The words of the Anglican Confession state: “Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we [that is ALL of us] have sinned against you and against our fellow men, in thought and word and deed, through negligence, through weakness, through our own deliberate fault…” All have sinned. There is no-one righteous, not even one. We can never fully keep the law, the word of God, because it is impossible for us not to sin! Certainly we try not to sin, and for a while we might succeed, but inevitably we end up sinning again, because it’s in our nature to sin!

Like the fable of the scorpion that asked a frog to carry him across the river because he couldn’t swim? ‘How do I know you won’t sting me?’ the frog asked. ‘Because if I do then we’ll both drown,’ he replied. So the scorpion hopped on the frog’s back and the frog climbed into the water. Half way across the river the scorpion stung him and as they were both drowning the frog cried: “You promised you wouldn’t sting me. Now we will both die. Why did you do it?” The scorpion replied, “I couldn’t not do it: it’s in my nature to sting!”