Looking at the Cross

What things in Christ's death especially reveal themselves to us? Three things: wonderful love, that he died for us; wonderful hatred, that he would die for sin; and wonderful holiness and love of grace.
From where does hatred of sin come, but from wondrous purity and holiness that cannot endure sin? And when the soul considers that it is one with Christ, it has the same disposition that Christ had. Christ in love for us died. Can I apprehend that love of Christ when he died and was crucified and tormented for my sin, unless, out of love, I hate sin again? And when I consider how Christ died to purge sin and to satisfy for it, can I, being one with him, have any attitude other than he had upon the cross? I cannot.
I cannot but hate sin; and, hating sin, I must re-enact his part. That is, as he died for sin, so I die to sin; as he was crucified for it, so it is crucified in me; as he was pierced, so he gives corruption a stab in me; as he was buried, so my corruption is buried; and as he died once never to die again, so I follow my sins to the grave, to the death of old Adam, that he never rises again. These and similar thoughts are stirred up in a Christian, which Paul aims at in Romans 6 and other passages. As the power of God's Spirit raised him up when he was at the lowest, after three days in the grave, so the Spirit in every Christian raises him up at the lowest, to comfort, to a further degree of grace, more and more. When Christians are fallen into any sin or any affliction for sin, when they are tripped and undermined by their corruptions, the same power that raised Christ from the grave raises them from their sins daily, that they gather strength against them. And when we are at the lowest, in the grave, the same power will raise us like Christ in every way.

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Richard Sibbes 'Refreshment for the Soul.'
Glorious Freedom, pp. 117-18 [128-29]
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