When we are tempted and seek to know and love God, and like Moses long to see His glory, and out of that occupation of our minds have no further love for that previous temptation, we have experienced something of the reality of the very highest form of freedom from sin. It is one thing to love sin and to force ourselves to quit it; it is another thing to hate sin because love for God is so gripping that the sin no longer appeals. The latter is repentance; the former is reform. It is repentance that God requires. Repentance is “a change of mind.” To love and yet quit it is not the same as hating it and quitting it. Your supposed victory over a sin may be simple displacement. You may love one sin so much (such as your pride) that you will curtail another more embarrassing sin which you also love. This may look spiritual, but there is nothing of God in it. Natural men do it every day.
Jim Elliff

Reading Room

The Reading Room

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enchir19 CHAPTER XIX ALMSGIVING AND FORGIVENESS 70. We must beware, however, lest anyone suppose that unspeakable crimes such as they commit who "will not possess the Kingdom of God" can…

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conbk06 AUGUSTINE'S CONFESSIONS BOOK SIX CHAPTER I O Hope from my youth,1 where wast thou to me and where hadst thou gone away?2 For hadst thou not created me and…

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enchir04 CHAPTER IV THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 12. All of nature, therefore, is good, since the Creator of all nature is supremely good. But nature is not supremely and immutably…

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enchir20 CHAPTER XX SPIRITUAL ALMSGIVING 75. Now, surely, those who live in gross wickedness and take no care to correct their lives and habits, who yet, amid their crimes and…

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conbk07 AUGUSTINE'S CONFESSIONS BOOK SEVEN CHAPTER I Dead now was that evil and shameful youth of mine, and I was passing into full manhood.1 As I increased in years, the…

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enchir21 CHAPTER XXI PROBLEMS OF CASUISTRY 78. What sins are trivial and what are grave, however, is not for human but for divine judgment to determine. For we see that,…

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conbk08 AUGUSTINE'S CONFESSIONS BOOK EIGHT CHAPTER I O my God, let me remember with gratitude and confess to thee thy mercies toward me. Let my bones be bathed in thy…

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enchir06 CHAPTER VI THE PROBLEM OF LYING 18. Here a most difficult and complex issue arises which I once dealt with in a large book, in response to the urgent…

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enchir22 CHAPTER XXII THE TWO CAUSES OF SIN 81. I shall now mention what I have often discussed before in other places in my short treatises.185 We sin from two…

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conbk09 AUGUSTINE'S CONFESSIONS BOOK NINE CHAPTER I "O Lord, I am thy servant; I am thy servant and the son of thy handmaid. Thou hast loosed my bonds. I will…

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