As I was studying Romans 8:1 this week in my sermon preparation time, I picked up Samuel Bolton’s The True Bounds of Christian Freedom (1645A.D.) to skim for important quotes I had underlined. This is one of the best, and it’s certainly worth sharing. As a Christian I have never read a more encouraging paragraph:
…God has mercy for ‘can-nots’, but none for ‘will-nots’. God can distinguish between weakness and wickedness. While you are under the law, this weakness is your wickedness, a sinful weakness, and therefore God hates it. Under the Gospel He looks not upon the weakness of the saints as their wickedness, and therefore He pities them. Sin makes those who are under the law the objects of God’s hatred. Sin in a believer makes him the object of God’s pity. Men, you know, hate poison in a toad, but pity it in a man. In the one it is their nature, in the other their disease. Sin in a wicked man is as poison in a toad; God hates it and him; it is the man’s nature. But sin in a child of God is like poison in a man; God pities him. He pities the saints for sins and infirmities, but hates the wicked. It is the nature of the one, the disease of the other (p. 43).
For the record, this is the best book on the idea of Law/Gospel, or on the straight-forward application of the gospel, that I have ever read.
