsomeness becomes apparent when we consider what Scripture likens sin unto. (The following is adapted from Venning, The Sinfulness of Sin, 161.)
In the King James Version of 1 Kings 8:38, sin is called “the plague of [the] heart.” As in the bubonic plague! As in the plague that killed between 30 to 50 percent of the entire population of Europe in the 14th century. This is what sin is! Proverbs 14:30 says, “A tranquil heart is life to the body, but passion”—or some translations have “jealousy” or “envy”—“is rottenness to the bones.” Think of bones rotting away—being eaten by a foul disease, becoming brittle, and breaking in half. Second Timothy 2:16–17 likens the “worldly and empty chatter” of apostates like Hymenaeus and Philetus to “gangrene”—to an ulcerous cancer, that eats away at the flesh, and causes it to rot. Let me ask you: How eager are you to sit next to someone with a flesh-eating bacteria? But friends, this is what sin is! And will you sidle up to it, and cling to it, and immerse yourself in it?
Ezekiel 16 likens sin to the blood in which infants are born. Matthew 23 likens lawlessness to the putrefaction of graves, which stink with the decomposition of human flesh. Second Peter 2 calls sin the vomit of dogs. And in Romans 3:13, Paul calls sin poison itself. Sin is the poison, the rottenness, the disease, the plague of the soul—worse than any plague of the body! Can you dally with it?
You need to ask yourself, “Is that really my estimation of sin? Do I recoil from it as the loathsome disease as it is?” For almost two solid years, many people wore multiple masks on their faces, gloves on their hands; they wore face shields; they didn’t travel; they didn’t visit their family; in some cases they were apart from their family members when they died—all to stay away from a disease that at least had the potential to harm them. Do you seek to keep away from sin as much as some sought to keep away from Covid?
III. Contrary to the Glory of God
Third, recognize that sin is contrary to the glory of God. Jesus teaches us in Matthew 6:24 that “No one can serve two masters.” He says, “You cannot serve God and wealth.” And “wealth,” there, can stand in for any idol, which would be to serve sin. In Romans 7, Paul opposes serving the law of God on the one hand, and serving the law of sin on the other. Romans 6 says we are either slaves of sin or slaves of righteousness.
Sin is in competition with God for the allegiance and worship of your heart, which means sin is out to steal the glory that God rightly deserves. In fact, some of the church fathers called sin, “Deicide”—God-murder, or God-killing—because sin’s whole goal is to stand in the place of God as the ruler of men’s hearts. And to do it, sin would have to kill God. One writer said that sin “goes about to ungod God” (Venning, 30), which it would have to do to be god in His place.
Perhaps the greatest evidence that you are a true believer in Jesus is that you delight—from the bottom of your soul—to see God get what He is worthy of! to see His glory magnified! Even if your name must decrease, you delight to see His name increase. “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to Your name give glory” (Ps 115:1). The believer’s greatest joy is to see God glorified. But what does sin do? It goes about to steal that glory. One writer said, “Sin is a running from God and a fighting against God; it would spoil the Lord of all the jewels of His crown” (Richard Alleine, Heaven Opened, 190). Sin wants the crown for itself, and it would snatch it from the Lord’s brow in order to get it. Dear Christian, you who love to see God glorified: how can you be a party to such sedition, such treason, as that?
The Puritan Ralph Venning puts it this way. He says, “Poor soul! Can you find it in your heart to hug and embrace such a monster as this? Will you love that which hates God, and which God hates? God forbid! Will you join yourself to that which is nothing but contrariety to God, and all that is good? Oh, say to this idol, this devil, get [away], what have I to do with you, you sorcerer, you full of all malignity and mischief; you child, yea father of the Devil, you who are the founder of Hell, an enemy to all righteousness, who ceases not to pervert the right ways of the Lord, and to reproach the living God! Away! away! Shall I be seduced by you to grieve the God of all my joy, to displease the God of all my comfort, to vex the God of all my contentment, to do evil against a good God, by whom I live, move, and have my being? Oh no!” (36). God is all my good! He is the fountain of living waters, Jeremah 2:13! Shall we forsake the sweet springs of holiness for the broken cisterns of sin, which can hold no water; which can bring no ultimate joy, no comfort, no contentment? Oh, no!
IV. Contrary to the Good of Man
And then, related to that, sin is not only contrary to the glory of God; it is contrary to the good of man. Which is to repeat myself, right? Because the good of man is the glory of God! His glory is our good. The definition of all blessing in the Scriptures is our beholding the face of Almighty God with the eyes of faith. Numbers 6: “The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face shine on you, and be gracious to you.” It’s the definition of blessing to have “the Lord lift up His countenance on you, and give you peace.” This is a picture of communion with God. Psalm 27 verse 8, “When You said, ‘Seek My face,’ my heart said to You, ‘Your face, O Yahweh I shall seek.’” But, Psalm 30 verse 7, when “You hid Your face, I was dismayed.”
