Sin And Its Consequences

      One of the beautiful stories of the Old Testament is that of the dedication of the great temple to God. This is found in 2 Chronicles 6. In the following chapter God's answer to Solomon's dedication presentation is found. Contained in these two chapters, Solomon's statement to God and God's answer to Solomon, there is much valuable information about sin, its consequences, and the forgiveness of it. We would do well to study it carefully. It is important that we understand it.

      After telling the Lord that he had now "built Him a house of habitation, and a place for Him to dwell for ever" (6:2), Solomon stood before the altar of Jehovah in the presence of all the assembly of Israel, and spread forth his hands toward heaven. After a beautiful acknowledgment of God's faithfulness and loving kindness toward them, he addresses the matter of their sins and of God's forgiveness.

      1. First of all, Solomon recognizes that he and his people WILL sin:

"If a man sin against his neighbor . . ." (v.22);

"If thy people Israel be smitten down before the enemy, because they have sinned against thee . . ." (v.24);

"When the heavens are shut up, and there is no rain, because they have sinned against thee . . ." (v.26);

"If (they who go out to battle) sin against thee . . ." (v.36).

Not that some of them will sin, and not that all of them might sin, but that every single one of them WILL sin. Has sinned, does sin, and will sin. Solomon says it in these words: "There is no man that sinneth not" (v.36).

      While it is true that Solomon repeatedly commences his statements with an "if" ---"If a man sin against his neighbor; "If" he sin against God; "If" he sin by commission; "If" he sin by omission ---the "if" does not imply doubt as to the fact of sin. It only implies probability as to the kind of sin; as to the form that the sin will take, but it never implies any doubt that the sin will take place.

      This truth that every man is a sinner is taught throughout the Scriptures, for as Solomon says, "there is not a just man upon the earth that liveth and doeth good and sinneth not" (Ecc. 7:20). In New Testament times John says, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us" (1 John 1:8), and again, "If we say that we have not sinned, (note the past tense), we make him a liar, and his word is not in us" (v.10). Paul states that "there is none righteous, no, not one" (Rom. 3:10), "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (v.23).

Sin And The Preaching Of The Gospel

      What does this recognition of sin have to do with the preaching of the Gospel today?

      There is some justification for those preachers who preached so much, a hundred years ago, on man's depraved condition. "Hell fire and damnation preaching," it might be called. It has been said that some of these preachers developed such skill in their forceful presentations so as to "dangle a sinner over the very fires of hell." But these preachers saw that there was no sense in preaching salvation to a man unless he was lost, and knew he was lost, and knew that he was going to be punished because of his sin. He was – to be sure -- "going to hell" -- and these preachers wanted him to know it.

      Man can not be saved from something that does not exist! Many deny that there is any hell, or any lake of fire, or any second death, any torment, any misery, any punishment at all, or anything else to be saved from after he lives his life here, dies, and is buried. Modernists have believed and taught such doctrines as, "there is within each man his own heaven, or his own hell." Red Skelton, called affectionately "America's clown," is quoted as saying, "I believe in love and Santa Claus, but I do not believe in hell." It would appear that more people are inclined to listen to Red Skelton than believe the Bible. But regardless of how much one might want to believe him, and his doctrine, he must not! It is a false doctrine! And so -- in view of this kind of philosophy -- preachers are asking, "How can Christ save a man who does not, or can not, believe that he can possibly be lost.

      Calvinism, upon which so much of modern religion is based, has no salvation for anybody. According to this theory the elect were never in any danger of being lost. They were "elect" from eternity; they could never be lost. The "non-elect" can never be saved under any circumstances. It is, therefore, a system without any salvation in it for anybody. According to this theory, not a prophet, apostle, evangelist, sermon, Bible lesson, tract, book, or any other human instrumentality, ever saved a soul from being lost. The unchangeable decree of God, before the beginning of time, determined who were the elect, and who were the non-elect, and the number of those predestined to be saved is so definite that it can neither be increased nor can it be decreased. Not one of the elect can ever be lost, nor one of the non-elect be saved.

      So we easily see that according to this system there is simply no salvation at all to be preached. These men who preached the Gospel of salvation saw this, and saw that unless man was lost, there was nothing from which to be saved. They, therefore, set out to prove that all men were lost because they were totally sinful, and, this sinfulness was hereditary. Hence, the doctrine of "total, hereditary, depravity." This doctrine involved the need for misrepresenting Bible language to sustain it, but many became adept at it. But this doctrine is also false! Don't you believe it.

