I’m reading Owen’s Temptation and Sin again, so you can expect to see more Owen quotes in the coming weeks. He says:

“When a man hath confirmed his imagination to such an apprehension of grace and mercy [when a man has so convinced himself that he has grace as mercy] as to be able, without bitterness, to swallow and digest daily sins, that man is at the very brink of turning the grace of God into lasciviousness [feeling the freedom to sin], and being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”

The picture of “swallowing and digesting sin” makes me think of a fish that is so hungry for the lure, he doesn’t just bite it, he swallows it whole. Then he’s really hooked: there’s no getting off that line. The question we need to ask ourselves is this: do we “swallow and digest daily sins”? Most people don’t wake up in the morning thinking: what’s the biggest, baddest sin I can commit today? But small sins quickly become big sins, so we have to be careful each day to put sin to death. If we don’t, we run the risk of being hardened by sin: becoming so insensitive to it, and we don’t even mind sinning in bigger and more serious ways.

Ask your parents today to help you determine if there are ways that you are digesting daily sins. If you find them, turn from your sin to Christ Jesus! Remember Romans 5:20 - “…where sin increased, grace abounded all the more…”

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