It is impossible to serve sin and to serve Christ. Favourite and constitutional sins must be relinquished. I know many persons who say that they are under concern of soul whose sincerity I more than question, because they continue in known sin, and yet they complain that they cannot find peace. How can they? If you meet with a person who drinks upon the sly and is frequently half intoxicated, if you hear him say that he cannot find rest in Christ, do you wonder? Do you not feel that he is a hypocrite?... Talk about having a Savior and continue to get drunk; I marvel that you do not perish like Ananias and Sapphira. Another man is carrying on his trade in a way which is dishonest, and yet he whines amid cants about not finding peace with God. Do not his own words condemn him? What has he to do with peace? How can he continue in sin and yet be saved from sin?
Oh, sirs, be not deceived; your sins and you must part or Jesus will have nothing to do with you. Do you think so badly of my Lord as to dream that he will pander to your passions by giving you liberty to live in sin and yet go to heaven? For shame! Has Christ come to play the lackey to your lusts and let you do the work of Satan and then receive the wages of the godly? Oh no, there must be a clean sweep of the false to make room for the true; we must have no Ishbosheth* if David is to be king. Though you may not attain perfection, yet in your desires you must be perfect; you must from your heart put away every single sin, be it of what shape it may, however pleasurable or painful it may appear. Off must come the right arms, and out must go the right eyes. It were better for you to enter into life maimed and blind than that you should perish in your transgressions.
* - See 2 Samuel chs. 2 & 3
From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Now Then Do It," delivered September 23, 1877. Image by Adrian Dreßler on Flickr under Creative Commons License.
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