The Nature of Sin
Sin is “that abominable thing which God hates:” he cannot look upon it, or on those who commit it, without the utmost abhorrence. It is, whether we will believe it or not, “exceeding sinful.” Now we are told by the prophet, that many will “call evil good, and good evil; and will put darkness for light, and light for darkness; bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.” But if the whole universe should do this, would they alter the essential qualities of these things? Would darkness cease to be darkness, and serve all the purposes of light? or would bitter change its properties to sweetness? So, whatever construction men may put upon sin, and however they may palliate its enormity, it will ever remain immutably the same; a defiling, debasing, damning evil; more to be dreaded than death itself. We may call it innocent; but it will “bite like a serpent, and sting like an adder.” We may roll it as a sweet morsel “under our tongue; but it will be the gall of asps within us.”
Charles Simeon
Comments on Proverbs 14:9
Horae Homileticae Vol 7
p. 130
