Comfort's First Step: Rightly Knowing Our Sin

Minister:
Date: PM
Text: Romans 7; Lord's Day 2
Psalters: 424, 293, 159, 362
  1. Misery - the symptom.
    1. The presence of misery is assumed.
    2. Misery indicates there is something wrong (like a fever indicates an infection).
      1. It is the clear shout of God that man is guilty before God and worthy of punishment as sinners.
      2. Unless we see the cause of our misery and treat it, there will be no deliverance and recovery.
  2. How do we learn correctly about sin as the cause of our misery?
    1. There are two and only two possibilities: man or God.
    2. God’s law is the reflection of His own perfection, requiring one thing: love (Rom. 13:10).
      1. We are to love God supremely with our all, all the time.
      2. The extension of true love for God is to love our neighbor as ourselves.
    3. With the law God commands conformity of His rational, moral creatures - on pain of His curse.
  3. God’s law, like a stick rousing a sleeping bear, rouses the evil in our natures.
    1. The law shows that we are prone to hate God and our neighbor instead of having any love.
      1. We hate (not just love less) God.
      2. Anyone who does not fear and love God has no respect for his neighbor.
    2. The true believer is the only one with the ability to admit honestly his natural and constant depravity.
    3. But the same faith which acknowledges sin also acknowledges justification (5:1 and 8:1).
      1. God’s law becomes blessed to us as its terrors drive us to Christ.
      2. The Bible may thunder God’s curse unto death, but it also shows us Christ dying in the stead of sinners.