Remembrance of Sin

EzEKEiL xvi. 63. That thou mayest remember, and be confounded, and never open thy mouth any more because of thy shame, when I am pacified toward thee for all that thou hast done.

Among the various points of difference between good men and bad, none is more clearly revealed in the Scriptures, and none more observable in Christian experience, than that a good man remembers his sinfulness, and a bad man forgets it. Wicked men may, from time to time, have severe compunctions of conscience; there may be periods in their history, and events in the providence of God, which fill them with alarm; but these terrors are occasional, and their sense of sin soon passes away. They try to forget it, and do forget it. Though the day is coming when the remembrance of it will be revived and imbittered, for the most part, they are too successful in their efforts to obliterate all such impressions. It is not so with a good man. He never lives in this state of spiritual death. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, do not pass away, and find him dead, torpid, and senseless. Not only is it impossible for him to live at ease in present sin, but it is impossible for him to live without frequently calling to mind the sins that are past. Men who do not feel, and act thus, give no evidence that they are good men; but, on the other hand, evidence that ought to be starthng to their own hopes, that they are in the gall of bitterness and bonds of iniquity. A good man may have strong and precious hopes that his sins are pardoned; but his inward peace, so far from destroying, or diminishing his sense of his own sinfulness, is but a new incentive to remember it, and “be confounded, and never open his mouth any more because of his shame, when God is pacified toward him for all that he has done.” It falls in with all the feelings of his renewed nature to feel thus. His hope in the divine mercy does not make him thoughtless; it does not lead him to forget what is past, nor ever dismiss the remembrance of his great sinfulness. In illustrating these general thoughts, I observe,

I. In the first place, Good men are incited to the remembrance of sin by their love of God.

It is characteristic of a good man, that he does not “live without God in the world.” God is much in his thoughts, and has the first place in his heart. “My meditation of him,” says the Psalmist, “shall be sweet; I will be glad in the Lord.” Elsewhere he says, “My soul shall be satisfied with marrow and fatness; my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips, when I remember thee upon my bed, when I meditate on thee in the night-watches.” The remembrance of God is very apt to bring with it the remembrance of sin. The mind even of a wicked man could not long be fixed upon God without being perplexed and embarrassed by the thought of his own sinfulness. Much more does a devout mind feel this. “I have heard of thee, by the hearing of the ear,” exclaimed Job, “but now mine eye seeth thee; wherefore, I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” He is the One we have lightly esteemed; the forgotten, dishonored, and injured One, who, because he is “pacified toward us,” is the more worthy of unoffending, unsinning love. His goodness leaves us without excuse, and makes our sins appear exceeding sinful. And it is just in this light, that good men wish and seek to view them. The clearer their conceptions of God, the more impressive is their remembrance of their own sinful, guilty, and odious conduct. Men make light of sin, only when they make light of God. They have low and mean thoughts of sin, only when they have low and mean thoughts of God. They forget sin, only when, like an atheistic world, they utterly forget God.

II. Good men are induced to the remembrance of sin, in the second place, by their attachment to the government and law which God has established.

It is characteristic of a good man, that he is 2i friend to the divine government and law. He feels himself to be the subject of the King of kings, and Lord of lords; whose supremacy gives him the throne, and who lives and reigns “God over all blessed for evermore.” Good men on the earth have, in every age, been distinguished for their attachment to the rightful authority of their divine Prince. The power, the grandeur, the riches of their great Sovereign; his glories, his favor, his resistless and universal dominion, have ever been the source of heartfelt gratulation and delight to those who have ceased to be rebels, and become loyal subjects. “O how love I thy law!” says the devout Psalmist. And again he says, “The Lord God Omnipotent reigneth, let the earth rejoice!” These, and thoughts like these, often dwell upon the lips of the children of God. And they are thoughts in their own nature adapted to bring with them the remembrance of their own sinfulness. “By the law is the knowledge of sin.” “Sin is the transgression of the law.” ‘’ Sin, by the commandment, becomes exceedingly sinful.” To require what is right, and forbid what is wrong, in deed, word, thought, and on pains and penalties which interminable ages show are commensurate with the transgressor’s ill desert, is that which every good man knows the Deity must do, or be undeified, and no longer God. Wherever sin exists, therefore, it is the same odious and ill-deserving thing. It is transgression of the law; it is the curse of the universe; it is the abhorrence of the divine mind. It is not less hateful, nor less hated of God, in any man, because he is a Christian; but rather more hateful, and more hated. Nor is his vivid and keen remembrance of his -iniquity at all abated, by the hope that the Holy Lawgiver is pacified toward such a sinner as himself. How can it be, in view of that law which he has so dishonored, and which his Saviour has so magnified and made honorable? Never can he lose sight of the criminality and turpitude of his transgressions, and never can they cease to be burdensome and, loathsome. Just as natural objects appear differently by the light in which they are seen, are the sins of men exhibited in true light by the law of God. Though committed in bygone years, they no longer appear at a distance; and though they once seemed small, they are now exhibited in truer magnitude. The heart bleeds at such a retrospect. Memory sinks the sin deep. And though atoning blood may give peace, it obliterates not the remembrance of the sin.

