Sin is the only real colour element left in modern life.

God's forgiveness is the only thing. And, well, I take full responsibility for the adultery. It was my fault and, you know, no matter what went on, the man has to take responsibility and I do.

He had angered Providence by resisting too many temptations. There was nothing left but heaven, where he would meet only those who, like him, had wasted earth.

But it was too late. He had angered Providence by resisting too many temptations. There was nothing left but heaven, where he would meet only those who, like him, had wasted earth.

The entire thrust of this season at the end of the church year is designed to bring us face-to-face with reality—reality about sin and death, reality about the human race, reality about God. Something ultimate has entered our world, something or Someone that calls us to attention, calls us out of our daily preoccupations and our routine points of view. That is what this season with its special biblical readings is designed to reveal.

For Paul, it is not God, but the curse of the Law that condemned Jesus. In his death, Paul declares, Jesus was giving himself over to the Enemy — to Sin, to its ally the Law, and to its wage, Death (Rom. 6:23; 7:8-11). This was his warfare. That is one of the most important reasons — perhaps the most important — that Jesus was crucified, for no other mode of execution would have been commensurate with the extremity of humanity's condition under Sin.

Today's man of the world proclaims that sin, and his enterprising in sin, are a part of modern living, but it is not modern. It goes back to Adam and Eve - to desire and the temptation to know - to experience evil.

Think of a sinner who is sinking in the abyss; listen to his cry of anguish when with his last groan he vindicates the justice his life has mocked and says: It is self-inflicted

Kierkegaard says: "An ethic which ignores sin is an absolutely idle science.

By Thy birth, and by Thy Cross, Rescue him from endless loss; By Thy death and burial, Save him from a final fall; By Thy rising from the tomb, By Thy mounting up above, By the Spirit's gracious love, Save him in the day of doom.

So true is it that all sin is ultimately against the Lord; so bitter is the root of self; and so terrible the power of evil in its constantly growing strength, till it casts out all fear of God or care for man.

In damnation, the sinner receives what he deserves; in salvation, the saved sinner receives what he does not deserve. Judgment is all of merit; salvation is all of grace.