Sin

To understand grace, to understand Christ aright, we must understand what sin is. And how otherwise can we come to this understanding than through the light of God and His Word?

Come with me to the beginning of the Bible. See there man created by God, after His image, and pronounced by his Creator to be very good. Then sin entered, as rebellion against God. Adam was driven out of Paradise, and was brought along with the untold millions of following generations under curse and ruin. That was the work of sin. Here we learn its nature and power.

Come further on, and see the Ark of Noah on Ararat. So terrible had godlessness become among men, God saw nothing for it but to destroy man

from off the earth. That was the work of sin.

- Come once more with me, to Sinai. God wished to establish His covenant with a new nation — with the people of Israel. But because of man’s sinfulness, He can do this only by appearing in darkness and lightning so terrible that Moses said: ‘‘I exceedingly fear and quake.’’ And before the end of the giving of the law, that awful message came: ‘‘Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the Book of the Law to do them.’’ It was sin which made that necessary.

Come once more with me, and this time to Calvary. There see what sin is, and the hatred and enmity with which the world cast out and crucified the Son of God. There sin reached its climax. There Christ was, by God Himself, made sin, and became a curse, as the only way to destroy sin. In the agony in which He prayed in Gethsemane, that He might not drink the terrible cup, and in the agony in which on the cross, in the deep darkness of desertion, He cried out: ‘‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’’ we obtain at least some faint idea of the curse and indescribable suffering

which sin brings. If anything can make us hate

and detest sin, it is Christ on the cross.

Come once again with me to the judgment-seat of the Great Day, and see the bottomless pit of darkness wherein countless souls will be plunged under the sentence: ‘‘Depart from Me ye cursed, into everlasting fire.’’ Oh, will not these words soften our hearts, and fill us with a never-to-be-forgotten horror of sin, so that we may hate it with a perfect

hatred?

And now is there anything else that can help

us to understand what sin is? Yes there is. Turn

your eyes inward, and behold your own heart, and see sin there. Remember that all you have already seen of the hatefulness and godlessness of sin should teach you what sin in your own heart means — all the enmity against God, all the ruin of men, all of its inner nature of hatefulness, lie hidden in the sin you have committed, and which still dwells in your heart. And if you then remember that you are a child of God, and yet commit sin and allow it sometimes fulfilling its lusts, is it not fitting that you should cry out with shame: ‘‘Woe is me, because of my sin’’? “Depart from me, for 1 am a sinful man, O Lord.’’

One great power of sin is that it blinds men so that they do not recognize its true character. Eiven the Christian himself finds an excuse in the thought that he can never be perfect, and that daily sin is a necessity. He is so accustomed to the thought of sinning, that he has almost lost the power and ability of mourning over sin. And yet there can

be no real progress in grace apart from an increased

consciousness of the sin and guilt of every transgression against God. And there cannot be a more important question than this: ‘‘How can I regain the lost tenderness of conscience, and become prepared really to offer to God the sacrifice of a broken heart?’’

Scripture teaches us the way. Let the Christian remember what God thinks about sin — the hatred with which His holiness burns against it, the solemn sacrifice which He made to conquer sin, and deliver. us from it. Let him tarry in God’s presence till His holiness shines upon him, and he eries out with Isaiah: ‘‘ Woe is me, for I am undone!”’

Let him remember the Cross, and what the love of Christ had to endure there, through the unspeakable pain which sin caused Him; and let him ask if this will not teach him.to hearken to the voice which says: ‘‘Oh, do not this abominable thing which I hate.’’ Let him take time, so that the blood and love of the Cross may exercise their full influence on him, and let him think of sin as nothing less than giving his hand to Satan, and his power. Is not this a terrible result of our prayerlessness, and of our short and hasty tarrying before God — that the true knowledge of sin is almost lost?

Let the believer think not only of what redemp- — tion has cost Christ, but also of the fact that Christ is offered to him, by the Holy Spirit, as a gift of inconceivable grace, through whom Divine forgiveness and purification and renewing have taken possession of him; and let him ask himself with what — 4

return such love should be repaid. If only time were taken to tarry in God’s presence and ask such questions, the Spirit of God would accomplish His work of conviction of sin in us, and would teach us to take an entirely new standpoint, and would give us a new view of sin. The thought would begin to arise in our hearts that we have in very deed been redeemed, so that in the power of Christ we may live every day as partners in the great victory which Christ obtained over sin on the Cross, and manifest it in our walk.

What think you? Do you not begin to see that the sin of prayerlessness has had a more terrible effect than you at first supposed? It is because of this hasty and superficial converse with God that the sense of sin is so weak, and that no motives have power to help you to hate and flee from sin as you ought. Nothing, nothing except the hidden humble, constant fellowship with God can teach you, as a child of God, to hate sin as God wants you to hate it.

Nothing, nothing but the constant nearness and un-

ceasing power of the living Christ can make it possible for you rightly to understand what gin is, and to detest it. And without this deeper understanding of sin, there will be no thought of appropriating the victory which is made possible for you in Christ Jesus, and will be wrought in you by the Spirit.

O my God, cause me to know my sin, and teach me to tarry before Thee and to wait on Thee till Thy

Spirit causes something of Thy holiness to rest upon me! O my God, cause me to know my sin, and let this drive me to listen to the promise: ‘‘He that abideth in Him sinneth not,’’? and to expect the fulfilment from Thee!