When the Church of God fell in Adam, she fell with a crash
which broke every bone and bruised her flesh with wounds which are ulcerated
from head to toe. Her understanding, her conscience, and her affections were all
fearfully maimed. The first was blinded, the second stupefied, and the third
alienated. Every mental faculty thus became perverted and distorted. As in a
shipwrecked vessel the water runs in through every leak, so when Adam fell upon
the rocks of sin and temptation, and made shipwreck of the image of God in which
he was created, sin rushed into every faculty of body and soul, and penetrated
into the inmost recesses of his being.
Or to use another figure; as when a man is bitten by a
poisonous serpent the venom courses through every artery and vein, and he dies a
corrupted mass from head to foot, so did the poison-fang of sin penetrate into
Adam's inmost soul and body, and infect him with its venom from the sole to the
crown.
But the fearful havoc which sin has made is never seen nor felt
until the soul is quickened into spiritual life. O what work does sin then make
in the conscience, when it is opened up by the Spirit of God! Whatever
superficial or shallow views we may have had of sin before, it is only as its
desperate and malignant character is opened up by the Holy Spirit that it is
really seen, felt, grieved under, and mourned over as indeed a most dreadful and
fearful reality. It is this sword of the Spirit which cuts and wounds; it is
this entrance of life and light that gashes the conscience; it is this divine
work which lacerates the heart and inflicts those deep wounds which nothing but
the "balm in Gilead" can heal.
[Joseph Philpot]
Jeremiah 8:22 ... Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?
Psalm 103:2-3 ... Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases;
1 Peter 2:24 ... Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.❤
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Jeremiah 8:22 ... Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?
Psalm 103:2-3 ... Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases;
1 Peter 2:24 ... Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.❤
