What Sin Does

This is what sin does to us all, even if our own situation seems less extreme.  The Bible tells us that the sinful mind is “hostile to God” (Romans 8.7).  It describes us as “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2.1).  It says that, apart from a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, we are “alienated and hostile in mind” (Colossians 1.21).  Worst of all, we cannot save ourselves.  On the contrary, we are “utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all that is spiritually good” (Westminster Larger Catechism 25).  This is all because “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4.4).

From: “What Has He Done for You?” (Luke 8.26-39) in Luke by Philip Graham Ryken; Reformed Expository Commentary series; 2 volumes (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2009), 1:398.

Philip Graham Ryken (born in 1966) was, at the time these sermons were published, Senior Minister of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  He is now President of Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois.

 

Look Up and Live

The brazen serpent [Numbers 21] was not lifted up as a curiosity to be gazed upon by the healthy, but its special purpose was for those who were bitten.  Jesus died as a real savior for real sinners.  Whether the “bite” has made you a drunkard or a thief or an unchaste or a profane person, a look at the Great Savior will heal you of these diseases and make you live in holiness and communion with God.  Look and live. – Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892)

 

How Dangerous Sin Is

Let us see what a dangerous thing sin is.  I mean not only the committing of it, which one would think was fearful enough, but that, afterward, we are not able to rise out of it.  Even though sin troubles our consciences, like under-cooked meat sours the stomach, we will lie still in it.  We think, wrongly, that we can repent whenever we please.  Sin hardens the heart, for a time, especially soon after the committing of it, so that we cannot, at all, humble our hearts and bewail our sin to God.  But, if we come to ourselves again after a time, it is by God’s preceding us.  He renews His grace, causing us to relent, be remorseful of it, and renounce it, and crave God’s pardon.  Thereby only are we enabled to repent and return to former works.  But, see that this is not for any power in us, for we are not able to bring our hearts thereto or to do any such thing of ourselves.  And I say more: that, many times, when people have fallen, they do not attain this grace, either, until God brings them to hear by preaching or, by affliction, calls them to a deeper consideration or, by some such-like means, brings their sin to light and into disgrace with them.  So it was for the people at Bochim (“Weeping”) [in Judges 2.1-5], and then it may be, they stay their course and return. – Richard Rogers (1551-1618), from his sermons on the Book of Judges (1615).

 

The Enemies of Christ are Sometimes Close to Home

Assuredly, my friends, religion does not save us by the mere fact of our being brought into intimate contact with it.  Those who have known most about it in early youth, the sons of religious parents, sometimes turn out to be its worst enemies.  They appear to speak with authority when they say that they have tried it and found it wanting.  They are like soldiers who, after making themselves perfectly acquainted with their general’s resources and position, go over to the enemy and place their knowledge at his disposal.  This sad sight, as many of us know, has been repeated in not a few conspicuous instances in this and the last generation, as well as in instances which are not conspicuous.  Christ is set in the firmament of the spiritual heavens for the fall of these unhappy souls.  He is, to them, “a savor of death unto death” (2 Corinthians 2.16).  He is ever, in Himself, loving and merciful, “not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3.9).  But, in all generations, there are souls of whom He says, in sorrow, “If I had not come and spoken to them, they had not had sin.  But now, they have no cloak for their sin” (John 15.22).  He is “set,” against the tenor of His own blessed will, for the fall of many.

From: “Results of Christ’s First Coming,” a sermon on Luke 2.34, preached at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, England, on Sunday, December 17, 1876.  Published in: Advent in St. Paul’s: Sermons Bearing Chiefly on the Two Comings of Our Lord by H. P. Liddon; 2nd edition (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1889), pp. 252-253.

H. P. Liddon (1829-1890) was Canon and Chancellor of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, England.  His most important book is The Divinity of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: The Bampton Lectures for 1866 (1867).