      What about the "once saved, always saved" doctrine taught by many preachers today, and no doubt believed by many of your friends (and maybe some of us?). Is there really any salvation in this system? Faith to many of this persuasion seems to mean little more than a mental assent to the fact that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ and Son of God. "Faith," as they define it, is the all-important point. Only believe and you will be saved. "Only" has been added to the Bible teachings about faith. We are saved by "faith only," or "faith alone." This in spite of the plain statement by James, "not by faith only" (James 2:24); "for as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also" (v.26).

      It is my conviction that the "once saved, always saved" doctrine, along with the "election," "foreordination," and "predestination" teachings, have done more to hinder growth in Christian character and virtue than almost any other doctrine pertaining to redemption. If we can be saved, and cannot be lost, because we at one time believed in Jesus as Saviour, why go to all the trouble to put off the old man with his evil deeds and put on the new man which is created in righteousness and true holiness. (Eph. 4:22,24.) Why fear backsliding? Why be concerned about resisting, grieving and quenching the Spirit within you? About falling from grace? About being a castaway? Was Paul so ignorant that his concern for his own salvation was unnecessary? Did he not know that his salvation was absolutely assured when he said, "I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection; lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway" (1 Cor. 9:27)? Was it unnecessary for him to warn the Corinthians, with all their many sins, "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall?" (1 Cor. 9:12)? Does this statement sound as if one cannot fall?

      Peter warned those to whom he wrote to "Beware, lest being led away with the error of the wicked, they fall from their own steadfastness" (2 Peter 3:17). Doesn't sound as if one cannot fall, does it? He also said, in a positive way, "If you do these things, you shall never fall" (2 Peter 1:10). What were these things? "Giving all diligence," he says, "add faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, charity." Lay all these together; along side of one another - "For," he continues, "if these things be in you and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ" (v.8). Can one be barren and unfruitful even though he possesses "the knowledge" of the Lord? Peter apparently thought so.

      It is strange that this doctrine of "once saved, always saved" persists in view of these and countless other plain statements in the New Testament. But it does, and it is my opinion that this doctrine, in a very subtle and yet very real way, does great harm to the spiritual growth of many people. Paul asks, "Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?" Now note, he is writing to Christians, those who had had their sins forgiven upon their being baptized into Christ, and now were tempted to "continue" in sins. Then he answers his own question with this exclamation:

"God forbid. how shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? Know ye not -- don't you understand -- that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin" (Rom.6:1-7).

      One needs to read and study thoroughly the rest of the chapter. All of us need to ask, in view of Paul's doctrine, "Did our baptism take?

      2. Secondly, it recognizes that chastisement will inevitably follow sins. Solomon clearly understood that God would punish them for their sins. Consider this:

"And if thy people Israel be smitten down before the enemy; because they have sinned against thee . . ." (2 Chron. 6:24).

"When the heavens are shut up, and there is no rain, because they have sinned against thee . . ." (v.26).

"If there be in the land famine, if there be pestilence, if there be blasting or mildew, locust or caterpillar; if their enemies besiege them in the land of their cities; whatsoever plague or whatsoever sickness there be; . . . forgive . . ." (vs.28,30). Why ask "forgiveness" if their sins were not the cause of such things?

"If thy people go out to battle against their enemies, . . . if they sin against thee, (for there is no man that sinneth not,) and thou be angry with them, and deliver them to the enemy, so that they carry them away captive unto a land far off or near . . ." (vs.34,36). Again, why ask "forgiveness" if their sins were not the cause of such things?

      Now someone might ask, and rightly, "We are in a different age. Does God punish us today because of our sins?" The answer is "Yes!" I'm convinced that He does.

      That the world has been cursed with a vast amount of pain and misery, there can be no doubt. There have been many tears, and increasing number of graveyards give striking testimony to sorrow and pain. Hardly does one go to the grave without at first suffering bodily torment. The Word of God tells us that all this woe, pain, sorrow and death initially have been caused by sin. "By man sin entered into the world and death by sin" (Rom. 5:12).

      The great G. C. Brewer commented upon this fact in these words:

"If a man deny the Bible doctrine of the source of all our woe, then call upon him to give an account of it. Whence did it come? The fact that the Bible ascribes it to sin should prove that it is true, for it can not be accounted for in any other way. So then, all of the pain, and woe, and misery, and even death, that the human race has experienced since the days of Adam to the present time, are manifestations of God's wrath against sin, and of his estimate of the enormity of the act when a man deliberately violates the law of his Maker. This alone ought to teach us a great horror for sin."

