SIN is an awful reality. It is one of the most stupendous facts in the universe. As a hydra-headed monster it has been stalking about this world for the past six thousand years, cursing, blighting, withering, blasting, damning all that it comes in contact with.
Wherever it travels it brings poison with its breath. Whatever it touches it inflicts a sting more deadly than the most venomous reptile. It has put the whole world out of joint, and turned it into a moral chaos. Its devastating effects are seen in the various forms of misery around us today. Its awful curse is witnessed in the drunkenness and immorality, lying and deceit, practiced both in town and country. The workhouses, asylums, and graveyards tell the ghastly tale of sorrow and suffering it has brought in its train. No one has escaped its poisonous venom. The king and the peasant, the learned and the illiterate, are alike affected by it. No circle of society can claim exemption from the evil. The sad havoc it has wrought no plummet can fathom, no human understanding can grasp. It is only known to God, and will not be fully manifested until the judgment throne is set.
Have you the forgiveness of sins? “A plain question,” you may answer. But you will admit, my reader, that it is a most momentous one. Your everlasting weal or woe hangs on how you stand in reference to it. Sinned against God you have: for “all have sinned.” If you die and meet God in your sins, you will be banished from His presence forever. “Be sure your sin will find you out.”
You may ask, What is sin? Let the sacred page answer. “The thought of foolishness is sin.” “All unrighteousness is sin.” “To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” “Sin is lawlessness” (N.T.), which is simply doing one’s own will.
You may say, “I am not as great a sinner as many a person. I know.” Granted! But remember one sin drove the brightest cherub out of heaven. For one sin the angels, that kept not their first estate, are reserved in chains under darkness, until the judgment of the great day. One sin banished Adam and Eve from Eden. For one sin Ham, the wicked son of Noah, was cursed of God, and his children made subject to perpetual servitude. One sin hindered Moses from entering the promised land. For one sin the covetous Achan was stoned to death, and all Israel were smitten before their enemies. One sin brought down wrath upon King Uzziah and he was plagued with leprosy until the day of his death. For one sin Ananias and Sapphira were stricken dead. The awful results of one sin—Adam’s —brought the eternal Son of God from heaven’s brightest glory to earth’s deepest misery, and led Him to go into the dark dominion of death, and through the unutterable anguish and unfathomable suffering of Calvary’s cross. And one sin unforgiven will keep you out of heaven, and shut you up in hell forever. How solemn!
Do not think, my honest reader, that sin is a light thing in the eyes of unsullied purity and divine holiness. Think not that you can evade looking at your sins, however unpleasant the task may be, or that God will forget one of them. A faithful register of them is kept in heaven, and your sins will meet you one day. “Some men’s sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment; and some they follow after” (1 Tim. 5:2424Some men's sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment; and some men they follow after. (1 Timothy 5:24)).
It is in vain for you to be like the ostrich, who, deprived of reason, hides her head in the sand, and forgets that her pursuers will overtake her. Your sins will surely overtake you, perhaps when you least expect it, and are least prepared to face the just and awful consequences of them.
Another has graphically described an awakened conscience thus, “with whip of scorpions, over bed of spikes, in pinch of midnight darkness it chases guilt.” If your conscience is hardened through lust, or religiousness, or both, and has not yet been awakened to the gravity and perilousness of your position, it will yet be aroused, if not on a death-bed, in the awful torments of hell-fire.
Remember, “God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” You must either honestly face your sins now in the searching light of God’s holy presence, as a repentant sinner, confessing your sins, saying, “I have sinned,” and hear Him say to you, “Thy sins are forgiven thee, go in peace”; or else have them bound upon you for all eternity, in the anguish of dark despair, “where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.”
Sin and holiness cannot dwell together. Holiness abhors sin, and righteousness must punish it. My past history of guilt God cannot overlook. If He took no notice of it, He would forfeit His claim to be a righteous God. To admit me into heaven in my sins would be to deny His holy character.
How then can God righteously clear me? is a question of the utmost importance to my soul, and to every awakened sin-burdened conscience.
Only one way was open, and that was, that someone be found who could bear the penalty for me in such a way as would meet the requirements of God’s righteous throne. This in mercy God gave His own Son to accomplish. Christ came as the sent One of God to bear the judgment. God’s grace can now flow out to me through a righteous channel. “Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:1818For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: (1 Peter 3:18)). “Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many” (Heb. 9:2828So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation. (Hebrews 9:28)). “The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:66All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:6)).
I ask myself, Am not I one of the “all,” whose sins Christ bore? Am not I one of the “many” for whom He offered Himself? Did His death settle the whole account for me? Is God fully satisfied with what His Son accomplished? If so, can I be any longer charged with the guilt of my sins? Am I then justified, or reckoned righteous, on account of what another has done?
Hear what Paul says, “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness; that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (Rom. 3:25, 2625Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; 26To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. (Romans 3:25‑26)). “Who was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification. Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 4:25,25Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. (Romans 4:25) vs. 1). “Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him” (Rom. 5:99Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. (Romans 5:9)). “To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness” (Rom. 4:55But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. (Romans 4:5)).