 

John Calvin on Sin

There is not the slightest doubt in Calvin’s mind, therefore, about the fact that reason “cannot judge anything of God” nor can the “wise men of the world frame themselves to the Gospel.”  From the start, the perverted mind, by its very action, inverts the truth and cannot take any step whatever in the right direction.  The more man contrives methods of approaching God, the more he alienates himself.  “All the soundness of judgment which is given to men is corrupted and perverted so that not even one spark of light continues to dwell in them.”  All action on the part of the perverted reason is the action of self-will, but no self-willed movement can reach God, for it always meets with the divine judgment and is, accordingly, inflicted with blindness.  It meets that aspect of the divine majesty whereby God repels men and separates them from Himself, hardening them in their sin and defection and error.  It is impossible to reach God except by His will and in the way in which He reveals Himself.  He has circumscribed men’s minds by His grace so that they not only owe their origin to grace and depend on grace from moment to moment, but cannot have any true motion except in accordance with grace and within these “barriers.”  To transgress these gracious bounds is presumption and sin, and can only end in destruction.  Thus, our first parents died when they “erred in not regulating the measure of their knowledge by the will of God.”  Being “incredulous at His Word…they began, like fascinated persons, to lose reason and judgment” until their “mind was smitten with blindness and infected with innumerable errors.”  Because of this perverse procedure, “all the studies in which men think they attain the highest wisdom” must be pronounced “vain and frivolous.”

From: Calvin’s Doctrine of Man by T. F. Torrance; reprint (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1957), pp. 124-125.  Originally published in 1949.

T. F. Torrance (1913-2007) was a Scottish theologian, author, educator, and churchman.  He was Professor of Christian Dogmatics at the University of Edinburgh in Edinburgh, Scotland, from 1952 to 1979.  His best book is The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being, Three Persons, published in 1996.

 

In the Context of Evangelism

It may be asked: what are the signs of true conviction of sin, as distinct from the mere smart of a natural bad conscience or the mere disgust at life which any disillusioned person may feel?

The signs seem to be three in number.

1.  Conviction of sin is, essentially, an awareness of a wrong relationship with God, not just with one’s neighbor or one’s own conscience and ideals for oneself, but with one’s Maker, the God in whose hand one’s breath is and on whom one depends for existence every moment.  To define conviction of sin as a sense of need, without qualification, would not be enough; it is not any sense of need, but a sense of a particular need – a need, namely, for restoration of fellowship with God.  It is the realization that, as one stands at present, one is in a relationship with God that spells only rejection and retribution and wrath and pain, for the present and the future; and a realization that this is an intolerable relationship to remain in and, therefore, a desire that, at whatever cost and on whatever terms, it might be changed.  Conviction of sin may center upon the sense of one’s guilt before God or one’s uncleanness in His sight or one’s rebellion against Him or one’s alienation and estrangement from Him but, always, it is a sense of the need to get right, not simply with oneself or other people, but with God.

2.  Conviction of sin always includes conviction of sins: a sense of guilt for particular wrongs done in the sight of God, from which one needs to turn and be rid of them if one is ever to be right with God.  Thus, Isaiah was convicted specifically of sins of speech (Isaiah 6.5) and Zacchaeus of sins of extortion (Luke 19.8).

3.  Conviction of sin always includes conviction of sinfulness: a sense of one’s complete corruption and perversity in God’s sight and one’s consequent need of what Ezekiel called a “new heart” (Ezekiel 36.26), and our Lord a “new birth” (John 3.3ff), i.e., a moral re-creation.  Thus, the author of Psalm 51 – traditionally identified with David, convicted of his sin with Bathsheba – confesses not only particular transgressions (verses 1-4) but, also, the depravity of his nature (verses 5-6) and seeks cleansing from the guilt and defilement of both (verses 7-10).  Indeed, perhaps the shortest way to tell whether a person is convicted of sin or not is to take him through Psalm 51 and see whether his heart is, in fact, speaking anything like the language of the psalmist.

From: Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God by J. I. Packer (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1961), pp. 62-63.

James Innell Packer (born in 1926) is an English-born Canadian Anglican theologian and prolific author.