All your happiness lies in communion with God! Life is to know Him, to have facetime with Him. And yet what does sin do? Isaiah 59:2: “Your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear.” The Puritan Edward Reyner commented, “Sin sets up a partition wall, or separates between Christ and the soul, and keeps them at a distance…. Sin darkens and blinds the eye that should behold Christ; withers the hand that should receive Christ; and shuts the heart that should entertain Him” (Precepts for Christian Practice, 58). Thomas Watson said, “Sin clips the wings of prayer, so that it will not fly to the throne of grace” (Mischief of Sin, 58). Psalm 66:18: “If I regard wickedness in my heart, the Lord will not hear.”
Why would you do this to yourself? Why would you sow to your own ruin? Why would you court death and hell and wrath? Especially when blessing is within arms’ reach! You see, sin is not only contrary to the glory of God—which you should love and cherish more than anything. But sin is contrary to the good of man! In sinning, you only act against your own good! You only sow to your own destruction! Listen: No person in history has ever benefited from a single act of sin. Not once. It’s nothing but mischief. And yet we rush headlong into it, as if it would satisfy us, as if it would bring us what we desire. And it’s the exact opposite. It’s like a man dying of thirst, who runs to the ocean for refreshment: the saltwater only deepens his dehydration and hastens his death.
V. The Deceitfulness of Sin
Number five: the sinfulness of sin consists in the deceitfulness of sin. In our text here in Romans 7, and verse 11, Paul says, “Sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.” Ephesians 4:22 calls the desires of sin “the lusts of deceit.” Hebrews 3:13 uses this very phrase and speaks of being “hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” Sin is a trickster! a huckster! a swindler! People say, “How could something like this happen? How could they be so foolish?” And the answer is: Satan is a master deceiver.
Nobody has put this more memorably than Brooks in Precious Remedies. The very first “device” of Satan that Brooks seeks to give a remedy for is that Satan presents the bait and hides the hook. He presents the golden cup, and hides the poison. He presents “the sweet, the pleasure, and the profit that may flow in upon the soul by yielding to sin, and by hiding from the soul the wrath and misery that will certainly follow the committing of sin.” Brooks says, “He promises the soul honor, pleasure, [and] profit, but pays the soul with the greatest contempt, shame, and loss that can be” (29–30). And Ralph Venning said, “Sin promises like a God but pays like a Devil. … It promises gold and pays dross” (170).
Sin doesn’t tempt you with the pain of your spouse, with the tears of shame of your family, with the ruin of your ministry, with the loss of your good name, with the flames of hell itself. Satan hides the hook underneath the bait. But oh, friends, the hook is always there! Meditate on the hook. Force yourself to look upon sin now as you must look upon when it has its devastation.
And inasmuch as a traitor is more vile than an open enemy—inasmuch as secret betrayal is more sinister than open contempt—recognize that sin is a deceiver. And stir up your hatred of sin just as you find false friends to be utterly repugnant. Sin is the falsest friend there is.
VI. The Wretched End of Sin
Consider a sixth feature of the sinfulness of sin, namely, the wretched end of sin. The wretched end of sin: which is none other than the utter ruin of the soul in the eternal torments of hell. Venning said, “It is the design and work of sin to make man eternally miserable, and to undo him, soul and body, forever” (78). There are no words that can give adequate picture of the horrors of that wretched place.
In Matthew 25:41, Jesus says, “Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels.” Oh, who can speak of this? Away from Christ, the fountain of life, the spring of all joy! Devoid of blessing; only cursing; the consummation of a cursed existence! Into fire—the flames of torment—of weeping and gnashing of teeth! And not for a time, but eternal fire, with no hope of escape! And with the most wretched company: the devil and his angels—the very deceivers who seduced you to that place, there now only to mock and deride you for being foolish enough to fall prey to their seduction! (Adapted from Venning, 72.)
O, friends: hell is the perfect misery and consummate ruin of the soul. If every sin—even the tiniest, most seemingly harmless sin—could have its way, this is the wretched end it would drag you into, every single time.
VII. The Greatest Tragedy of Sin
Supreme wickedness, loathsomeness, contrary to the glory of God and the good of man, the deceitfulness, the wretched end of sin. Now consider, number seven, the greatest tragedy of sin. And that is: the undoing of the Lord Jesus Christ. Can we delight in that which brought our greatest friend to His greatest misery?
There He lay, in Gethsemane, on His face before His Father, staring into the abyss of divine abandonment—of the swirling cauldron of the cup of wrath that would soon be pressed to His holy lips. Abandoned by His closest friends, who could not keep watch with Him for one hour, in the greatest trial of His life. Now begging not to be abandoned by His Father: “Father if there’s any other way! Yet not as I will, but as You will.” And what does He hear on the dust of the Garden? Nothing. Silence from heaven. He’s already bearing the punishment for your sin.
