A flippant youth asked a preacher, “You say that unsaved people carry a weight of sin. I feel nothing. How heavy is sin? Is it ten pounds? Eighty pounds?”
The preacher replied by asking the youth, “If you laid a 400-pound weight on a corpse, would it feel the load?” The youth replied, “It would feel nothing because it is dead.”
The preacher concluded, “That spirit, too, is indeed dead which feels no load of sin or is indifferent to its burden and flippant about its presence.” The youth was silenced.
Sin is like a woodpecker. Each particular attack makes noise but doesn’t seem to do much damage. But, like a woodpecker, if you let it chip away at your life long enough, it will leave many an ugly hole that never fills in.
J. C. Ryle, the first bishop of Liverpool, England (Anglican) wrote over 200 evangelical tracts, of which 2 million were distributed – The very animals whose smell is most offensive to us have no idea that they are offensive, and are not offensive to one another. And man, fallen man, has just no idea what a vile thing sin is in the sight of God.