 

Augustine’s Sins

I also was a thief, stealing things from my parents’ larder or table, either out of sheer gluttony or in order to have something to give to the other boys, who liked being paid to play with me, though they enjoyed the play just as much as I did.  In these games, too, I often used to try to overcome my rivals by cheating, all the time being overcome myself by the empty desire to be thought the best.  But, if I caught someone else cheating me, I simply could not abide it and would attack him in the most savage language for doing just what I had been doing to others.  And, if I was caught cheating, myself, and blamed for it in the same way, I preferred to get into a rage rather than to yield and submit.

Is this what is called “the innocence of boyhood”?  Not so, Lord, not so.  I beg your leave, my God.  For it is just these same sins which, as the years pass by, become related no longer to tutors, schoolmasters, footballs, nuts, and pet sparrows, but to magistrates and kings, gold, estates, and slaves; just as, in later years, punishments are more severe than the schoomaster’s cane.  It must, therefore, have been the low stature of children, O our King, which you used as a sign of humility and commended in the words: “of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”

From: Confessions by Augustine; translated from the Latin by Rex Warner (New York: A Signet Classic, 2001), p. 23.  Translation originally published in 1963.  Original published ca. 400.  Translation of portion of Book 1, Chapter 19.

Augustine (354-430) was the first important Christian theologian since the completion of the New Testament, and a prolific writer.

Rex Warner (1905-1986) was a prolific translator of ancient Greek and Roman writings, as well as an eductor in both Britain and the United States.

 

For the Lord’s Day (167)

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife.*  And you are arrogant!  Ought you not, rather, to mourn?  Let him who has done this be removed from among you.  (1 Corinthians 5.1-2)

*That is, a man was having sex with his stepmother, which was both biblically illegal (Leviticus 18.7-8, 29; cf. Deuteronomy 22.30) and illegal under Roman law.

 

Regarding Sinners

While men stand under the law, there are always differences among them.  There is the difference between the righteous and the sinners, between those who strive to fulfill the law and those who break the law.  As to the fulfillment or the violation of the law, there is an endless gradation of more or less.  But, all such differences pale before the new righteousness of God.  “There is no distinction.”  Without exception, all are sinners before God.  “All have sinned.”  That is the point of departure for the whole redemptive work of God.  No one has anything to offer which could elicit the love of God.  In that respect, all are alike.  Man’s own righteousness, though it be of great importance within human relations, does not serve, at all, to motivate God’s work of salvation.  That depends, wholly, on God Himself.  The only motive is in God Himself, in His gracious will.

From: Commentary on Romans by Anders Nygren; translated from the Swedish by Carl Rasmussen (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1949 [Swedish original: 1944]), pp. 152-153.  Comment on Romans 3:21-31.

Anders Nygren (1890-1978) was a Swedish Lutheran minister and theologian.  He was Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Lund (1924-1948) and Bishop of Lund (1948-1959).

 

Hating Sin

But, what is the hatred of sin?  It implies a universal repugnancy in every part of a man against sin, not only in his reason and conscience, but will and affections.  There is not a wicked man but, in many cases, his conscience bids him do otherwise.  Ay, but a renewed man, his heart inclines him to do otherwise.  His heart is set against sin, and taken up with the things of God: “I delight in the law of God after the inner man” (Romans 7:22).  It is in the whole inward man, which consists of many parts and faculties.  Briefly then, it notes the opposition not from enlightened conscience only, but from the bent of the renewed heart.  Reason and conscience will take God’s part and quarrel with sins, else the wicked man could not be self-condemned.

From: One Hundred and Ninety Sermons on the Hundred and Nineteenth Psalm by Thomas Manton; 3 volumes; reprint (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1990 [1680]), 2:387-388.  Comment on Psalm 119:104.  The reprint is of an edition published: (London: William Brown, 1842)

Thomas Manton (1620-1677) was one of the finest of the Puritan preachers England produced.  His exposition of Psalm 119 is the fruit of nearly 30 years of pastoral experience.