THERE are certain most urgent needs for the present day, relating to the spiritual kingdom, which should exercise the hearts of all true workers for God, and they should do their utmost to satisfy them. Amongst these spiritual needs, we should assign a very prominent place to the enforcement of the character and reality of sin. Sin in its sinfulness, sin in its relation to the infinitely holy God, sin and its punishment, and sin and its only remedy, should be insisted upon in the Sunday-school class, by the chair-side when visiting, as well as in public ministry. The bold declaration of what sin is, is too little in evidence in the popular religion of our day, indeed it seems in danger of being elbowed out altogether― that is to say, out of fashionable religion.
Sin is as sinful as ever it was. Six thousand years of human progress have not diminished its intensity. Man is, by nature, as sinful as his earliest progenitors; there is no glimmer of man evolving himself into sinlessness, and there never will be. What is termed human progress, on its present day lines―education, electric light, railways, and so on―does not in any degree touch the question of the nature of man in relation to his fellows; we need not observe that such matters do not relate to man in his duty towards God. Man is no nearer goodness because he travels forty miles an hour, or peace because he has invented dynamite, nor is he nearer honesty because he reads cheap literature and is politically instructed. Ask parents whether education has made their children tender-hearted and obedient, and traders if telegrams have rendered trade honest and men trustworthy?
But when we tome to deal with sin in relation to God we are the most appalled, for here is most terrible degeneracy. The world may boast itself of material progress, but what shall be said of spiritual thought? We may judge of the views about sin of workers in the Christian field, by the remedies they propose for it.
One remedy is education―but at the best an educated man is only an educated sinner. If we proposed to change a crab tree by cultivation we should be derided, and be properly regarded as not knowing the nature of a crab tree. We should be told, “After all your efforts you will only have produced a cultivated crab tree!” And just in the same way do we say, a man proposing to deal with human sin by education, that is, by educating the race not to sin, is utterly in the dark as to the nature of man. The education the Sunday-school teacher should give his class is, “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God,” “The soul that sinneth it shall die.” And the teacher should teach his young charge that God is holy, and that before Him every heart is open, and to Him every thought known, and by Him every word heard, and that all must in the coming day give account to Him.
When a human being takes in the reality of what sin is, he needs reality in reference to the forgiveness of his sins. Can we imagine a man truly awakened to the burden of his sins, being content with “pleasant Sunday afternoons for the people,” or some light fancy, which is called religion?
Can we imagine a truly awakened sinner realizing who God is, and believing what God’s Word teaches him, being satisfied with mere prayers or ceremonies? Impossible; that man must have the divine reality to rest on. He will tolerate no false remedies, and he will not have them, because he cannot, since they do him no good, and give him no ease.
Now, if we can be used to sow into one human heart the seed of truth as to what sin is, we have not lived in vain. When this seed germinates within the heart a mightier power exists there, than in all the surroundings of the world, a force which no mere human power can resist.
There is only one remedy for sin, and that is Jesus and His blood―Jesus Christ and Him crucified. He gives rest to the soul, and none but One who is divine can do this. His cross is the divine witness of the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and the proof that there is none other remedy for sin. Christ crucified is no reformer of the human race―far otherwise; Christ crucified is the Holy One of God standing in the sinner’s stead. Christ crucified is the eternal proof to the believer of his own sinfulness; true, he may look into his heart and again and again see its blackness, but as he looks to the cross of Christ he sees the blackness of sin as God beholds it, and has just and God-given thoughts of sin.
How deep is the need for witnessing to the cross of Christ in its true character in our day! If the cross of Christ were spiritually honored, the cross would not be worn as an ornament. How could the divine witness of what man is, the emblem of shame and judicial suffering, be allowed to dangle from a chain suspended from a waistcoat or the neck The cross-wearing fashion is one evidence of the meager thoughts men have about sin and Christ crucified for sinful men. The true evangelical can alone speak duly of sin and its remedy. The rationalist knows neither what sin really is, nor does he know its remedy, for he makes light of God, the Judge of all, and rejects the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The ceremonialist does not fully know what sin is, nor its remedy, for he teaches that sin can be met in some way by religious pursuits, and that its remedy is not Christ and Him crucified only, but in part the offices of the Church. The remedy is the one and only Saviour, Jesus Christ the Lord: He and He alone saves us from our sins.