III. Good men are induced to the remembrance of sin, in the third place, by thew love of the Divine Saviour.

It is characteristic of every good man, that he is a sincere lover of Christ and his GospeL His love of Christ is his ruHng passion. He has forsaken all for Christ. He has cheerfully renounced every opposing and rival claim, and taken up his cross, that he might follow Christ. If not his earliest, Christ now has his first and best, love. There are no attachments he cannot renounce for the sake of Christ; no wealth which he cannot relinquish for the unsearchable riches of Christ; no honors he cannot forego for the honor which cometh from God only; no power he cannot disclaim in order to live for Christ, and reign with him; no knowledge he does not count as loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ his Lord. His presence is his highest joy; his Gospel th’e theme of his wondrous thoughts and admiring praise; his blood, is his purity and peace; his righteousness, his title to the heavenly inheritance. And therefore it is, that such a man remembers his iniquities, even when others forget them. His fondest love of Christ, and his most unclouded hopes, are immingled with many a bitter and touching recollection of his own vileness. Pardoned as he is, he feels deeply and tenderly what it is to be a pardoned sinner. The thought is often present to his mind, at what an amazing sacrifice this immunity was procured; by whose sorrows he is happy; by whose tears, he smiles; by whose death, he lives; by whose cross, he expects to reign. The vain fancy has fled, that there is some reason in himself why he should be the object of the divine favor. All that he hopes for is in defiance of his own unworthiness and ill desert. The very thought that “God is pacified toward him for all that he has done,” leads him to remember what a sinner he has been, and to be confounded, and never open his mouth any more because of his shame. A memory at peace with God is not a faithless memory; nor is a conscience pacified by the blood of sprinkling an unfeeling conscience. The Saviour forgives, but the forgiven does not forget his sins. That look of tenderness on Peter made him “go out and weep bitterly.” That thrice repeated question, “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?” opened all the sources of penitential recollection afresh. Christian love does not soon forget the injuries sin has done. It were a dreadful perversity of moral feeling, to be forgetful of sin because it is forgiven. Good men have a deeper sense of their sins after they are pardoned than before, and a more faithful remembrance of them. Pardon is precious, but it is the means to a greater and more important end. God forgives sin, that the grace expressed in forgiveness may produce that grateful love, which, while it remembers transgression, remembers only to forsake it How little do they understand of the Gospel, — of the revelation of the redeeming love of God, — of the tidings of mercy to sinners through a divine Mediator, who impute to it a tendency to lead the pardoned sinner to forget his sins. But,

IV. In the fourth place, good men are led to the remembrance of sin by an enlightened and tender conscience.

It is characteristic of every Christian, that he has an enlightened and, tender conscience. He is not merely an alarmed and awakened sinner, but the subject of ingenuous conviction. Nor is his conviction diminished because he is a Christian, but the rather increased; nor is it a transient and passing emotion, but one that remains. The convictions of conscience in an unrenewed man, are occasional; in a man who is born of God, they are habitual. The former are partial; the latter are universal, and extend to every form and degree of sin. In an unrenewed man they are the effect of fear merely; in the heart that is renewed, they are the effect of love. The consciences of wicked men know nothing of the high principles, the elevated motives, which give rise to that conviction for sin which exists in the bosom of the true Christian. The very relief which the conscience of a good man finds in confessing and forsaking his sins, and in a believing application to the blood of Christ, makes his conscience more tender and faithful. He does not inquire what is the lowest measure of grace to evince that he is a child of God; nor what, and how many sins he may commit, and yet be saved at last. He does not ask how sin may be sheltered and screened, but how it may be detected; nor does he seek to know how far it may be indulged, but how it may be mortified. And for the same reason, he does not seek to forget, but rather to remember it; and just in the degree in which his conscience becomes enlightened and tender. He welcomes all its reproaches, nor does he the less willingly call his sins to remembrance, that they fill him with self-loathing and self-condemnation. It is one of the privileges of his adoption, that God will not allow the conscience of such a man to become seared and hardened; but keeps it alive to search out, and mark down, and remember his wickedness. Nor does he restrain his conscience in her scrutinizing survey; but bids her remind him of all that he has done. Nor does she perform her work deceitfully; but calls to his remembrance all the aggravating circumstances of time, place, manner, rejected admonition and entreaty, the complicated character of his transgressions, the object at which he was aiming, the light he resisted, the influence he jeoparded, and the earnest dispensation of the Gospel he enjoyed. Nor does he stifle her voice, nor soften the severity of her censures, nor bribe her to judge him with lenity. His prayer to God has often been, “Make me to know my transgression and my sin;” and he who heareth prayer commissions conscience to make the mournful disclosure, that his people may remember and be confounded, and never open their “mouth any more, because of their shame, when he is pacified toward them for all that they have done.” I remark,

