Category Archives: Sin

Donald Macleod on ‘total depravity’

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‘Total depravity (a notorious phrase that invariably raises people’s hackles) means that according to biblical teaching every single aspect of our human personality is affected by sin. This does not mean that all human beings are equally evil. It does not mean that any human being is as bad as he might be. And it certainly does not mean that all human beings are devils or demons. There are real gradations in sin, there is real progress in sin and there is a real distinction between the human and the demonic.…

Repentance and revival

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Sensitiveness to sin

If, as we have seen, a leading feature of revival preaching is the setting forth of God’s holy character, and his righteous law, and his judgement against sin, then it follows that the experience of those being revived will be characterise by repentance.  If revival is to be defined as the coming back to life of something very nearly like a corpse, then it follows that the first act which must be performed is to mourn and confess the spiritual lifelessness from which we would be delivered.…

Quotes on Sin

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For evil to triumph, it is only necessary for good men to do nothing.  (Edmund Burke)

Before I can preach love and grace, I must preach sin, law and judgement.  (John Wesley)

Sin is the dare of God’s justice, the rape of his mercy, the jeer of his patience, the slight of his power, and the contempt of his love.  (John Bunyan)

He that hath slight thoughts of sin never had great thoughts of God. (John Owen)

No sin is small. …

Confession

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E.C. Hoskyns put it forthrightly: ‘When a Christian man declares that the four times repeated response in the Litany of the English Church – “Have mercy upon us miserable sinners” – has no meaning for him, he proclaims that he has as yet no understanding of the Christian religion or that he has apostasized from it.’  (Q in A Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, 308)

Confession of sin may be general.  Examples are found extensively in the Bible, and also in most liturgies.…