These scriptures drive all uncertainty from my mind. I do not wait until the judgment day to see whether I will be acquitted or condemned. I am justified now by God Himself from every charge of sin. All was charged to my substitute, whose resurrection is the evidence that I am eternally cleared. “It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us” (Rom. 8:33, 3433Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. 34Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. (Romans 8:33‑34)).
Now it is important to state for the sake of young believers and others who may not be clear, that justification is one act. Justification is from something. Hence it says, “All that believe are justified from all things.” We are cleared from all charge, and pronounced righteous by God Himself. At the end of Romans 4 we are justified from our sins. At the end of Romans 5 we have justification of life which is simply life in a risen Christ, to which no charge of sin can ever be attached. We are completely severed from all the responsibility of Adam, which involved death and condemnation, and we are now connected with Christ—the last Adam. He is our life, and our righteousness before God.
I never can lose my justification by anything I may do, however grievous it may be in God’s sight. I may do many things I ought not to do, and grieve the Holy Spirit who dwells within me, and defile my conscience, and have to hang my head down before God, or even before my fellow-Christians. David and Peter had to do this.
When both these men sinned so grievously, we do not read of them seeking to be justified again, though we well know that each of them turned to the Lord, and sought restoration. The difference between justification and restoration is simply this, that justification is from a state in which I was by nature, but in which I can never be before God again. Restoration is to a condition of soul which I may have lost through my carelessness and unwatchfulness.
David prays, “Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit. Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted ado thee” (Psa. 51:12, 1312Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit. 13Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee. (Psalm 51:12‑13)). The Lord having warned Peter of Satan’s desire to have him before his failure, said to him, “When thou are converted (or restored) strengthen thy brethren.” He would know himself better through his sad failure, and consequently would be able to warn others of danger, and encourage them also through the Lord’s grace to His failing servant. After his restoration the Lord committed His most precious treasure to Peter’s keeping. What grace! How unlike man it is, but how very like the Lord.
In 1 Corinthians 6:11,11And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:11) Paul distinctly says to the Corinthians, “Such were some of you”— speaking of their past state— “but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” Notwithstanding that the Corinthians were justified in the full value of the name of the Lord Jesus, which involves all that He is before God, their ways were not satisfactory, but the very contrary. They were a great grief to Paul’s heart. He had to weep and break his heart over them. Yet for all that he did not unchristianize them. He rebuked them very sharply, but in the deepest love. He tried to awaken their slumbering consciences to a sense of their moral state. He exhorts them to “awake to righteousness, and sin not, for some have not the knowledge of God.” This does not mean that they were not converted, but that they had become utterly insensible as to what suited God’s presence in their conduct there.
Paul’s love for them, in seeking their restoration, represented the Lord’s love for them. He loved them as a father loves his children. If a child sins ever so much against his father, it does not thereby break the relationship that exists. The father might reprove the child, and even put him at a moral distance from him, that he might be led to feel the gravity of his offense against his father. But if the child was humbled and broken, and came before the father in the spirit of self-judgment, owning his offense—if we understand a father’s affection—what father would then keep the child at a distance? The father would only be too glad to have the distance removed that there should be no restraint upon his affections flowing out in the fullest manner to the child.
Though the Scriptures exhort the believer against committing sin, and exhort us also to be holy as God is holy, yet we may and do sin. “In many things we all offend.” To please oneself is the very essence of sin, and not to walk before God with a perfect heart is sin. If we were always abiding in Christ, and thus in communion with God, we should not please ourselves. The pleasure of God would control our whole life. But who would dare to say the3 never please themselves, and always walk before God with a perfect heart? Sin is not measured by our poor thoughts, but by what suits the divine presence. The light of God’s presence so penetrates and searches the hidden springs of our moral being, that we could not stand before God for.one moment but for the consciousness that the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth us from all sin. No matter what the light detects or exposes in us, the blood is the abiding witness that all has been cleared away before God.
“If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:11My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: (1 John 2:1)). We never could restore ourselves, nor would we seek it were it not for Christ’s advocacy. He is there in heaven in the unchanging value of His own work. He maintains our cause before the Father, and in the face of our accuser, the devil, whoever seeks to hinder us in our approach to God and in our testimony for God, by his accusations whether true or false. The Holy Spirit, who dwells within us in response to the Advocate, makes us feel our state. He takes us back to the point of departure, and if truly humbled we not only confess our sins, but we judge ourselves—turn from and repudiate what we may have fallen into. We then get a more just estimation of what we are in God’s sight, and a deeper, fuller sense of what His perfect grace is. It is helpful to remember what another has said, “We cannot mend the past, but we cannot be right in the present without judging the past, if truly humbled, and we had to live our life over again, we will not think we could do it any better.”
Salvation is all of grace. Those who know themselves will be the most ready to confess it. Grace at the top, grace at the bottom, and grace all the way between. God has taken us up to exhibit His rich grace in us, even now. In the ages to come He will show us what is the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness towards us through Christ Jesus.
May the deep sense of grace cause our hearts to abound in praise continually. Amen.
P. W.