The Deceitfulness of Sin

Ttow hard it is for physicians to undeceive a consumptive patient! It is so painful that the office is seldom done. The victim of that flattering disease — vphich so often selects the fairest for its prey — tells us every day that she is better, and “will soon be out again.” The hectic flush which she mistakes for returning health is only a cunning mask behind which death steals in to strike the doomed one to the heart. Such is the deceitfuluess of disease.

We could to-day summon ten thousand slaves of the stimulating cup, and not one of them would acknowledge that he intends to become a drunkard. The fatal symptoms of their sin are all too legible in the flushed face, the unsteady gait, and the tipsy talk; and yet they stoutly insist that they “never take more than is good for them,” and that they “know just when to stop.” This is Satan’s catechism, which every tippler learns. Such is the deceitfulness of evil habit.

Now, just as the victims of a consumption or a cancer deceive themselves, just as the inebriate tries to conceal from himself the fatal serpent in his social glass, so do all impenitent persons deceive themselves as to the nature and enormity of their sins. They regard all sin against God as a light thing. Dishonesty in trade, falsehood, adultery, theft, treason, they understand perfectly to be exceedingly injurious to their victims and to society. But whUe they are keenly alive to every trespass against commercial integrity or social order, they utterly belittle all hearts in against a holy God. They regard it as a trifle; and secretly a vast majority of impenitent sinners hold that a future hell is an improbability. I once heard a learned judge say that the idea of future punishment was “a ghost-story, only fit to frighten weak-minded women.” What his infidel lips expressed coarsely millions who are not “infidels” believe in their inmost hearts. Their “hearts are hardened through the deceitfulness of sin” as to the very essence of sin, and as to the extent of their own guiltiness.

We do not exaggerate the importance of a right estimate of sin. This is a vital point in the soul’s salvation: it is more than a technic of theology. The nature of sin and its inherent ill-desert is a precise point where the rejectors of future punishment diverge from the path of truth. Only admit that sin is an infinite offence against Jehovah, and their error perishes in a moment, under the direct threatenings of God’s Word. It is at this point that Socinians leave us, and leave their Bibles too. They assume that sin is a light and venial thing that may be pardoned without an atonement; and then they discover no need of a Divine Redeemer to “make a propitiation” for the sinner. When a man is thoroughly convicted of his own guiltiness before God, he is seldom disturbed with any Socinian doubts as to the necessity of grasping Christ Jesus as his only Saviour. Sin appears to him so abominable an outrage against the holy and loving God, that he can understand why a Redeemer is indispensable, and why he should accept the all - sufficient One whom the gospel offers. In fact, this matter of estimating sin rightly lies at the dividing-spot between truth and error, with myriads of persons. This is the starting-point toward Calvary and heaven; or it is the “stumbling-point,” whence they precipitate them selves downward toward perdition.

After all, what is sin? It is a transgression of the law of God, and it proceeds from the heart. It lies not only in evil performances, but in evil purposes. If sin is committed against God, what does God himself say about it 1 He pronounces it in his Word to be “exceeding sinful,” — “the abominable thing that he hates.” He compares it to a loathsome leprosy. He declares that the “wages of sin is death.” He declares that even the “evil thoughts” which proceed from the heart “defile a man,” and that nothing that defileth shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. Many passages in God’s Word flash red with holy wrath against sin as the stupendous crime against the government of Jehovah.

Human history is the record of what sin has wrought from Eden to this hour. Sin gives birth to every real sorrow. Sin mingles every cup of temptation. Sin breeds every war. Sin blanches every corpse. Sin digs every grave. Sin weaves every shroud. Sin kindles the fires of future torment. As Chalmers has nervously phrased it, “the waste and the havoc of centuries that are gone, and the waste and havoc of centuries yet to come, all reverberate in one awful voice, ‘Death hath passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.’”

The crowning evidence of the exceeding enormity of sin is seen on Calvary. What reared the cross ] What wove the crown of thorns? What mingled the bitter cup which the suffering Jesus prayed “might pass from him “? What slew the Lamb of God? Heaven, earth, and hell, all answer sin. On that background of infinite love — the love of Him who died for sinners — human guilt stands out with a midnight malignity of blackness!

Impenitent friend! come up to Calvary, and see yourself in the light of that wonderful scene! See what sin is doing there, what your sin deserves, and what Jesus bore there for you, the sinner. Confess there what you cannot deny, that you are rejecting Him who shed his blood for you. Confess that you are making a mock at sin, and treating it as a trifle. Confess that you are among Christ’s crucifiers. And then pretend, if you dare, that you are not guilty. If those who despise Moses’s law perish, “of how much sorer punishment will you be thought worthy who have trodden under foot the Son of God, and have counted the blood of the covenant an unholy thing?”

That men who are guilty of such a crime against the loving Jesus should esteem it a small and venial matter, is the strongest proof of the “deceitfulness of sin.” Other arguments cluster about it; but we have no space to cite them. We might remind you of the thousand false promises sin makes, but never keeps. It promises happiness, and pays in remorse. It smiles and smiles, and “murders while it smiles.” It whispers “ye shall not surely die,” but its wages are death everlasting.

We have read of a singular tree that forcibly illustrates the deceitfulness of sin. It is called the Judas-tree. The blossoms appear before the leaves, and they are of brilliant crimson. The flaming beauty of the flowers attracts innumerable insects, and the wandering bee is drawn to it to gather honey. But every bee that alights upon the blossoms imbibes a fatal opiate, and drops dead from among the crimson flowers to the earth! Beneath this enticing tree the earth, is strewed with the victims of its fatal fascinations. That fatal plant that attracts only to destroy is a vivid emblem of the deceitfulness and deadliness of sin. For the poison of sin’s bewitching flowers there is but one remedy. It is found in the “leaves of the tree of life,” that groweth on Mount Calvary.