The Carnal Mind is Enmity Against God pt.9 Spurgeon

III. I have said that I would endeavor, in the third place, to show the great enormity of this guilt.
I do fear, my Brethren, that very often when we consider our state we think not so much of the guilt as of the misery. I have sometimes read sermons upon the inclination of the sinner to evil, in which it has been very powerfully proved and certainly the pride of human nature has been well humbled and brought low. But one thing always strikes me, if it is left out, as being a very great omission—the doctrine that man is guilty in all these things. If His heart is against God, we ought to tell him it is his sin. And if he cannot repent we ought to show him that sin is the sole cause of his disability—that all his alienation from God is sin—that as long as he keeps from God it is sin.

I fear many of us here must acknowledge that we do not charge the sin of it to our own consciences. Yes, say we, we have many corruptions. Oh, yes. But we sit down very contented. My Brethren we ought not to do so. The having those corruptions is our crime which should be confessed as an enormous evil. If I, as a minister of the Gospel, do not press home the sin of the thing, I have missed what is the very virus of it. I have left out the very essence if I have not shown that it is a crime. Now, “the carnal mind is enmity against God.” What a sin it is! This will appear in two ways. Consider the relation in which we stand to God and then remember what God is. And after I have spoken of these two things, I hope you will see, indeed, that it is a sin to be at enmity with God.

What is God to us? He is the Creator of the heavens and the earth. He bears up the pillars of the universe, His breath perfumes the flowers. His brush paints them. He is the Author of this fair creation. “We are the sheep of His pasture, He has made us and not we ourselves.” He stands to us in the relationship of a Maker and Creator and from that fact He claims to be our King. He is our Legislator our Law-maker. And then, to make our crime still worse and worse, He is the Ruler of Providence. For it is He who keeps us daily. He supplies our wants. He keeps the breath within our nostrils. He bids the blood still pursue its course through the veins. He holds us in life and prevents us from death. He stands before us, our Creator, our King, our Sustainer, our Benefactor. And I ask, is it not a sin of enormous magnitude—is it not high treason against the Emperor of Heaven—is it not an awful sin, the depth of which we cannot fathom with the line of all our judgment—that we, His creatures, dependent upon Him, should be at enmity with God?

But the crime may be seen to be worse when we think of what God is. Let me appeal personally to you in an interrogatory style for this has weight with it. Sinner! Why are you at enmity with God? God is the God of Love, He is kind to His creatures. He regards you with His love of benevolence. This very day His sun has shone upon you. This day you have had food and raiment and you have come up here in health and strength. Do you hate God because He loves you? Is that the reason? Consider how many mercies you have received at His hands all your lives long! You are born with a body not deformed, you have had a tolerable share of health. You have been recovered many times from sickness.

When lying at the gates of death His arm has held back your soul from the last step to destruction. Do you hate God for all this? Do you hate Him because He spared your life by His tender mercy? Behold His goodness that He has spread before you! He might have sent you to Hell, but you are here. Now, do you hate God for sparing you? Oh, why are you at enmity with Him? My fellow Creature, do you not know that God sent His Son from His bosom, hung Him on the tree and there suffered Him to die for sinners, the Just for the unjust? And do you hate God for that?