FAITH:
GIFT OF GOD; MAN: SINFULNESS OF; CONSCIENCE

In spite of our effort to make sinners think they are unhappy the fact is that wherever social and health conditions permit the masses of mankind enjoy themselves very much. Sin has its pleasures (Hebrews 11:25) and the vast majority of human beings have a whale of a time living. The conscience is a bit of a pest but most persons manage to strike a truce with it quite early in life and are not troubled much by it thereafter.

It takes a work of God in a man to sour him on the world and to turn him against himself; yet until this has happened to him he is psychologically unable to repent and believe. Any degree of contentment with the world’s moral standards or his own lack of holiness successfully blocks off the flow of faith into the man’s heart. Esau’s fatal flaw was moral complacency; Jacob’s only virtue was his bitter discontent.

John 6:37, 44; Ephesians 2:8–10; Hebrews 11:24–26

The Set of the Sail, 143, 144.