86. The Most Outrageous Sin of All
The Most Outrageous Sin of All And if you fail to believe and be saved, you are thereby turning the supreme sacrifice and unspeakable suffering of God-in-Christ into an eternal waste, at least as far as your personal salvation is concerned, and nothing can be a more outrageous sin!
God so loved you as to go through the infinite pain of giving up His Son to take your place by His death, that the way might be opened to bring you within the reach of His love. If you refuse His love, He will go through eternity with nothing in you to show for His suffering, with His sacrifice forever useless, as far as your salvation is concerned. To strike a man for no cause is an insult. To strike one who is showing a kindness is an outrage. For a man to strike his father is infamous. But to strike to the heart by the murder of His Son, the God who sent that Son to show His love, and then, when His love turns that murder into an atonement for the murderer’s sin, and yet the murderer still refuses the love and turns the infinite suffering, at least that for himself, into a useless waste—where can language be found to describe a sin like that! And yet just that is the sin of the one who refuses God’s gift of eternal life in Christ.
Henry Clay, of whom all Kentuckians are justly proud, once had a debt at a bank which he was wholly unable to meet, and so he saw nothing but judgment impending. On the day it was due, and with nothing to pay it with, he went into the bank and said to the cashier: “I came to see you about my obligation at this bank.” The cashier said: “Mr. Clay, you have no obligation at this bank.”
Thinking he had been misunderstood, Mr. Clay said again: “I refer to the note I owe this bank.” Again the cashier said: “You do not owe this bank one cent.”
“How am I to understand you?” asked Mr. Clay.
“A few friends of yours,” said the cashier, “knowing of the note and of your inability to meet it, made up the amount among themselves and came and paid it.”
Tears welled up in Mr. Clay’s eyes, and he left the bank unable to say another word.
Note the underlying principles behind this incident. First, there is a law that says to debtors to banks, for the sake of the depositors who have committed to them their financial welfare: “Pay up, or judgment.”
Next, Mr. Clay was helpless to pay up, and so he faced judgment. Then his friends, by voluntarily suffering personal loss, had become his substitutes and met his obligation for him.
Then Mr. Clay, when told the good news, believed it, and accepted what his friends had done for him. He did nothing financial to merit this gift of money, yet in simply accepting what his friends had done in his name, he was fully justified before the banking laws in the names of his friends, and acquitted of all obligation. His conscience toward the bank was now clear, and the law could never touch him for that debt.
Just so the whole race had an obligation before God. But through bankruptcy, payment was forever impossible. God had said: “Pay up, or judgment,” so judgment hung over the race. Then because there was no one else who could qualify to pay the debt, God Himself, in His Son, met that obligation for the whole race at Calvary.
Man did nothing to meet it, for he had nothing to pay. So God did it all, and the transaction is forever closed for the whole race. Man has now simply to receive what God has done, just as Mr. Clay received what his friends had done. If we accept it by receiving Christ, God accepts us. If we reject it by refusing Christ, God will be compelled to reject us. Not because we have broken the Commandment, even all ten of them, but because we have refused to accept what He has done for us. Can you turn down a salvation like that? Can you refuse a pardon which has already been provided for you, and is being offered on the simple condition of acceptance. Can you turn Christ’s sufferings for you into a useless and eternal waste? THE END