Titus 3:3 For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy… What slavery is like the slavery of sin? In every other case there is hope; there are lulls, at least, and intervals of anguish; there are alleviations, though perhaps they may be few and rare; there is patience, there is prayer; there may be the comfort of the cherished Spirit of God in the inner heart; there is death, in which the consummation of earthly tyranny works its own cure, and the slave is free forever; but in the slavery of sin there is no hope, no lull, no check, no flight, no patience, no prayer, no inward peace of a religious spirit counterbalancing the outward misery of the fettered limbs; and death, the limit of the one slavery, is but the terrible "beginning of the end" of the other; when sin, which has been allowed to rule in the heart and members during life, declares itself visibly and unmistakably to be the very tyrant of souls himself, the Prince of Darkness, to whose sway his slave is consigned to all eternity. (Bp. Moberly.) Parallel Verses KJV: For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another. |