THERE are THREE GREAT SINS― crying sins ―against God, which are found, not among the heathen, nor among Jews, nor Mohammedans, but among, and only among, professing Christians; people who have their Bibles, and who enjoy many of the external privileges of Christianity. The sins I allude to are not the gross, evil abominations of murder, lying, drunkenness, &c., &c., which even this wicked world itself condemns. The sins I speak of are religious sins; the worst of all sins, because they are the most blinding and deceptive.
No person ever thinks of trusting to bad works to win God’s favor or to take him to heaven, but many a person is trusting to dead works to gain the favor and blessing of God, and everlasting life at the end. Now the Word of God declares that “we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (Isa. 64:66But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. (Isaiah 64:6)). Mark, it is not our sins, but our righteousnesses (the best things we can do) which are filthy in God’s sight. But how few really believe this!
Alas, how many there are who are vainly dreaming of salvation without faith; who imagine themselves on the way to heaven, but have never been born again; and who have and profess religion, but without Christ. Christless religion is soul-destroying religion. Christless religion makes the man who follows it, the persistent, inveterate, implacable enemy of the Christ of God. Saul of Tarsus was full to the brim of religion (see Phil. 3). No one had more in the flesh to trust to than he, but his very religiousness made him the apostle of the bitter hatred and enmity of man’s heart against God’s Christ, and God’s religion. Oh, what an opening of his poor blind eyes (though they were shut to all earthly objects), when he was led to see that the crucified Nazarene, whose name he was endeavouring to blot out from under heaven, was really THE LORD; that the earth-rejected Man, who had lain in death in Joseph’s tomb, was now seated on the throne of God, in the power of an endless life! What a vile wretch he must have seen himself to be! A poor insignificant little creature, made of dust, daring to fight against the Lord of glory! How much was such religion worth? His very zeal for it had made him the persecutor of Christ and His saints. Had any one come to Saul that day, and congratulated him on his religious life and zeal, what would he have said? Would he not have answered something to this effect? ― “Do not talk to me of my religion or of my goodness; I am vile; I have been going right against God and His Son; my religion is hateful now to me, as it must be to Him: it has led me astray, and made me the chief of sinners, and all but destroyed my soul.”
Now, everyone knows that if you tell one who is going on in a course of open, vile sin, that he is wrong, and the judgment of God will surely overtake him, he will admit that what you say is true, even though he may still pursue his old ways. But tell a Christless religionist, a lifeless professor, a self-righteous sinner, that all his religion, his profession, his righteousness, counts nothing in God’s sight; nay, more, that the sacrifice of the wicked is abomination to Him; nay, more still, that if ever he is to be saved, he will have to come as a poor, undone, lost sinner, that God will give him no credit for all his fancied good works, that he will have to cast them all overboard, and come as a poor needy soul, vile, and absolutely dependent upon the undeserved mercy of God; ―tell him all this, and that God says there is no difference (for all have sinned) between him and the most wicked on the earth, and how angry, how indignant he will at once become! Such, indeed, is the result of man’s religion, when the blessed grace of God is presented to him.
Now the three religious sins of Christendom which I wish to warn my reader against, are very specious, and very commonly met with. They are not what people would at all call SINS. Let us hear what they are: ―
1. Trying to be good.
2. Trying to love God.
3. Trying to believe.
These, so far from appearing to be sins against God, may look to be very right, proper, and commendable attempts for anyone to make, and likely to insure the blessing and favor of God to those who thus try. But wait a moment, dear reader.
1. “Trying to be good” is flying in the face of Scripture, for it declares “There is none righteous; no, not one.” “There is none that doeth good; no, not one.” This is God’s verdict upon man in his natural condition, no matter what his outward life and ways may be. Again, in John 3, the Lord in speaking to Nicodemus, who to all appearance was a good man, and trying to do good, solemnly tells him, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” A new birth is necessary. It will not do to try to be good. To make the effort, is to deny that you are undone, that you are so unimprovably bad, that nothing short of a divine work in your soul, wrought by the Spirit and the Word of God, can ever reach your case. You must be born again. The only way to be good, is for the sinner to tell God how bad he is; to plead guilty, and acknowledge himself undone, and lost! This is the first upright thing a man can do. God can then meet you and bless you; not because you are good, but because He is good. He blesses you in spite of your badness, because of what His own beloved Son has done.
2. “Trying to love God!” “But is it not right to love God? Should we not do so?” someone will exclaim. Yes, my friend, it is perfectly right to love God, but that is an entirely different thing from trying to love Him. Just think of it. A mother says she is trying to love her child. A husband is trying to love his wife. There must be something greatly amiss. One would naturally say, What sort of husband must he, or what sort of wife must she, be? And what sort of God is He that you, my reader, must try to love? Ah, you are all adrift. You are giving the God of all grace a bad character, by saying He is One you have to try to love. You are sinning against Him by thus thinking and thus speaking. You have begun at the wrong end. You have forgotten His great love. “We love Him, because He first loved us,” is the answer they can give who have given up trying, and have found that “God, who is rich in mercy,” loved us WHEN we were dead in sins (Eph. 2). The Lord’s word to Nicodemus, in John 3:1616For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16), makes it all plain. The heart of God is the source of all good, and of all love. God loved, and God gave.
He so loved the world, that He gave the best, and the brightest object in heaven, for the vilest on earth.
But how Satan deceives and blinds poor souls as to this! What days and months and years of misery are spent by honest souls in trying to love God, and yet they fail. “Oh, sir,” said a poor dying girl to a servant of the Lord who called to see her, “I am so unhappy; I lay awake all night trying to love God, but I cannot.” “Well,” replied her friend, “I will give you something else to do. Lie awake all this night and try to love your mother.” “Oh, but I do love my mother,” said the poor girl; “she is so good to me, I cannot help loving her.” This then enabled her visitor to point out to her serious error in “passing over the love of God” to her, and thinking only of hers to Him, which however she could not find.
“I have it, I have it,” cried a gentleman, as he ran upstairs, and burst into the room where his wife was, “It is not OUR love to Him, but His love to us!” This poor distracted soul had been for months and months trying and failing, trying and failing, to love God, but that day, at a meeting, heard the verse of the hymn given out, ―
“O by Thy love constrain us,
And fix our hearts on Thee.”
This was enough. He waited for no more, but leaving the meeting in haste, he got into the first cab he found, and hurried home to his wife with the joyful tidings above related. To love God, because of His marvelous love to us, is right; in fact, we cannot help doing so; to TRY to love Him, is sin.
3. “Trying to believe” is the commonest sin of all. “But ought we not to believe God?” you say. Yes, surely, yes. But trying to believe God is quite a different matter. Have we to try to believe what we know to be true? or have we to try to believe one whose truthfulness we do not doubt? What sort of God do you suppose Him to be, whom you have to try to believe? Again, to turn to John 3:1616For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16), we find not only God’s love and God’s gift spoken of, but the Lord declares, that whosoever believes (not tries to believe) should not perish, but have everlasting life. How plain all this is!
1. You must be born again; not try to be good.
2. God has loved the guilty, and those who know His love, love Him in return; they have not to try to love Him.
3. God has spoken the truth; unless you deem His word doubtful, you have not to try to believe Him. F. C.