Sin is no abstract dogma. It is not a debt which somebody can pay and so wash off the slate. Sin is a fact within our lives. It is a condition of heart and will. There is no sin apart from a sinner. Wherever sin exists there is a conscious deviation from a standard--a sag of the nature, and it produces an effect upon the entire personality. The person who sins disobeys a sense of right. He falls below his vision of the good. He sees a path, but he does not walk in it. He hears a voice, but he says “no” instead of “yes.” He is aware of a higher self which makes its appeal, but he lets the lower have the reins. There is no description of sin anywhere to compare with the powerful narrative out of the actual life of the Apostle Paul, found in Romans VII: 9-25. The thing which moves us as we read it is the picture here drawn of our own state. A lower nature dominates us and spoils our life. “What I would I do not; what I would not that I do.” The most solemn fact of sin is its accumulation of consequences in the life of the person. Each sin tends to produce a _set_ of the nature. It weaves a mesh of habit. It makes toward a dominion, or as Paul calls it, a _law of sin_ in the man--“Wretched Man,” who sees a shining possible life, but stays below, chained to a body of sin. Sin, real sin, and not the fictitious abstraction which figures in theories, is a condition of personal will and action much more than a debt to be paid or forgiven. The problem is far deeper. The only possible remedy here is to get a new man, a transformation of personality. Relief from _penalty_ will not stead. Forgiveness is not enough. Relief from _penalty_, forgiveness alone, might spoil us, and make us think too lightly of our own sin. No, it is not a judicial relief which our panting, sin-defeated hearts cry out for. We want more than the knowledge that the past is covered and will not count on the books against us. We want blackness replaced by whiteness, we want weakness replaced by power, we want to experience a new set of our innermost nature which will make us more than conquerors. We seek deliverance not from penalty and debt--but deliverance from the life of sin into a life of holy will.