Danger Signals

“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” — i yohn i. 8.

HOW often is this text quoted by the nominal Christian, as if it were an excuse for continuing in sin. And sometimes we have heard it referred to as an argument against the possibility of being freed in this life from the service of sin.

But if there are those who thus abuse this passage of Scripture, let us by no means fall into the opposite delusion by concluding, as some have done, that the text does not refer to the believer at all.

Nothing is clearer, as we see from the context, than that the persons addressed are the true children of God, and that the danger against which we are warned is that which meets us at the point of highest privilege.

It is not a temptation to which a careless worldling, or even an inconsistent believer, is exposed. As Dr. Candlish says: “It is not deliberate hypocrisy that we are here warned against; but a far more subtle form of falsehood, and one apt more easily to beset us as believers even when most seriously and earnestly bent on “walking in the light as God is in the light” The danger “lies in the line of our sanctification.**” For a time the new insight we have got, under that light in which we walk, into the spiritual law of God, and into our own carnal selves, keeps us shut up into Christ; and into that continual * sprinkling of His blood upon us, without which we cannot have a moment’s peace, or a moment’s sense of being cleansed from sin. But gradually we come to be more at ease. We cannot be altogether insensible to the growing satisfaction of our new standing with God, and our new feelings towards Him. Before the fervour of our first fresh love, inward struggles are hushed. The evil that but

yesterday seemed so unconquerable ceases to make itself so acutely felt. The crisis is past; the war, as a war to the knife, is ended; grace prevails; iniquity, as ashamed, hides its face.

**Ah! then begins the secret lurking inclination to cherish within myself some thought equivalent to * saying that I have no sin.* It may not so express itself. It may not be self-acknowledged, or even self-conscious. It comes insidiously as a thief to steal away my integrity before I am aware of it. Remaining corruption in me ceases gradually to give trouble or distress. A certain lethargic proneness to acquiesce in things as they are creeps over me. I am not conscious of anything very far amiss in my spiritual experience or in my practical behaviour. I begin to ’ say that I have no sin.*

But * I deceive myself, and the truth is not in me.* I am fast sinking into my old natural habit of evasion and equivocation.

of self-excuse and self-justification. ‘Guile’ is taking the place of * truth ’ — the truth of God — * in my spirit,* * in my inward parts.* I cease to be as sensitively alive as I once was to whatever in me or about me cannot stand the light. I am thus incurring a serious hazard: the hazard of being found ’ walking in darkness,* and so disqualifying myself for fellowship with * Him who is light.* And I am apt to lose a very precious privilege: the privilege of continual and constant confession, in order to continual and constant forgiveness.** We believe this witness is true.

Let us thank God, then, for so lovingly giving us this safeguard against such a danger.

The use of such passages of Scripture may be made clearer by an illustration.

We all like to travel by express train. But speed alone is not all that is essential. Suppose as you are entering the carriage the guard comes up and informs you that the

“express,” by which you are about to travel, will be run that day without “brakes,” or “danger signals.” However great might be your desire to have plenty of steam, no consideration would induce you to risk your life on such a wild and reckless journey.

So God, in His word, has not only instructed us concerning the mighty power by which the believer is to be filled, but He has also graciously given us certain safeguards to preserve us from running off the lines of “truth and soberness.”

Let no man, therefore, presume, under any plea whatever, to remove the danger-signals which God Himself has placed on the line of the believer’s sanctification. Let us take these words, and similar passages of Scriptuce, as they stand, and accept them in their plain and evident meaning. And while we would zealously testify to the unlimited power and fulness we have in Christ for “cleansing from all unrighteousness,” as well as for the pardon of all sin, let us never suppose we can ever

attain an experience or arrive at a condition in this life, in which we may say truthfully we have no sin ‘*; or, what is equivalent to it, that we no longer need continually the power and efficacy of the cleansing blood.