16. GRIEF AT SIN

"Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus."

"He looked around at them in anger — being deeply grieved at their hardness of their hearts." — Mark 3:5.

On this one occasion only, is the expression used with reference to Jesus — "He looked around at them in anger!" Never did He grieve for Himself. His in tensest sorrows were reserved for those who were tampering with their own souls, and dishonouring His God. The continual spectacle of moral evil, thrust on the gaze of spotless purity, made His earthly history one consecutive history of grief, one perpetual "cross and passion."

In the tears shed at the grave of Bethany — sympathy, doubtless, for the world's myriad mourners, had its own share (the bereaved could not part with so precious a tribute in their hours of sadness) — but a far more impressive cause was one undiscerned by the weeping sisters and sorrowing crowd — His knowledge of the deep and obdurate impenitence of those who were about to gaze on the mightiest of miracles, only to "despise, and be astonished, and perish!" "Jesus wept!" — but His profoundest anguish was over resisted grace, abused privileges, scorned mercy! It was the Divine Craftsman mourning over His shattered handiwork — the Almighty Creator weeping over His ruined world — God, the God-man, "grieving" over the Temple of the soul — a humiliating wreck of what once was made "after His own image!"

Can we sympathize in any respect with such exalted tears? Do we mourn for sin, our own sin — the deep insult which it inflicts on God — the ruinous consequences it entails on ourselves? Do we grieve at sin in others? Do we know anything of Lots' grief, "Lot was a righteous man who was tormented in his soul by the wickedness he saw and heard day after day!" — by the stupid hardness and obduracy of the depraved heart, which resists alike the appeals of wrath and love, judgment and mercy? Ah! it is easy, in general terms, to condemn vice, and to utter harsh, severe, and cutting denunciations on the guilty! It is easy to pass uncharitable comments on the inconsistencies or follies of others; but to "grieve" as our Lord did, is a different thing; to mourn over the hardness of heart, and yet to have the burning desire to teach it better things — to hate, as He did, the sin — but, like Him also, to love the sinner!

Reader! look specially to your own spirit. In one respect, the example of Jesus falls short of your case. He had no sin of His own to mourn over. He could only commiserate others. Your in tensest grief must begin with yourself. Like the watchful Levite of old, be a guardian at the temple-gates of your own soul. Whatever is your besetting iniquity, your constitutional bias to sin — seek to guard it with wakeful vigilance. Grieve at the thought of incurring one passing shadow of displeasure from so kind and compassionate a Saviour. Let this be a holy preservative in your every hour of temptation, "How can I do this great wickedness — and sin against God?"

Grieve for a perishing world — a groaning creation fettered and chained in unwilling "subjection to vanity." Do what you can, by effort, by prayer — to hasten on the hour of jubilee when its ashy robes of sin and sorrow shall be laid aside, and, attired in the "beauties of holiness," it shall exult in "the glorious liberty of the sons of God!"

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