Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1095
“Sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good, that sin by the commandment might become exceedingly sinful.” Romans 7:13.
“Philosophers have measured mountains
Fathom’d the depths of seas, of states, and kings,
Walked with a staff to Heaven and traced fountains:
But there are two vast, spacious things,
The which to measure it does more behoove:
Yet few there are that sound them—Sin and Love.”
So sang George Herbert, that sweet and saintly poet, and of one of those “two vast spacious things” we are about to speak on this morning—namely, sin. May the Holy Spirit direct us in thought and speech while into the very center of our subject we plunge at once, keeping to the words of our text.
I. Our first point to consider this morning shall be that TO MANY MEN SIN DOES NOT APPEAR SIN. Yes, and in all men in their natural blindness there is an ignorance of what sin is. It needs the power of the Divine Omnipotence, the voice of that same Majesty, which said, “Let there be light,” and there was light to illuminate the human mind, or else it will remain in darkness as to much of its own actual sin and the deep and deadly evil which belongs to it. Man, with wretched perverseness of misconception, abides content in a wrong idea of it. His deeds are evil and he will not come to the light lest he should know more concerning that evil than he wishes to know.
Moreover, such is the power of self-esteem that though sin abounds in the sinner he will not readily be brought to feel or confess its existence. There are men in this world, steeped up to the throat in iniquity, who never dream that they have committed anything worse than little faults. There are those whose souls are saturated with it till they are like the wool that has been lying in the scarlet dye—and yet they conceive themselves as white as snow. This is due in part to that dullness of conscience which is the result of the Fall. Though I have heard 10,000 times that conscience is the deputy of God in the soul of man, I have never been able to subscribe to that dogma.
It is no such thing! In many persons conscience is perverted. In others only a fragment of it remains and in all it is fallible and subject to aberrations. Conscience is in all men a thing of degrees dependent upon education, example and previous character. It is an eye of the soul, but it is frequently partly blind and weak and always needs light from above or else it does but mock the soul. Conscience is a faculty of the mind, which, like every other, has suffered serious damage through our natural depravity and it is by no means perfect. It is only the understanding acting upon moral subjects and upon such matters it often puts bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter, darkness for light and light for darkness. Therefore it is that men’s sins do not appear to them to be sin.
In all probability there is not one, even among renewed men, who fully knows the evil of sin nor will there be until in Heaven we shall be perfect. And then, when we shall see the perfection of Divine holiness, we shall understand how black a thing was sin. Men who have lived underground all their lives do not know how dark the mine is, nor can they know it until they stand in the blaze of a summer’s noon. In a great measure, our inability to see sin arises from the exceedingly deceitfulness both of sin and of the human heart. Sin assumes the brightest forms even as Satan attires himself as an angel of light. Such a thing as iniquity walking abroad in its own nakedness is seldom seen—like Jezebel it attires its head and paints its face. And, indeed, the heart loves to have it so and is eager to be deceived.
We will, if we can, extenuate our faults. We are all very quick-sighted to perceive something, which, if it does not quite excuse our fault, at all events prevents its being placed in the first-class of atrocities. Sometimes we will not understand the Commandment. We are willing not to know its force and stringency. It is too keen and sharp and we try to blunt its edge. If we can find a milder meaning for it we are glad to do so, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked”—therefore it invents a thousand falsehoods. As the deceivableness of sin is very great, so that it adorns itself with the colors of righteousness and makes men believe that they are pleasing God when they are offending Him, so is man, himself, an eager self-deceiver and, like the fool in Solomon’s Proverbs, he readily follows the flatterer.
In most men, their not seeing sin to be sin arises from their ignorance of the spirituality of the Law. Men read the Ten Commandments and they suppose them to mean nothing more than the superficial sense. If they read, for instance, “You shall do no murder,” straightway they say, “I have never broken that Law.” But they forget that he that hates his brother is a murderer and that unrighteous anger is a distinct violation of the command. If I willfully do anything which tends to destroy or shorten life, either my own or my neighbor’s, I am breaking the Commandment.