There He is on trial, silent, as a Lamb before its shearers, while sinners condemn Him, Mark 14:64, “to be deserving of death.”
There He is, on the Via Dolorosa, collapsed under the weight of His own crossbar.
There He is before the Romans: beaten, and whipped, and spit upon. “I am a worm and not a man, a reproach of men and despised by the people” (Ps 22:6). He should have said, “I am God, as well as man! the praise of all men and worshiped by the angels of heaven!”
And there He is on the cross, uttering those wretched words that eternity will not exegete for us: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
Can you bear to look at Him? What put Him there? Dear people, it was sin! It was sin that made the Beloved Son to be forsaken of His Father! It was sin that made the Darling of Heaven the reproach of earth! It was sin that melted the King’s heart like wax (Ps 22:14)! Brooks says, “Those very sins that Satan paints, and puts new names and colors upon, cost the best blood, the noblest blood, the life-blood, the heart-blood of the Lord Jesus!” Oh, the sinfulness of sin! John Flavel says, if you can read of the deep humiliation and unspeakable sorrows of Christ in atoning for sin, you should look upon sin like a young child would look upon the knife that stabbed his father to the heart. You would never sharpen it to wound the Son of God afresh (Fountain of Life, 1:26).
Flavel also tells of how he read of a prostitute who killed her child, and said that the baby smiled at her as she went to stab him. Why would the baby do otherwise? He recognizes his mother, and expects to receive good from her hand. And then Flavel says, “Sinner, does not Christ smile upon you in the gospel? And will you, as it were, stab Him to the heart by your infidelity?” (1:172–73).
Oh, the greatest tragedy of sin, friends, is how it put the precious Lord of glory to shame! how it smote His holy heart with the displeasure of His Father—with all the bitterness of hell itself! How can we consent to it? How can we dally with it? How can we embrace it? How can we not rouse all our energy—all the holy vehemence of our souls—to fight it, to battle it, to kill it?
Conclusion
But do you know what the sick thing is? You and I, before we make it home today, will sin. We may not destroy our marriage, or ruin our reputation. But we will transgress the holy law of our holy God. We will think, speak, feel, or do something that put our dear Savior on the cross! “O, wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom 7:24). But the only answer to that—ever and always—is: “Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom 7:25)! And “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1)!
As we come to this table, we must come in the strength of that truth. Sin is utterly sinful. It plagues us to our very core. But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! Our sin does nothing but heap condemnation upon us. It taunts us, like a schoolyard bully, “Condemnation! Condemnation! Condemnation!” But our only hope, friends, is to shout back all the more loudly! to preach to our souls and to the enemy of our souls: “No condemnation! No condemnation! No condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus!”
Dear people: if you are in Christ Jesus by faith alone this morning, you are welcome to this table! to the table of the King! You, vile, filthy, loathsome, wretched sinner, are welcome to feast your souls upon the King of all life and grace and strength and holiness! Lepers, we are! And yet invited to the family meal in the house of the Prince of all Purity!
Dear believer, this table is not reserved for the sinless! No, the Great Physician didn’t come for the healthy! He came for the sick! He came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance (Luke 5:31–32)! And if you’re in Him, you may come to Him today through His blood with full assurance of faith, with hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, with bodies washed with pure water (Heb 10:22). Oh, let the sinfulness of sin pierce you to your very soul! Let the sting of it afflict your heart! Let it buckle your knees and bow you to the dust! But, dear brother or sister, don’t stay in the dust. Raise your eyes to heaven, and behold with the eyes of faith your risen and ascended Lord, seated on the throne of heaven, with nail-pierced hands, victorious over all sin and death!
And see in Him all your righteousness! See His blood which washes away your stains. See His lifelong obedience as the pure white robe that He drapes across your shoulders. See the Holy the Spirit as if a dove, whom He sends into your heart to seal your adoption. And come to Him, and feast upon the grace that overcomes and conquers sin. “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom 5:20–21).
And dear unbeliever: what more could you need to hear to convince you to fly to Jesus Christ? You have seen sin unmasked before you, this morning. Will you shut your eyes to its vileness? Will you keep lying to yourself that there is some satisfaction in that foul monster that should keep you from so glorious a Savior? His arms are opened as wide for you as they are to us as His people! In this day of mercy, you are still yet welcome to this beautiful King, if only you will have Him by faith alone this morning. Dear sinner: turn from your sin, confess your guilt, despair of paying God back or earning your forgiveness; cast yourself upon the mercy of Jesus Christ; put all your trust for righteousness before God in Him—in His obedient life, in His substitutionary death, in His triumphant resurrection! And you come to Him, for the first time, as a sinner saved by grace.