Gospel Prism

The reality of thinking about the Ten Commandments is that you begin to see just how dark, how depraved, how flawed you are before a perfectly good God. Charles Spurgeon beautifully puts this thought of law and grace so well together:

And as I looked upon that corpse, I heard a footstep, and wondered where it was. I listened, and I clearly perceived that the murderer was close at hand! It was dark, and I groped about to find him. I found that, somehow or other, wherever I put out my hand, I could not meet with him, for he was NEARER to me than my hand would go.

At last I put my hand upon MY BREAST. “I have thee now” said I — for lo! he was IN MY OWN HEART — the murderer was hiding within my own bosom, dwelling in the recesses of my INMOST SOUL.

Ah! then I wept indeed, that I, in the very presence of my murdered Master, should be harboring the murderer — and I felt myself most guilty while I bowed over His Corpse, and sang that plaintive hymn…”Twas you, MY SINS, my cruel sins, His chief tormentors were; Each of my crimes became a nail, and unbelief the spear.”

Amid the rabble rout which hounded the Redeemer to His doom, there were some gracious souls whose bitter anguish sought vent in wailing and lamentations, fit music to accompany that march of woe. When my soul can, in imagination, see the Saviour bearing His cross to Calvary, she joins the godly women, and weeps with them; for, indeed, there is true cause for grief, cause lying deeper than those mourning women thought. They bewailed innocence maltreated, goodness persecuted, love bleeding, meekness about to die — but my heart has a deeper and more bitter cause to mourn.

MY SINS were the scourges which lacerated those blessed shoulders, and crowned with thorns those bleeding brows; my sins cried —”Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”— and laid the cross upon His gracious shoulders. His being led forth to die is sorrow enough for one eternity; but my having been His murderer, is more, infinitely more grief than one poor fountain of tears can express.

If Christ has died for me, ungodly as I am, without strength as I am, then I cannot live in sin any longer, but must arouse myself to love and serve Him who hath redeemed me. I cannot trifle with the evil which slew my best Friend. I must be holy for His sake.

HOW CAN I LIVE IN SIN WHEN HE HAS DIED TO SAVE ME FROM IT?