29. The Sinner Is an Anarchist

The Sinner Is an Anarchist 1. in its relation to God, sin is anarchy The anarchist under a human government says, No ruler. The sinner says, No God. This is the attitude not only of the infidel and atheist, who try to make themselves believe there is no God, but also of every unregenerate sinner. The turned key, the bolts and bars shutting God out of the heart, say in unmistakable language, No God! No God! The stubborn will and the deliberate choice of the heart have shut God out of as much of His universe as the sinner controls, and the absence of God from the heart is as real and complete as though there were no God in existence. As the anarchist in a human government says, No ruler over me, so the sinner against the divine government says, No God for me! The anarchist also says, No government over me such as the ruler stands for, and the sinner says, No government over me such as God stands for. So at this point also the anarchist and the sinner equal each other. When that poor misguided Russian youth shot President McKinley, it was not a shot at the man, but at the United States government. Thinking only in terms of Russian Czarism, Leon Czolgosz imagined that with the President out of the way, the whole government would collapse like a house of cards. That was what did happen in Russia when the Czar was driven from his throne. So when the assassin said, No president, he was thereby saying, No government such as he stands for.

Just so with the moral anarchist in God’s government. He is compelled to keep God out of his heart, or he cannot keep God’s government out of his life. And since that government is out of all harmony with his selfish desires and purposes, he is out of harmony with that kind of government. If he could have his own way and still be in harmony with God, he would like that kind of harmony, but if having his own way is anarchy, he will still have his own way, whatever the cost. So he says, No God, because he is saying, No government of God over my life. At another point also the sinner and the anarchist are equal. The anarchist, having said, No ruler, for I do not want his rulership, also says, I want my own kind of rulership in the place of his. And this is the ultimate source of his anarchy. A little reflection will convince any thinking person that a condition of complete anarchy, no law, is impossible. Confine a company of professed anarchists on an island, and laws, written or unwritten, would come into operation at once. The very nature and constitution of moral beings makes escape from conformity to law impossible, for every conscious moment of every man’s existence is spent in obedience to many laws, whether he wants it that way or not. So an anarchist is simply setting aside law in one form, only to submit to it in another.

Precisely so with the sinner. He says, No God for me, for I do not want His government over my life; I propose to run my life as I please (Luke 19:14). But refusing the will of God over his life does not rid him of the control of law, for that very refusal brands him as the helpless slave of the law of sin and death, and his freedom from the moral law of God becomes abject bond-slavery to the inescapable laws that rule the realm which he has chosen, which laws God could not help establishing when He framed the laws of life. It is impossible, in the moral realm as in the governmental, to get away from law, for all are under the control either of the laws of life or of death. The sinner and the anarchist are thus equal to each other, point for point, which constitutes sin as the crime of moral anarchy.

2. Once again, sin is intolerance

It is intolerance of the will of God over the life. And for proof that this is true with all who are under control to sin, one needs but to present to a person under that control a call to surrender to the will of God, and it will instantly bring to the surface his spirit of intolerance.

He may react to such a call in sullen silence, or with sarcastic insult, or with courteous refusal, but no matter what his manner may be, it is all the same spirit of intolerance. He may, if endowed with impulses toward a moral life, even appear to yield to God’s will, but when his attitude is analyzed, he is found to be wholly intolerant of the will he professes to have accepted, since, for example, he refuses to believe the Scriptures to be inspired and inerrant, and therefore the authoritative will of God. So instead of being yielded to God, he is yielded simply to his own judgment of what God’s will is, and is therefore living his life on his own terms, and not at all on God’s.