V. In the fifth place, There are great advantages in this remembrance of sin.

It is a most humbhng view of the human character which is brought t the mind of every Christian, in the remembrance of his past sins. The child of God has no sympathy with those who exalt the depraved character of man. In the humbling remembrance of his own wickedness, he has evidence that the human heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. He sees that his own history is but the counterpart of those descriptions of human apostasy, which are given in God’s word. Nor do these reminiscences obscure the light of his hopes, and lead him to despondency. He is not alone in them; but they are the common recollections of all the people of God. He would not be a Christian, if he did not feel that he had much to remember that needed to be forgiven. The fact that he thus remembers his wickedness, is to be attributed to the existence of those gracious affections which never have a place in the soul without many a confession of what is past. The Adversary may perplex his mind, disturb his peace, weaken his hands, and discourage his heart, and plunge him for a little season in darkness and despondency, by such a retrospect; but he is not ignorant of his devices. The more Christian men look within their own hearts, and look back upoM their own history, the more they see the wonderful fitness of that method of mercy which Christ has revealed, to the character and condition of just such sinners as they are. They feel that they have need of all the fulness of that great salvation, all its mercy, all its grace, and all the efficacy of its atoning blood. And they never have stronger impressions of its riches and gratuity, and of the hearty welcome with which it greets them, than in this humbling remembrance of their own vileness. The divine mercy is never so precious, as in such remembrances as these. And it is a happy sign of reconciliation to God, when the reception of that mercy quickens this remembrance, and your own humility and gratitude. That mercy fails of one of its most delightful effects, if it does not humble you and lead you to say, “God be merciful to me a sinner!” The more you cherish this remembrance, the more will you cherish the grateful remembrance of God’s love. The more will you trust him in view of all that is past; and the more will you continue to trust in him in time to come. The more will you love and obey him, and the more will you glorify and enjoy him forever.

There is one painful remark which I feel constrained to make in the conclusion of this discourse. And it is addressed to those of you, beloved hearers, who make light of sin. Sin is that which no being in the universe can make light of. God does not make light of it. The Saviour could not make light of it when he bore the heavy burden, not his own, upon the cross. Angels do not make light of it. The devils in hell cannot make light of it, but groan under the fearful load to all eternity. Good men cannot make light of it; but think of it and remember it with deep abasement and shame. And you, my friends, cannot always make light of it, nor always forget it. The time will come, when you will remember it all. God grant, that it may not be too late to escape from the awful burden! Memory will not always be thus inactive. Be sure your sin will find you out. Conscience will not always be thus torpid. The all-seeing eye has ever been upon you, and is upon you still. Ten thousand times ten thousand are the witnesses of all your wickedness. There is, indeed, no need of witnesses. You yourselves know all; and you yourselves will be witnesses of all. You cannot escape from the reproach and shame of sin, until you can escape from yourselves. Though you climb to the mountains, dig into the depths, conscience will be there. Fearful remembrances of sin and agonizing rebukes of conscience await you, even though you sleep on till death and the judgment. And still more fearful will they be, when from that judgment-seat you go away to that world, where the worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.

Nor is there any refuge from such a doom save one. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so has the Son of Man been lifted up. This is the remedy for the conscience stung with the guiU of sin. The universe knows no other. Memory is soothed in her recollections, when faith looks to this Lamb of God. The heart is sprinkled from an evil conscience, when its penitence flows out at the cross. Its wounds are stanched, and its anguish is relieved, by the blood of that Great Healer. You who make light of sin, make light of this mighty remedy. You who forget sin, forget the only cure and relief for sin. How long, thoughtless and forgetful sinner, how long wilt thou make light of them! Mercy yet knocks, calls, pleads, beseeches, and waits. Near as you are to the brink of destruction, there is an arm that can draw you back; great as is your danger, there is a hiding place that can shelter you. O escape for thy life! Turn ye to the stronghold, all ye who are as yet the prisoners of hope.