03/25/2019

Jeremiah 17:9

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick;
    who can understand it?

Romans 7:11

¹¹ For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.

“Sin….deceived me.”

Intellectually man has a twofold liability.  He is finite and he is fallen.  In any contest with sin he is sure to lose.  From Jeremiah and from Paul we have the same information.  We, both believers and unbelievers, are liable to be, and will be, deceived by sin.

Sin’s greatest deceit consistent with the Prophet’s complaint is when we think of ourselves in some grand and worthy way.  We deceive ourselves when we excuse ourselves.  There is never an excuse for sin.  God is holy and He hates evil.

We deceive ourselves when we think that some application of God’s Law does not apply.  The Law is holy, just, and good.  And it is the eternal standard of righteousness.  Sin is man’s failure to live God’s Law.  Romans 3:23 gives the result of sin as failing to live up to God’s glory.  This glory might be more but it surely is nothing less that His perfect righteousness.

And sin has deceived us when we think we can love God whom we can’t see without loving our neighbor whom we can see.