090. SOME WILL NOT CEASE TO SIN

SOME WILL NOT CEASE TO SIN With these preliminary explanations we may proceed at once to three separate statements, which contain in them the essence of the Scripture doctrine of eternal punishment. They are the following: First, there are some men who, throughout eternity, will not cease to sin against God. Secondly, this eternal sinning against God will involve eternal misery. Thirdly, this misery will be the appointed vindication of God’s law, and so will be an eternal punishment.

Let us take the first point and consider it. There are some men who throughout eternity will not cease to sin against God. In order to make more plain the significance of this statement, we may translate it into other language. Since the great command of the law is, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God," and the refusal to love God is the one great sin, the proposition may run: There are men who throughout eternity will not love God. Their sin will be a voluntary declination to trust or obey their Creator, a voluntary withholding from him of the affection of their hearts, a voluntary withdrawal of themselves from the influx of his light and love.

Judging of the matter upon purely a priori grounds, it might seem impossible for moral creatures thus to decide against God. It might seem impossible for God to permit sin or to inflict punishment. But facts show us that men do sin, and that God has permitted them to sin, while at the same time he punishes their sin, at least in this world. The only explanation of the problem lies in man’s freedom. He has a will, which he may set supremely on good or evil, self or God, and . then, as a responsible being, he must stand the conse quences of his choice. We see what the results of this scheme have been. Men have turned away from God. They dislike his presence and his law. And this dislike becomes confirmed and fixed, until no arguments or influences which can be brought to bear upon them will ever change it into love. This was the condition of those to whom the Saviour uttered the words in Mark’s Gospel; or, if it was not already their actual condition, they were in danger of falling into it. They had set themselves against God, and their sin was in danger of becoming an eternal sin, a sin into which they had so put their heart and will that there would be no disposition to retrace their steps, and so their opposition to truth and righteousness and love would be everlasting. The advocates of universal salvation are usually advocates of an unresisted and absolute freedom of the human will. Many of them declare that man can choose good or evil, at any moment, whatever may be his surroundings, or whatever may be his previous character. He has the power, they say, at any moment, to choose holiness and God. He has equal power, in spite of all motives to a contrary course, to chose sin and Satan. And yet these advocates of unlimited freedom deny the possibility of the will’s permanently choosing evil. They are very inconsistent with themselves. They strenuously maintain the inalienable freedom of the human will to make choices contrary to all the motives which are brought, or can be brought, to bear upon it. They grant that, as a matter of fact, we find in this world men choosing sin in spite of infinite motives to the contrary. Upon their own theory of human freedom, no motives which God can use will certainly accomplish the salvation of all moral creatures. The soul which resists Christ here may resist him forever. We have no right to say that all will certainly be saved, for there is no limit to man’s possible perversity and madness. Only God himself can tell us whether all will accept salvation, and God tells us in this passage of his word which we are considering that there is a sin which hath never forgiveness, but which is so persisted in as to be eternal. But if the salvation of all is problematical upon the theory of freedom, which has been mentioned, it is far more so upon the truer view that man’s volitions, unless special divine influences are granted him, simply express his previous character. Though not necessarily, yet with infallible certainty, this evil tree will bring forth evil fruit. The man acts out what is in him. He has been adding to the strength of his selfishness by the acts of a lifetime. There is a certainty that, unless renewed and transformed by the divine Spirit, he will act selfishly still. And all this is as true of the next life as it is of this. Death is no saviour. Death does not change character. The filthy will be filthy still, while the righteous will be righteous still.

Radically new views of Christ and of the truth will never be possible, so long as the man continues to hate Christ and the truth. When we hate a thing, to bring us into close contact with it is to increase our hatred. So the light of eternity is not of itself sufficient to change dislike of God into love. Bring the sinner into contact with the intense whiteness of the divine purity and he flies from it in dread. It convicts and condemns him. Since the carnal mind is enmity to God, death, that lifts the veil between God and the sinner, must only intensify the sinner’s hatred, and so confirm his evil character that change is forever after impossible.

It is sometimes said that the sufferings of the next world may be the means of changing the character. But suffering has in itself no reforming power. Unless accompanied by special renewing influences of the Holy Spirit it only hardens and embitters the soul. A man never needs so much the grace of God as when he is in affliction, for if that grace is not sought and used, his affliction may only petrify his moral and spiritual nature. A lifetime of pain did not make Blanco White a believer, and ages of pain will have not even a tendency to turn an enemy of God into a friend. The only agent who can accomplish the work of renewing the human heart and will, is the mighty Spirit of God. Is that Spirit given after death to sanctify the sufferings of those who leave this world rejecters of God and of his salvation? Only God can tell us. And in all the Bible there is no positive intimation, even, that such influences of the Spirit are exerted after death upon the still impenitent, while there is much evidence that the moral condition in which death finds men is their condition forever.