They Chose Affliction Rather Than Sin
By Jeremiah Burroughs
First, those servants of God, who have been guided by the wisdom of
God to make their choice, have rather chosen the sorest and most dreadful
afflictions in this world than willingly commit the least sin. For example, if
you would but turn your thoughts to what you have read or heard of the martyrs,
what hideous and grievous torments they suffered, the boiling of their bodies in
scalding lead, laying their naked backs on hot gridirons, rending and tearing
their members in pieces with horses, pulling their flesh off with pinchers, and
others by red-hot burning tongs, enduring their flesh to be scorched by being
broiled, first on one side, then on the other side. Yes, weak women have endured
this, to have their flesh harrowed with stones and sharp irons, to have bodies
slayed and then thrown into rivers of cold ice, and a thousand more things,
whatever hell and wicked men could devise. They were content to endure all this,
and certainly could they have devised ten thousand times more exquisite torments
than they did, they would have been content to have endured that, and whatever
else, rather than to act against their consciences and commit the least sin. And
they accounted this to be a good choice when, as they saw sin against their
consciences on the one hand and all their torments on the other, they rather
embraced these tortures than embrace that sin.
They could endure all the tortures on their bodies that could be devised
rather than to commit any known sin against their consciences, and yet you will
venture to commit a known sin against your conscience rather than to be found
out in some fault and have an angry word or a little shame! If it is only to
gain two pence, you will tell a lie, and are willing to choose sin rather than
endure the least trouble. A mighty difference between you and them.
You know how it was with Paul. When he speaks of afflictions, these are his
expressions: they are but light and momentary; they are but for a moment,
but they work an exceeding weight of glory. Mark it. Light afflictions.
What were they? You would count them heavy if they were upon you. Paul was
whipped up and down as if he had been a rogue. He was put into stocks. He did
not have clothes to cover his nakedness; he had not bread to eat, and he was
accounted the off-scouring of the world, and yet he accounts all this but light.
But when he comes to sin, that is heavy! O wretched man that I am!
Thus he gives a dreadful shriek at sin. See what a difference he makes between
affliction and sin, and accounts it abundantly more evil to be in sin than to be
in affliction. And so it was with Christ Himself, who was content for the sake
of poor souls to come and undergo all kind of affliction and pain and sorrow; to
have His body whipped and scourged; to be laughed at and scorned; to bear the
wrath of God for the sin of man, to be made a curse for man under the curse of
the law, and to be under such extreme pain through the wrath of His Father that
He sweat great drops of blood.
All this Christ willingly endured. But now, if it had been to have committed
the least sin to have saved all the world, Christ would never have done it.
Though Christ could be content to suffer all kinds of miseries, yes, even the
wrath of His Father, yet had it been to have committed the least sin, Christ
would have let all the world be damned eternally rather than that He would done
that, there being so much evil in it. Christ was content to make His very
soul an offering for sin. But sin is so great an evil that Christ was not
capable of it.
Christ never entertained the least thought of it, but cast it off if it ever
came to Him. The afflictions that Christ endured, though they were not every way
the same with the damned in hell, yet certainly they were as real and true. And,
therefore, see that Christ was capable of that evil, of the wrath of the
Almighty upon His soul, and yet not capable of sin. He was willing to undergo
that, and yet not to have the least guilt of sin applied to Him. And
therefore, certainly, there is more evil in the least sin than in the greatest
affliction.
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