There are few sinners but what hope to repent before they die, and nevertheless continue to swallow the damnable intoxicating draughts of sin. The extravagant folly of such person may be compared to that of a man who stabs himself in order to heal the wound again…There are those who plunge themselves deeper and deeper into sin, in order to stifle the thoughts of those sins which they have already committed; this is just as if a man should drink a dose of poison to expel another. Sir Richard Hill
Sin is the most horrible thing in the universe, though indeed few see it that way in reality. Sin is not just an intellectual theory, but it is reality at its very worst. Sin, because it is human nature, is not just a power exerted from the outside upon man, but instead it is the very nature of man. The very nature of man is depraved and sinful, though part of that sinful nature is pride and that hides sin from man to some degree. Men can see that there are things in the world that harm people and they will agree that those things are sin, but what they cannot see is that all a person does comes from the heart. If the heart is bad, then all the things that a person does is bad even if the things appear as good to the love a person has for self.
The eye of faith beholds what sin does to the soul, but those without faith only pursue and can understand whether it is good for their pleasure at the moment. While no sinner that understands the true nature of hell will want to go there, so clearly they hope to repent in some way before they die. But they don’t truly desire a true repentance because they continue to give themselves to those things that are the opposite of repentance. Sin is what hardens the heart and yet they continue to give themselves to sin which hardens the heart while they give lip service to saying they want to repent.
As Hill points out, people give themselves over to more and more sin in order to stifle the thoughts of previous sin and the pangs of conscience that go with it. These people give themselves over to sin just in order to feel better or stop the pain. They give themselves over to sin in order to sleep at night, but they will not wake up to the fact that they are doing the very thing that caused the problem in the first place. If sin causes the problem, and it does, then it will do no good to continue in sin to stifle previous sins. It is a circular issue and people will need to go deeper into sin in the future to stifle the memory and conscience of sins committed now.
In the statements by Hill above we see some things opened and revealed our understanding about modern society. Sin brings misery, though people don’t like that thought. They want to be free from pain and misery, yet they don’t want to give up the things that cause the pain and misery. People go on in their sin and they go to counselors who pump them up and provide them with medication or false theories that will allow them to go on in their sin. Sin is essentially living for the glory, honor, and pleasure of self rather than the glory, honor, and pleasure of God. No matter what people do apart from a true repentance granted them by God, they will go deeper into misery.
We can see many of the problems of modern professing “Christianity” in the writing by Hill. People want to go to heaven by a wide path and take their sins with them. While this is not true Christianity, it does expose what the hirelings and charlatans are doing. They are raking in lots of money while helping the people go along in their misery. Some people entertain themselves to death in order to keep them from thinking about their misery, yet others give themselves to religion in order to stifle their conscience and misery. Some want an easy road to heaven and so they have an easy type of belief, yet others want to earn a lot if not most of it and so they want a hard road to heaven. The problem, however, is that neither of those roads are the narrow road, but instead both are on the broad road. There is only one way to deal with sin and that is the blood of Christ who gives true repentance by grace alone. False Christians may seem to have more fun, but they actually have more misery. The Beatitudes tell us that those who mourn are those who are “happy” or are truly blessed. Sin brings misery regardless of what one holds to as a creed or as an intellectual or historical faith. Only the risen Christ living in the heart of man can bring true contentment and true joy.
God Loves... Himself 
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