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This body of sin & death!

Back to Next Part Man's religion & God's religion 2


"What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?" Romans 7:24

What, then, was it that so pained this holy Apostle? It was the body of death that he carried in him! That moving mass of corruption—that Behemoth raising up his ponderous limbs in his soul, and trampling down all that was good and gracious in his heart!

The idea is taken from a practice of the Romans of tying a dead body to a living one. And O! what must have been the sickening sensation of ever feeling the cold corpse close to the warm flesh—to wake, say, in the night, and feel the dead body tied around the living one—and clasping it in its cold arms! What a sensation of horror and disgust must the living feel from such a punishment!

Now look at it spiritually. Your 'new man' is warm toward God. There are holy affections springing up—there are panting desires flowing forth—there are tender sighs, and longings and languishing's after the Son of God in His beauty. And then, linked to it, there is a carnal, torpid, sensual, dead, earthly heart—perpetually surrounding it with its cold, clammy embrace—communicating its deathly torpidity to the soul.

Would we pray—would we pour the heart forth in warm desires? The cold paw of this body of sin and death quenches that rising desire! Would we in the secret chambers of our heart earnestly seek His face?

The cold, clammy embrace of the body of sin and death chills it all—continually impeding every upward movement of the spirit, and clogging and fettering every desire of the heavenly nature! Now, the inward conflict produced by these exercises and perplexities forces out this cry—"What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?"


Back to Next Part Man's religion & God's religion 2