The Contenders

I am slowly making my way through “The Godly Man’s Picture,” and I came across a convicting chapter on sin. Each time I step away from Thomas Watson and return to him, I am reminded of how foolish I am to even step away. God has used him mightily, and he has been such a great influence upon me. I pray that God would even make me half the wordsmith that Watson is.

I’ll probably stretch this chapter out to a couple more posts since it deserves a deeper meditation.

This first portion answers the question, “What is it to indulge in sin?” (All found in pp. 146-147)

Answer 1: “To give the breast to it and feed it. As a fond parent humours his child and lets him have what he wants, so to indulge sin is to humour sin.”

Answer 2: “To indulge sin is to commit it with delight: ‘they had pleasure in unirghteousness’ (2 Thess. 2:12).”

“in this sense, a godly man does not indulge sin. Though sin is in him, he is troubled at it and would gladly get rid of it. There is as much difference between sin in the wicked and the godly as between poison being in a serpent and in a man. Poison in a serpent is in its natural place and is delightful, but poison in a man’s body is offensive and he uses antidotes to expel it. So sin in a wicked man is delightful, being in its natural place, but sin in a child of God is burdensome and he uses all means to expel it. The sin is trimmed off. The will is against it. A godly man enters his protest against sin…. A child of God, while he commits sin, hates the sin he commits…”