Sin
God hates sin
Deuteronomy 27:26 & James 2:10-11 are clear that there is no hierarchy of sin, but some sins however do have greater consequences than other sins. (Exodus 32:30-31, Matthew 11:24, John 19:11)
And some sins particularly stir the wrath of God
1. In our rebellion and pride imagining Him to be other than who He has revealed Himself to be
(Exodus 20:1-3, Psalm 50:17-21, Isaiah 65:2)
2. Child sacrifice and the shedding of innocent blood (2 Kings 17 & 21)
3. Leading children into sin (Matthew 18:6-7)
and
Proverbs 6:16-19
There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.
1 Kings 8:46
There is no one who does not sin.
Psalm 90:8
You have set our iniquities before you,
our secret sins in the light of your presence.
Isaiah 59: 2 & 13
Your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you. (Our sins are) rebellion and treachery against the LORD, turning our backs on our God.
Jeremiah 2:19
Your wickedness will punish you;
your backsliding will rebuke you.
Consider then and realize
how evil and bitter it is for you
when you forsake the LORD your God...
So should we
Psalm 97:10
Let those who love the LORD hate evil...
https://www.gotquestions.org/God-hate-sin.html
A.W. Tozer The Size of the Soul
It is our wretched habit of tolerating sin that keeps us in our half-dead condition.
John Calvin
Institutes of the Christian Religion, (3.3.10)
In the saints, until they are divested of mortal bodies, there is always sin; for in their flesh there resides that depravity of inordinate desiring which contends against righteousness. (Romans 7:21-25)
On 1 Timothy 1:15
It is not enough to realize in an abstract way that we are sinners. We must frankly confess our faults so that, being pierced by God’s judgments, we are even more willing to turn to him for mercy. As long as we tell ourselves, “I am a miserable sinner”, we will come coldly to God, and having received pardon for our sins we will go back to sleep … We must feel the wrongs we have done, how vile they are and the vengeance we deserve if God should withhold his mercy from us.
John Downame The Christian's Warfarre against the World, the Flesh and the Devil, 1609
Wee may note a difference betweene the state of Gods children and the wicked. Both fall into sin very oftn, both also commit heinous and grievous sins; yea sometimes the child of God falleth into more fearefull and horrible sins, than a mere worldling. Herein the chiefe difference betweene them consisteth, that the child of God after his fall is vexed and grieved, and laboureth to rise againe.
Joseph Alleine A Sure Guide to Heaven
O miserable man, what a deformed monster has sin made you! God made you 'little lower than the angels'; sin has made you little better than the devils, a monster that has his head and his heart where his feet should be, and his feet kicking against heaven, and everything out of place. The world that was formed to serve you, is come up to rule you.
Do not deceive yourself. See your misery while you may prevent it. Think what it is to be a vile outcast, a lost reprobate, a vessel of Divine wrath. Awake! awake! O sinner, arise and take your flight. There is but one door that you may flee by, and that is the narrow door of conversion and the new birth.
John Owen The Mortification of Sin
Do you mortify (sin)? Do you make it your daily work? Do not take a day off from this work; always be killing sin or it will be killing you.
We must not be concerned only with that which troubles us (which is self love), but with all that troubles God. God's work is to have full victory, and universal obedience, not just (over) the sins that trouble our souls.
Sin is a cloud that spreads itself over the face of the soul, and intercepts the beams of God's love and favour.
The Holy Spirit works mortification in us; yet, he keeps it still an act of our own obedience. The Holy Spirit works in us and upon us, as we are fit to be wrought in and upon: that is, so as to preserve our own liberty and free obedience. He works in us and with us, not against us or without us, so that his assistance is an encouragement as to the facilitating of the work.
Richard Baxter
Excusing sin, and heading for and extenuating it, and striving against the Spirit and conscience, and wrangling against ministers and godly friends, and hating reproof, are not the means to be cured and sanctified.
Keep as far as you can from those temptations which feed and strengthen the sins which you would overcome. Lay siege to your sins, and starve them out, by keeping away the food and fuel which is their maintenance and life.
William Gurnall The Christian in Complete Armour
Labour in thy meditations to give every sin its due accent, and suffer thy thoughts to dwell on them till thou findest the fire of thy indignation kindle in thy heart against them, yea, flame forth into such a holy zeal against them as makes thee put thyself under an oath to endeavour their utter ruin and destruction.
George Swinnock
We take the size of sin too low, and short, and wrong, when we measure it by the wrong it doth to ourselves, or our families, or our neighbours, or the nation wherein we live; indeed, herein somewhat of its evil and mischief doth appear; but to take its full length and proportion, we must consider the wrong it doth to this great, this glorious, this incomparable God. Sin is incomparably malignant, because the God principally injured by it is incomparably excellent.
Sin shouts louder than our prayers. Prayer will not prevail until the love of sin is taken out of the soul.
Jonathan Edwards A Treatise On Religious Affections
Grace does not stupify a man's conscience; but makes it more sensible, more easily and thoroughly to discern the sinfulness of that which is sinful, and to receive a greater conviction of the heinous and dreadful nature of sin. The conscience becomes susceptive of a quicker and deeper sense of sin, and the man is more convinced of his own sinfulness, and the wickedness of his heart.
Thomas Case A Treatise on Afflictions
O my brethren, we should hearken to the whisperings of lust in our own bosoms, and labour to suppress them; for if there be now such floatings of sin in the imagination, what will there be when enlargement shall present temptations and opportunities?
