Sin is a debt, a burden, a thief, a sickness, a leprosy, a plague, a poison, a serpent, a sting. Everything that man hates, sin is.
A load of curses and calamities beneath whose crushing intolerable pressure, the whole creation groans.
Who is the undertaker that digs man a grave?
Who is the painted temptress that steals his virtue?
Who is the murderess that destroys his life?
Who is the sorceress that first deceives and then damns his soul?
Sin.
Who with icy breath blights the fair blossoms of youth?
Who breaks the hearts of parents?
Who brings old men gray hairs with sorrow to the grave?
Sin.
Who changes gentle children into vipers, tender mothers into monsters, and their fathers into worse than Herods, the murderers of their own innocence?
Sin.
Who casts the apple of discord on household hearts?
Who lights the torch of war and bears it blazing over trembling lands?
Who by division in the church rends Christ’s seamless robe?
Sin.
Who is this Delilah that sings the Nazarite asleep and delivers up the strength of God into the hands of the uncircumcised? Who, winning smile on her face, honeyed flattery on her tongue, stands in the door to offer the sacred rites of hospitality, and when suspicion sleeps, treacherously pierces our temples with a nail?
What fair siren is this who seated on a rock by the deadly pool smiles to deceive, sings to lure, kisses to betray and flings her arms around our neck to leap with us into perdition?
Sin.
Who turns the soft and gentlest heart to stone?
Who hurls reason from her lofty throne and impels sinners mad as Gadarene swine to run down the precipice into a lake of fire?
Sin.
— Dr. Thomas Guthrie, from a sermon quoted by John MacArthur in the exposition of Romans 6:15-18