February 27

We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened. - 2 Corinthians 5:4.

AND burdened with what? How numberless are the evils under which believers groan, and by which they are pressed down to the ground! It would be endless to particularize them, but we may arrange them under two classes. First, Those evils which Christians endure in common with their fellow-creatures. “For man,” says Job, “is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.”

Secondly, The burdens of the Christian comprehend those painful things that are peculiar to themselves,-the persecutions for Christ’s sake which they experience from the world, the temptations of Satan, and, above all, they groan, being burdened with their sins. “Mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of my head; therefore my heart faileth me.”

At the beginning of the Christian life, we are enabled, by application to the blood of sprinkling, to have the “conscience cleansed from dead works to serve the living God,” and to enter into rest with regard to justification; but then, after this, in the remains of them, sin continues to be burdensome to the Christian all through life, and will be increasingly burdensome in proportion as he is increasingly holy. Paul was a singular sufferer, but he did not speak of any of his sufferings as he did of this,-the sin that was still dwelling in him; that when he would do good evil was present with him; and how to perform that which was good he found not, and therefore he says, “Oh, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”

Christians therefore groan often under moral infirmities. While the people of the world sneer at them as if they were licentious, as if they were always ready to plead for sin, Christians groan under the burden of those infirmities which their adversaries never feel as sins at all. You may lay any heavy load upon a dead man, and he does not feel the burden; you may drive a sword through his body, and he will neither move nor cry; but a living body feels the least pressure, and a mote in the eye will make the sufferer wretched for the time. So it is with the Christian.

Oh, there is enough here to induce Christians to groan, being burdened! It is said of that beautiful bird, the bird of paradise, that being once caught and caged it never leaves off sighing till it is set free. That bird is the Christian; he never leaves off sighing till he enters the glorious liberty of the sons of God.