094. ETERNAL SIN NOT HYPOTHETICAL

ETERNAL SIN NOT HYPOTHETICAL

It will be noted that in this discussion we have kept close to the passage of Scripture with which we began; we have aimed not to exaggerate but to interpret; we have said nothing about the number of the lost; we have maintained simply that some will be lost because they are "guilty of an eternal sin." In view of what our Lord said with regard to Judas, that it were good for that man if he had never been born; in view of Jesus’ declaration that the wicked shall go away into eternal punishment; in view of John’s declaration that there is a sin unto death; we are forbidden to regard "the eternal sin" as a merely hypothetical one; it is something actually committed; some are guilty of it; some will be eternally punished for it. Yet nowhere is it said that the number ultimately lost will exceed the number of the saved. On the other hand, the great numbers, the ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, are the numbers of God’s redeemed. Hell is a lake, not an ocean; and we may trust, with Doctor Hodge, that those who are lost will bear to those who are saved no greater proportion than those imprisoned in penitentiaries now bear to the total free population of the world.

While we go not one jot beyond the clear declarations of Scripture and the legitimate deductions from these, it should be our earnest effort to maintain precisely what the Scripture maintains. Left to ourselves we know nothing with certainty about the future; our reasonings are greatly affected by the impurity that still lingers in us; again and again are we tempted to subordinate the holiness of God to the happiness of his creatures. Let God be true and every man a liar. If the doctrine of eternal punishment be clearly taught in the Scriptures, then it is the duty of the preacher to preach it, and of the church to believe it. No fear of consequences to ourselves or to the church can absolve us from these duties. We are under obligation to hold and to proclaim the whole truth of God; if we do this, God will care for the results. All preaching which ignores this doctrine or explains it away, just so far lowers the holiness of God, of which eternal punishment is an expression, weakens our estimate of the heinousness of sin upon which it is visited, and degrades the work of Christ which was needful to save us from it. Let us be true to the word of God. Past interpretations of the Bible do not bind us, but the real teachings of Christ and his apostles do. We may interpret the material images of the New Testament in a spiritual and not a literal sense. But let us not fail to remember that the misery of the soul which eternally hates God is greater than the physical pains which are used to symbolize it.

"Knowing, therefore, the terrors of the Lord, we persuade men" by those terrors, as well as by his mercies. Indeed, the mercies will seem of little account until we know something of the terrors. Fear of future punishment is not the highest motive, yet it is a proper motive, for the renunciation of sin and the turning to Christ. The seeking of salvation which begins in fear of God’s anger may end, and in myriads of cases has ended, in the service of faith and love. May the law with its threatenings be our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. For though there is an "eternal sin," that "hath never forgiveness," and we are in danger of it, "Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth," and in him and his cross every one of us may find "redemption, even the forgiveness of sins."