      As long as mankind lives he will continue to reap the evil consequences of Adam's sin. And to a considerable degree, much, but certainly not all, of our physical ills today are caused by our own failure to know and obey the natural laws of good health and happiness. Millions of cells in the make-up of man's wonderful body, and when these cells are cared for properly they prosper, and when they aren't cared for, they will suffer, and man's whole body will suffer. Overeating, under-exercising, drugs and poisons (tobacco, alcohol, and all the rest) taken into the body; senseless worry, and countless other abuses because of man's ignorance or his lack of discipline, all work together to cause untold misery and pain, and even premature death.

      But while general punishment is meted out to both individuals and to nations because of God's laws being broken, we need to be very careful about attaching judgment to any individual or nation for a particular offense. In this age many sincere and competent Bible scholars believe that God "upholds all things by the word of his power" only (Heb. 1:3), and that God's specific chastisement is exerted through his Word acting upon the spirit of man: not in an extraordinary physical or material intervention. God's Word is certainly capable of doing all that New Testament writers say will be done to chasten:

"For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do" (Heb. 4:12,13).

      The writer of Hebrews urges those who have accepted Christ to not "despise the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when they are rebuked of him." The reason given? "For whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth" (Heb. 12:5ff). He continues by saying,

"Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby" (v.11).

      My friend, does God chasten you? If not, He apparently does not love you! How does He do this? This is one of the most difficult matters to understand, but it is my conviction that He does it through the force of His Word. The Holy Spirit, promised to all believers (Eph. 1:13,14; etc) and without which no man can belong to God (Rom. 8:9) is this force (I believe) that acts upon the spiritual mind, and causes Godly sorrow that worketh repentance, bringing forgiveness, comfort and hope to all who abide in it. Paul prayed that the Ephesians might "be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man" (3:16). If we mortals can be "strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man," can not this same Spirit torment us to repentance? It has rightly been said, I believe, that "guilt feelings are most often caused by guilt." If this is so, what is the source of these "guilt feelings?" To resist the Spirit (Acts 7:51), and to grieve the Spirit (Eph. 4:30) is but to run the risk of quenching the Spirit (1 Thess. 5:19). On the other side, James says that we should count it all joy when we fall into divers temptations (tests, trials, brought on by the demands of the Word?), knowing this, that the trying of our faith worketh patience. (James 1:2,3.) The whole context here stresses endurance, "keeping on keeping on," faithfulness, trusting, remaining confident; knowing that all things will work out well. Where does this "faith" come from? "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God" (Rom. 10:17).

      By far the more serious concern is what sin does to our spirit. Peter warns, "Abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul" (1 Peter 2:11). It is to the spirit that we must give primary concern. Solomon long ago said it correctly: "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life" (Proverbs 4:23). Jesus told the morally corrupt Jews:

"Either make the tree (the heart?) good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit. O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things . . . For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: These are the things which defile a man." (Matt. 12:33-35; 15:19,20).

The Horribleness Of Sin

      Preachers of righteousness have long agonized about the problem of communicating the horribleness of sin, that war against the soul. J. W. McGarvey once made this statement:

"I wonder if any of us has ever realized what it is to commit sin. I believe that I would esteem above every other gift that could be bestowed upon me as a preacher, the power to adequately conceive what sin is, and to adequately set it before the people. A number of times in my ministrations, I have prepared sermons designed to set forth the enormity of sin; but I have every time felt that I made a failure. I found, I thought, two causes of the failure: first, a want of realization in my own soul of the enormity of it; and second, inability to gather up such words and such figures of speech, as would, with anything like adequacy, set it forth before my hearers. The pleasures of sin have blinded our eyes to its enormity. So I have come to the conclusion, after a great deal of reflection, and a great deal of mental effort, that about the only correct gauge we have with which to measure the enormity or heinousness of sin, is the punishment that God has decreed against it. God is infinite in all his attributes; infinite in mercy, in love, in compassion; and when we find the punishment that such a God as that was constrained, by the justice that also characterizes him, to enact against sin, I think we shall be better able to form an idea of its enormity than we can from any other view of the matter."

      The terribleness of punishment? Could this help us to know how terrible sin really is? All of us have read the Scriptures describing hell. But have we ever really seriously contemplated them? Let's take another look at some of these passages.

In Matthew 8:12 hell is described as "outer darkness," a place of "weeping and gnashing of teeth."

In Matthew 13:42 Christ calls hell a "furnace of fire." Some other terms used by the Lord to describe hell are "everlasting fire" (Matt. 25:41), "unquenchable fire" (Mark 9:43), and a place "where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched" (Mark 9:48).

Paul, writing to the church in Thessalonica, calls hell a place of "everlasting destruction" (2 Thess. 1:9).

