The Cross, The Church, and The Kingdom # 19

The Kingdom of satan and Its Overthrow (continued)

The Nature of Sin (continued)

The act of rebellion, the counterpart of lucifer's rebellion, issued in a nature; and who will deny that in our very nature we are perverse? It does not matter, dear friends, how saintly and consecrated and devoted to the Lord you may be, how deep may have been the discipline in your life, and how great a measure of Christlikeness may have been developed in you - if you have a child, see if it inherits all that! Why, it will not be many hours old before you can see and hear "I will", "I will not." We do not inherit the Christlikeness of our forbears, unfortunately. Perversity is in every fresh generation. It is there, and from what we may call the simple form of that perversity in the rebellious, discontented, peevish cry of the little infant, right up and on to the vast circumference of this whole creation, in all this anarchy, strife, war, murder, cruelty, "man's inhumanity to man," it is the same thing, the same nature, the same in bred perversity. Man cannot tame it, nor eradicate it, nor heal it. He may set up his League of Nations or his United nations Organization with intent to curb or to cure international perversity, and what happens? Well, so much the worse for the League of Nations when it comes into collision with original sin! We who are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, lovers of Him, devoted to Him, know only too well that if we are put to the test, tried by adversity and by suffering and by disappointment and by frustration and by the Divine withholding from us of those things upon which our hearts are set, is it not all too easy for perversity and rebellion to rise up in us? Is it not all too difficult for us to keep it in check? It is there in the old man; that is the nature of sin. And this in satan is the very fountain head of all this other with which we are so familiar and which is so common in the creation. That is where it came from and that is its nature, and from this source man has become what he is. That is how it is, that is why it is.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 20 - (Self the Stronghold of Sin)