From J. C. Philpot's Daily Portions
December 8 "But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound."
Romans 5:20 In order to know what grace is in its reign over sin, and
in its super-aboundings over the aboundings of iniquity, we must be led
experimentally into the depths of the fall. We must be led by God himself
into the secrets of our own heart; we must be brought down into distress of
mind on account of our sin and the idolatry of our fallen nature. And when,
do what we will, sin will still work, reign, and abound, and we are brought
to soul poverty, helplessness, destitution, and misery, and cast ourselves
down at the footstool of his mercy--then we begin to see and feel the reign
of grace, in quickening our souls, in delivering us from the wrath to come,
and in preserving us from the dominion of evil. We begin to see then that
grace superabounds over all the aboundings of sin in our evil hearts, and as
it flows through the channel of the Savior's sufferings, that it will never
leave its favored objects until it brings them into the enjoyment of eternal
life! And if this does not melt and move the soul, and make a man praise and
bless God, nothing will, nothing can! But until we have entered into the depths of our own
iniquities, until we are led into the chambers of imagery, and brought to
sigh, groan, grieve, and cry under the burden of guilt on the conscience and
the workings of secret sin in the heart--it cannot be really known. And to
learn it thus, is a very different thing from learning it from books, or
ministers. To learn it in the depths of a troubled heart, by God's own
teaching, is a very different thing from learning it from the words of a
minister or even from the word of God itself. We can never know these things
savingly and effectually, until God himself is pleased to apply them with
his own blessed power, and communicate an unctuous savor of them to our
hearts, that we may know the truth, and find to our soul's consolation, that
the truth makes us free!