Jude (v.13) speaks of hell as the "blackness of darkness forever." In the book of Revelation, John records the things revealed to him by Jesus Christ through his angel. Here hell is spoken of as a "lake of fire" (20:15); a "lake which burneth with fire and brimstone" (21:8); a place where "the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night" (14:11).

Think of all this! Could anything be more terrible?

And yet, even this promise of punishment, and the severity of such punishment, for the disobedient and unrighteous, does not keep mankind from sinning. Do we really believe what the Bible says about hell?

We might furthermore point out that it is nearly always the lawbreaker who argues against the severity of the law. Who would call a law unjust? Or the punishment too severe? Would it not be those who have broken the law? If we put murderers, and drunkards, and adulterers and liars on the juries of the lands, would it be possible to get a just judgment that would uphold the righteous of God? I think not! Neither do you! The "ole timers" used to quote often the adage,

"No rogue e'er felt the halter draw

With good opinion of the law."

      The awful consequences of sin is also seen in all the pain and agony of millions of the human race. The broken homes, the crippled and mangled humanity. Forget for the moment those incidents of true accident, those events in life that were beyond man's control as far as anyone could possibly know. But there still remains much hurt and harm that is clearly the result of "man's inhumanity to man." As Robert Burns the poet said, this "makes countless thousands mourn." The wars, nation against nation, individual against individual; surprisingly, family member against family member (half of all murders in our nation are committed by other family members). For one to say that all this is in any way "God's will" is to blaspheme the good name of God. It simply is not so! "From whence come wars and fightings among you?" asks James. "Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?" (James 4:1). What about poverty? My conviction is that the world would know little of the extreme of this were it not for greed and covetousness. Man's inhumanity against man!

      Man can hardly conceive the cost of sin. When society's laws are broken the offender is punished. But even then he cannot pay the full price for his offense. Did Nathan F. Leopold pay the full price to society for his crime? He was 19 years old when he and Richard Loeb brutally murdered a 14 year old boy in a sadistic experiment. They were sentenced to life imprisonment. Loeb died in 1936, but Leopold spent over three decades in prison. He was a model prisoner, organizing a correspondence school and a library for prisoners, serving as a guinea pig for medical tests. He was paroled in 1958 and lived in Puerto Rico until his death at age 66. Some people claim that Leopold more than made up for his crime by his good works. He himself said:

"Atonement, expiation -- that's impossible for me to say. I don't know how to measure punishment. I have been here 33 years, have lost all the people near and dear to me, have forfeited any chance to be a success, to have a family and experience happiness. Now whether that's enough, I don't know. Others will have to decide."

      The cost of the offering necessary to bring about man's forgiveness before God helps us to see the extreme sinfulness of sin: the cruel crucifixion of the innocent Son of God, God's only begotten Son, who never committed a sin of any kind, yet ironically was made sin for all mankind. There is something terribly unjust in the innocent taking the blame for the guilty. This is magnified when we contemplate the hideous and cruel death Jesus had to suffer. What a testimony to the viciousness of mankind, brought to a climax by the butchery on Golgotha.

      All because of sin.

-- Hank Tankersley

"For God So Loved. . .”

      Those words are probably the most familiar words of the Bible. They are the beginning words of John 3:16, which says, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only Begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life." Most never look at the verses following, but it must be remembered that Jesus spoke all of these in the same lesson. We, too, must put it in the same context. He said, "For God sent the Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him."

      This verse gives us the clear purpose of God. He does not want to condemn the world; He wants to save it. The one and only means for the salvation of the world is stated-it is Jesus, His Son. Then, Jesus'great sermon continues, and He says, "He who believes in Him is not condemned; he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God." This is a startling statement. Most have never really thought about it. Belief, which is knowing, trusting, obeying, committing ourselves, will keep us from being condemned. And then, He says, that those who do not make this life-commitment "are condemned already."

      The church has never fully realized that the world is already lost because of sin, not because they have not believed in Christ. Some think that somehow the heathen will be saved by the grace and mercy of God because they did not know the Gospel, but that is not the case. We are already lost because we are in sin. Jesus is the only remedy the world has. Society has never faced the enormity of sin. Greed, lust, lies, stealing, adultery, hatred, murder, envy, and on and on we could go with our catalogue of sin; these all kill us, make families suffer, hurt the innocent, break God's heart, and separate God and man. Sin is the problem, not ignorance of Jesus and salvation. As humans, we are in a poor position to judge whom God should save and whom he should condemn. We will let Him do that; but at the same time, we have got to pay close attention to what He says as to how He is going to do it!

– Harvey Porter via Bulletin Digest

(Borrowed from Marion Bulletin)