SS. learning to do Theology, L4P3, cont'd

The Pattern by Which We are Drawn Out of Communion into Actual Sin

We are oftentimes because of the first acts of sin, before we are aware, carried into
distempered affections, foolish imaginations, pleasing delightfulness in things that
are not good nor profitable (pleasures in the idolatry of self), and hardened in unbelief and sin.

John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation: The Power and Efficacy of Indwelling Sin, p. 273

The Law and the Gospel are expositions of God's nature.

God is a righteous God = he lives for the advantage of others.

"Calvin on the Right Use of the Moral Law"

The office and use of the moral law shows the righteousness of God, warns, informs, convicts, and
condemns us of our own unrighteousness. For, we are blind and drunk with self-love; we must be
compelled to know and confess our own feebleness and impurity. if we are not clearly convinced of
our own vanity, we are puffed up with insane confidence in our own mental abilities, and can never
be compelled to recognize our inadequacies as long as we measure ourselves by the measure of our
own choice (Institutes, I1, 7.6.

So deep and torturous are the recesses of the evil of our own idolatry of self, if by the moral law, our
idol of self is not dragged from its secret hiding place, our idolatry of self destroys us so secretly that
we never even feel the fatal stab (Institutes, I1, 7,6.)