Romans 1:29-31 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder… I need not, I suppose, spend any time in illustrating the vividness and truthfulness of that metaphor which compares any kind of evil in a man's character to the silently, gradually, surely working leaven. The cancer spreads; the fungus creeps steadily through the rotting timber; the smallest hidden speck of evil in a man's nature has in it a demoniacal transforming and assimilating power which works underground, unconsciously even to the man himself, until some strain of temptation and stress of trial comes; and lo! he finds that what he thought was solid timber is all eaten out in the heart of it, and has no strength to resist or to bear. The smallest sin may corrupt a man's whole nature, and change, as it were, the chemical composition of every part of it; though in itself it be but an infinitesimal and almost invisible atom that has been dropped into the hole. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, |
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