Thomas Brooks
Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices (see below)
The reason God records the failures of his saints, is to encourage others who have fallen by weakness and infirmity from fainting, sinking, and despairing under the burden of their sins. He records them as landmarks to warn others that are standing, to take heed lest they fall (1 Corinthians 10:12); to warn his people about the rocks and snares as they sail through the ocean of this sinful troublesome world.
Satan's first device to draw the soul into sin is,
To present the bait—and hide the hook;
To present the golden cup—and hide the poison;
To present the sweet, the pleasure, and the profit that may flow in upon the soul by yielding to sin—and to hide from the soul the wrath and misery that will certainly follow the committing of sin!
Satan promises the best—but pays with the worst!
He promises honor—and pays with disgrace.
He promises pleasure—and pays with pain.
He promises profit—and pays with loss.
He promises life—and pays with death.
But God pays as He promises—all His payments are made in pure gold!
Crown and Glory of Christianity, "How shall we know whether we have real holiness?"
There is no little sin, because there is no little hell, and no little God to sin against.
C.H. Spurgeon
Never conceive that any one of the evils of your nature is so dead that it cannot have a resurrection. Strive against every form of sin, every thought of sin, every carnal tendency, every evil passion, but when you have striven most, never count your victory to be complete, until your feet are within the pearly gate.
He who looks sinward has his back to God - he who looks Godward has his back to sin. It is blessed conversion when men turn from the folly of sin to the glory of God. We want men so to turn that their whole life shall be a going towards God, a growing more like Him, a closer communing with Him, leading on to the soul's becoming perfectly like Him, and dwelling forever where He is.
Commentary of Psalm 21:9
Never tolerate slight thoughts of hell, or you will soon have low thoughts of sin.
Octavius Winslow Daily Walking With God
There is a present hell in sin, for which the holy shun it; and there is a future hell in sin, for which all should dread it.
On Romans 8:13 "If you through the spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live."
"If you." The work of the Spirit is not, and never was designed to be a substitute for the personal work of the believer. His influence, indispensable and sovereign though it is, does not release from human and individual responsibility. "Work out your own salvation," (Philippians 2:12) "Keep yourselves in the love of God," (Jude 21) "Building up yourselves," (Jude 20) are exhortations which emphatically and distinctly recognize the obligation of personal effort and human responsibility.
God will never release us from the obligation of "striving against sin." (Hebrews 12:4) Mortification is a work to which the believer must address himself, and that with prayerful and resolute earnestness.
Horatius Bonar God's Way of Holiness
The tendency of the present day (1864) is to underestimate sin and to misunderstand its nature. From the cross of Christ men strike out the very elements which intimate the divine opinion of its evil. Sin is admitted to be an evil, greater or less according to circumstances; a hereditary poison, which time and earnestness will work out of the constitution; an unruly but inevitable appetite, which is to be corrected gradually by moral discipline and wholesome intellectual diet, rendered medicinal by a moderate infusion of the "religious element"; a sickening pain, sometimes in the conscience, sometimes in the heart, that is to be soothed by the dreamy mysticism, which, acting like spiritual chloroform, dulls the uneasiness without touching its seat.
G. Campbell Morgan "Sin" on 1 John 3:4 "Sin is lawlessness."
Sin is first a decision and choice of the will. It was when I knew, and disobeyed, that I sinned.
The man who has become the slave of the sin to which he has turned himself, may know his chain broken, the fire quenched, the passion stilled as the Master stilled the storm upon Galilee, and the broken will made strong again. There is but one condition, and it is that man should turn from his sins to Christ and trust Him wholly and absolutely.
F.B. Meyer
Sin consists, not only in the positive transgression of the law of God, but in the want of conformity (obedience) to His will.
J.C. Ryle
Old Paths
Low and inadequate views of your spiritual disease, are sure to be accompanied by low and inadequate views of the remedy provided in the Gospel.
Holiness http://www.gracegems.org/Ryle/holiness2.htm
A sin consists in doing, saying, thinking or imagining anything that is not in perfect conformity with the mind and law of God.
The sinfulness of man does not begin from without — but from within. It is not the result of bad training in early years. It is not picked up from bad companions and bad examples. It is a family disease, which we all inherit from our first parents, Adam and Eve, and with which we are born! (Romans 5:12)
J. Gresham Machen, The Christian View of Man, 1937
At the heart of everything that the Bible says are two great truths, which belong inseparably together—the majesty of the law of God, and sin as an offence against that law. Both these basic truths are denied in modern society, and in the denial of them is found the central characteristic of the age in which we are living.
A.W. Tozer The Size of the Soul
Sin is three-dimensional and has consequences in three directions: toward God, toward self and toward society. It alienates from God, degrades self and injures others.
R.C. Sproul Everyone’s a Theologian: An Introduction to Systematic Theology
Sin is real. There is a reality to the evil in which we participate. It does not simply intrude upon us from outside. It is something with which we are deeply, intimately, and personally involved in our hearts and souls.
R.G. Lee "Payday Someday"
Sin will take you farther than you want to go.
Sin will keep you longer than you want to stay.
Sin will cost you more than you want to pay.
CAUTION
St. Augustine, Letter 211 c. 424
Cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum, With love for mankind and hatred of sins.
Our enemy is sin, Satan and the world and its philosophies (2 Corinthians 10:4-5, Ephesians 6:12), not the sinner blinded and in bondage to sin (John 8:34, Romans 12:20-21).
THE GOOD NEWS
Romans 5:8
But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.