Alan D. Strange
Puritan Board Senior
"Sin," as we confess, is "any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, any law of God, given as a rule to the reasonable creature" (WLC 24). What is this law, the moral law? WLC 93 answers this, making it clear what we owe to God and man: complete, never-flagging, wholehearted obedience.
The moral law has great use to all men, with particular use to the regenerate and the unregenerate each (WLC 94-97). What the moral law requires is a comprehensive love of God and a love of neighbor akin to self-love; we as Christians are grateful that Christ fulfilled all righteousness for us and we are, out of thankfulness, to "take greater care to conform [ourselves] thereunto as the rule of obedience" (WLC 97). Sin is the bane of our lives and knowing and walking with Christ in his ways is our joy.
Untrammeled love of God and neighbor, always, entirely: we long for such at our best moments and fail miserably in it at our worst. We never in this life at any given moment come close to achieving what God requires, not even close, due to remaining sin, sin which impacts every faculty of our being, our understanding, our will, and our affections. The remaining sin nature (to which we must die daily) is utterly self-centered and self-consumed.
I've not for one single moment in my life perfectly obeyed what Jesus sets before us in Matthew 22:34-40. If I think that I've ever come close to loving the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, and mind, I fail to realize two things: how worthy he truly is and what this really requires. I want as a new man in Christ to do so but I see that in me there is no good thing. He enables me to do this in a measure, given who I am in the flesh, that is remarkable. Yet I fall short at every point. And with the second commandment, the call to love my neighbor as I love myself, if I am honest in any measure, I am scandalously lacking here. I fall so far short of loving God and neighbor that if Christ is not wholly and entirely, from first to last, my Savior, I have no hope whatsoever.
All this is to say that, in light of my profound sinfulness, I have a hard time fathoming what the question at the head of this thread aims to get at.
Peace,
Alan
The moral law has great use to all men, with particular use to the regenerate and the unregenerate each (WLC 94-97). What the moral law requires is a comprehensive love of God and a love of neighbor akin to self-love; we as Christians are grateful that Christ fulfilled all righteousness for us and we are, out of thankfulness, to "take greater care to conform [ourselves] thereunto as the rule of obedience" (WLC 97). Sin is the bane of our lives and knowing and walking with Christ in his ways is our joy.
Untrammeled love of God and neighbor, always, entirely: we long for such at our best moments and fail miserably in it at our worst. We never in this life at any given moment come close to achieving what God requires, not even close, due to remaining sin, sin which impacts every faculty of our being, our understanding, our will, and our affections. The remaining sin nature (to which we must die daily) is utterly self-centered and self-consumed.
I've not for one single moment in my life perfectly obeyed what Jesus sets before us in Matthew 22:34-40. If I think that I've ever come close to loving the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, and mind, I fail to realize two things: how worthy he truly is and what this really requires. I want as a new man in Christ to do so but I see that in me there is no good thing. He enables me to do this in a measure, given who I am in the flesh, that is remarkable. Yet I fall short at every point. And with the second commandment, the call to love my neighbor as I love myself, if I am honest in any measure, I am scandalously lacking here. I fall so far short of loving God and neighbor that if Christ is not wholly and entirely, from first to last, my Savior, I have no hope whatsoever.
All this is to say that, in light of my profound sinfulness, I have a hard time fathoming what the question at the head of this thread aims to get at.
Peace,
Alan