ling to let sin be condemned in us, and to have our own souls
saved? I beseech you, beloved in the Lord, do not think to maintain always
Christ's enemy, that great traitor against which he came from heaven.
Wonder that he doth not prosecute both as enemies; but if he will destroy
the one and save the other, O let it be destroyed, not you; and so much
the more, for that it will destroy you! Look to him, so iniquity shall not
be your ruin, but he shall be the ruin of iniquity. But if you will not
admit of such a division between you and your sins, take heed that you be
not eternally undivided, that you have not one common lot for ever, that
is, condemnation. Many would be saved, but they would be saved with sin
too. Alas! that will condemn thee. As for sin, he hath proclaimed
irreconcilable enmity against it, he hath no quarter to give it, he will
never come in terms of composition with it, and all because it is his
mortal enemy. Therefore let sin be condemned, that thou mayest be saved.
It cannot be saved with thee, but thou mayest be condemned with it.

The words, "for sin," may be taken in another sense as fitly, "a sacrifice
for sin," so that the meaning is,--Jesus Christ came to condemn and
overthrow sin in its plea against us by a sacrifice for sin, that is, by
offering up his own body or flesh. And thus you have the way and means how
Christ conquered sin, and accomplished the business he was sent for. It
was by offering a sacrifice for sin, to expiate wrath, and so satisfy
justice. "The sting" and strength "of death is sin, and the strength of
sin is the law," as the apostle speaks it, 1 Cor. xv. 55. We had two great
enemies against us, two great tyrants over us,--sin and death. Death had
passed upon all mankind. Not only the miseries of this life and temporal
death had subjected all men, but the fear of an eternal death, of an
everlasting separation from the blessed face of God, might have seized
upon all, and subjected them to bondage, Heb. ii. 15. But the strength and
sting of that is sin; it is sin that arms death and hell against us. Take
away sin, and you take away the sting, the strength of death,--it hath no
force or power to hurt man. But death being the wages due for sin, (Rom.
vi. 23.) all the certainty and efficacy in the wages flows from this work
of darkness,--sin. But now "the strength of sin is the law." This puts a
poisonable and destructive virtue in the sting of sin, for it is the
sentence of God's