Colossians 3:5-9 Mortify therefore your members which are on the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence… It is not merely a thing of the past, as seen in the deluge, the destruction of Sodom, the overthrow of Israel in the wilderness; nor a thing wholly reserved for the world to come. It cometh as an enduring and essential principle of the Divine government. In physical debility and disease, in a shattered constitution, in dethroned reason, in destroyed power, you often witness the working of a righteous retribution, the marks of Divine indignation against sin. A sight of terrible penalty under God's law is it, to see a man carrying to a premature grave the evidences in his body of God's curse on sins of sensuality; to see the rich man, who has lived in avarice for gold, and has amassed it in millions, now in his old age unable to enjoy it, and haunted with the idea of dying in a workhouse; to see a man of pleasure, who has tried and exhausted all the resources of the world in finding it, now ending his days as a gloomy maniac. Yet these cases are nothing as compared with "the wrath to come; "only a few drops from a dark and dismal cloud, which will hereafter discharge itself in a storm of "judgment and fiery indignation." (J. Spence, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: |