41. Sin's Appalling Destructiveness

Sin’s Appalling Destructiveness In previous pages there was given an outline of some of the prominent aspects of sin, as it affects the sinner himself. Its final effect, not only on the sinner, but also on the universe of moral beings, and even on God Himself, must now be set forth, that we may see why God, because He is love, is under infinite obligation to put sin down.

Sin destroys the sinner. The destruction which sin works is proclaimed with such compelling eloquence across the pages of all history, that none who read the story can escape the appalling terror of its message. Even current history, to all who read the daily destruction wrought by sin all over the earth, speaks with a terrible power that none can evade. Not only this, but sin is contagious. It is the most contagious thing in the universe. When once it obtained a place in the heart of Lucifer, though “Son of the Morning,” its contagion spread from his own ruined heart until a great host of angels were caught by it and ruined with him for all eternity. And among men, no sooner had Eve been struck with the disease, than Adam was caught by the contagion and died with her (Genesis 3:6). And their race, every one of them born with the contagion of death already in their being (Romans 5:19), by that very means, as long as they remain spiritually severed from God, influence those about them in no way but to more pronounced activity in the corruption of the death by which the race is held. But more important than any other consideration, what about the effect of sin on God Himself? Is there no tragic effect upon the heart of God? Is it nothing to Him to be robbed of those upon whom He has set His heart, and toward whom His infinite love burns to lavish eternal happiness and joy upon them? Do not all other crimes whatsoever find both their meaning and their source in this one?

Disappointed love among men can give those who experience it some of the most excruciating natural suffering of which men are capable. And yet those who experience it most keenly can get from their greatest pain but the faintest hint of what disappointed love would mean to the heart of God.

Think of what the poignancy of that grief must be to God, as interpreted in the terms of the dread and horror of death and eternity which He has made instinctive in the heart of every sinner, that thus He may bring him back within the reach of His love. No one ever escaped the persistent dread and foreboding of future ill-being, when once he has reached the age of accountability, for it speaks in the still small voice of every sin-laden conscience. Why has a God of love set such a dread of the future in the hearts of those living in sin, unless it is because He is love; and because He Himself is seeking to escape disappointed love. The awful meaning behind the terror of such souls is the most appalling truth any human being can ever face. It is the truth thundered at us from a thousand angles every day, that the will of every one outside of God’s will is daily hardening in the direction in which it is set. This can mean but one thing. The one who has chosen his own will and turned God’s out, is moving, with tragic and inescapable certainty, toward final fixity of his will, with no power, even in God Himself, that can arrest the progress of that hardening, as long as he lives in sinful persistence in that choice. And it makes inevitable another thing, the full horror of which is wholly beyond all power of human conception. It is the fact that when one reaches that degree of hardness of character and fixity of will in which even the least desire for a change of choice has become impossible, he is forever doomed to slavery to his own evil desires, and with no possibility forever of having them satisfied. He has made the deliberate choice of a character controlled by the selfish principle, and being now fixed in that choice, he must abide eternally with those who are in control of the same principle, all of them wholly incapable of satisfaction (Revelation 22:11, R.V. marg.).