If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:8-10)

The Christian never sins with that enormity of boasting of which the unregenerate are guilty. Others wallow in transgressions and make their shame their glory, but if the believer falls, he is very quiet, mournful, and vexed.

Sinners go to their sins as children to their own father’s orchard, but believers slink away like thieves when they have been stealing forbidden fruit. Shame and sin are always in close company in a Christian.

If he be drunken with evil, he will be ashamed of himself and go to his bed like a whipped cur. He cannot proclaim his transgressions as some do in the midst of a ribald crowd, boasting of their exploits of evil.

His heart is broken within him, ands when he has sinned he goes with sore bones for many and many a day. Nor does he win with the fullness of deliberation that belongs to other men. The sinner can sit down by the month together and think over the iniquity that he means to perpetrate, till he gets his plans well organized and has matured his project, but the Christian cannot do this.

He may put the sin into his mouth and swallow it in a moment, but he cannot continue to roll it under his tongue. He who can carefully arrange and plot a transgression is still a true child of the old serpent. ((Charles Spurgeon, At the Master’s Feet [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005], June 12.))

Charles Spurgeon

Further reading

• WF PASTRIX PAULA WHITE: AS PAUL IS TO TIMOTHY, SO T.D. JAKES IS TO ME
• RICK WARREN MENTOR PETER DRUCKER: “I’M NOT A BORN AGAIN CHRISTIAN”
• UNREPENTANT “PORN KING,” RON JEREMY TEACHING IN ROCK CHURCH OF MILES MCPHERSON?