26. The Awful Nature of Sin

The Awful Nature of Sin

All the efforts that man puts forth toward God, in the hope of salvation from sin thereby, are but sin added to sin, and as Scripture seeks to describe and warn against its deadly effects, language seems almost to break down in the effort to portray sin as it really is.

Any discussion such as this, however, can set forth only an outline of what Scripture has to say about it, and so the description of its nature must be limited.

1. Sin is transgression, and demands expiation In order for an act to be a transgression, there must be a prohibition to transgress. And that which is transgressed must be something that is essentially right, and thus righteous. It must be a line which cannot be crossed without ruinous moral results. There is only one such line: that between conditions which ought to be, and those that ought not to be.

Stepping over any line from wrong to right could not be called a transgression, for that word carries the idea of going wrong, not turning to the right, the word for that being repentance. That which is right is so because it is good. And the only thing in existence which is or can be the foundation and producing cause of infinite good is good will—the good will of an infinitely good Being. And this we have seen to be the nature of God’s will, since perfect happiness is not only the aim of His will for all moral beings, but also the actual condition of all who are perfectly yielded to that will. Good will is the one thing in the universe that is absolute goodness.

Transgression, then, is to step over the line between God’s will and ours. This is the sum of all that is wrong, for it is to step out of all possibility of happiness into certain misery, thus robbing God of the infinite joy of lavishing His love on one whom He placed in His universe for that precise purpose. Such a sin demands expiation.

2. Sin is war on God, and demands condemnation

Either the sinner is justified in setting his will up against God’s will, or God is justified in condemning the sinner for committing such an outrage, and bringing his defiance to eternal defeat.

Sin is taking arms against that which alone can secure perfect moral welfare and eternal happiness, and such a thing is not only without all excuse, but justly damnable. Justifying God for condemning a thing like that is the only attitude a moral being with any proper sense of right and wrong can take.

God’s honor is at stake in the attack of sin on Him. His honor rests on giving such an assurance to His whole universe that He can be utterly trusted to carry out His word and will, that He will thereby command the perfect confidence of every moral being in existence, whether they exercise that confidence or not. His will must be maintained against all who fight to set it aside, for if there is a single knee that will not bow and confess that He is Lord in His universe, He would thus be proven to be less than omnipotent, and He could not be trusted. War on God therefore demands condemnation.

3. Sin is guilt, and demands a penalty Not only has man transgressed God’s will, but he has done it deliberately, defiantly, and purposely, continuing daily to do the opposite of what he knows he should do. This is a crime against God, and thus against His universe. It is the crime of opposing the will of a helpless creature to the will of the omnipotent Creator, thereby setting up a condition which, if it should work itself out unhindered, would destroy the welfare and happiness of the whole moral universe.

Such a crime against God and His moral creation demands a penalty, not simply as the only means of preventing further wreckage, but also as its just desert.

4. Sin is death, and demands a cemetery Not only is man guilty as a transgressor, he is ruined as a creature. Every human being ever born into this world was born spiritually dead, and a dead man is ruined for everything that goes on among the living.

“The soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4). Death is separation from the source of life. God is the only source of spiritual life, as of all life. Adam and Eve became spiritually severed from God the moment they sinned. And since we are a race, all the race died in Adam when he sinned, through the inescapable laws of heredity and racial unity. The evidence of their death followed the sin of Adam and Eve immediately. From harmony with God and His will they went at once into inharmony with and antagonism toward Him, and from happy fellowship into intolerance, even of His presence, showing it by hiding from Him when He came to show them His love and enjoy theirs. Such a total spiritual severance from God showed beyond denial that they were completely cut off from all vital spiritual connection with Him, which meant that they died spiritually the moment they sinned, and all their race died in them. A cemetery is therefore necessary, for none of the spiritually dead can be permitted, when they leave this world, to spread the corruption of spiritual death in such a realm of life and perfect purity as heaven. Death, even physical death on this earth, has no place among the living. So when Satan and his angels sinned and died spiritually to God, it was necessary to provide a spiritual cemetery “for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41), and since the corruption of sin is no different in human sinners from that in Satan and his angels, they must inhabit the same cemetery forever, which the Bible calls hell.