Your state is not at all to be measured by the opposition that sin makes to you, but by the opposition you make to it.
Interpretation
Your worth is determined by how you resist wrongdoing rather than by how wrongdoing affects you.
This quote highlights the importance of personal character and moral strength in the face of challenges. Rather than measuring oneself by external struggles or temptations, it emphasizes the need to focus on one's own actions and resistance against immorality, suggesting that true integrity comes from without and the actions you take against sin.
In practice
In a motivational speech about integrity and character.
Because he is; that is, because he is an infinitely glorious, good, wise, holy, powerful, righteous, self-subsisting , self-sufficient , and all-sufficient being; the fountain and author of all being and good; the first cause, last end, and sovereign Lord of all; therefore, he is to be worshipped: therefore, are we to admire, adore, and love him; to praise, to trust and to fear him.
If I have observed anything by experience, it is this: a man may take the measure of his growth and decay in grace according to his thoughts and meditations upon the person of Christ, and the glory of Christ's Kingdom, and of His love.
Mortification is the soul's vigorous opposition to self, wherein sincerity is most evident.
The growth of trees and plants takes place so slowly that it is not easily seen. Daily we notice little change. But, in course of time, we see that a great change has taken place. So it is with grace. Sanctification is a progressive, lifelong work (Prov 4:18). It is an amazing work of God's grace and it is a work to be prayed for (Rom 8:27).
Free will is "corrupted nature's deformed darling, the Pallas or beloved self-conception of darkened minds"
A man may be carried on in a constant course of mortification all his days; and yet perhaps never enjoy a good day of peace and consolation.
To recommend a monarchy on account of the prosperity it gives the provinces seems to me like recommending that a man should have liberty to treat his children as slaves, if at the same time he treats his slaves with reasonable consideration.
I think of the security of cages. How violence, cruelty, oppression, become a kind of home, a familiar pattern, a cage, in which we know how to operate and define ourselves.
The difference between life and the movies is that a script has to make sense, and life doesn't.
As compacts, charters of government are superior in obligation to all others, because they give effect to all others. As truths, none can be more sacred, because they are bound, on the conscience by the religious sanctions of an oath. As metes and bounds of government, they transcend all other land-marks, because every public usurpation is an encroachment on the private right, not of one, but of all.
There is a sense in which we are all each other's consequences
Evolutionary psychologists seem to want to unmask our noblest motives as ultimately self-interested - to show that our love for children, compassion for the unfortunate and sense of justice are just tactics in a Darwinian struggle to perpetuate our genes.
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