The Fruits of Sin and the Fruits of Holiness

Next Part The Fruits of Sin and the Fruits of Holiness 2

"What fruit had you then in those things whereof you are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death. But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, you have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." Romans 6:21-23

How few, speaking comparatively, of the living family see and admire the infinite wisdom of God in devising, executing, revealing, and applying the wondrous scheme of redeeming love. They freely acknowledge God's power; his mercy, his goodness, and his love have each their tribute of thankful praise. But how few seem to enter into the infinite wisdom of God in the contrivance and execution of that wondrous plan whereby he saved sinners. And yet how full the Scriptures are of it. How the Apostle breaks forth into a burst of holy admiration– "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God." How he says– "We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden mystery, which God ordained before the world unto our glory." "To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God." And so he is termed "the only wise God."

Now how does the wisdom of God shine forth in this way to draw forth such admiration from the mind of the Apostle? Assuming the entrance of sin into the world, the fall of man, and the state to which sin had reduced man, there were two problems to be solved, and both of such a nature that nothing but the wisdom of God could properly solve them. These two problems were– first, how man as a sinner– and by man I include all those in whom the purposes of God were fixed– how man as a sinner could be pardoned without any infringement of the justice and holiness of God. The other problem was, assuming the entrance of sin and the depravity of human nature which ensued therefrom, how could man be made capable of inheriting the blissful presence of God if he were pardoned?

To make this matter clear, we find these two problems continually cropping out in our society. There is a large class, especially in London– called the criminal class– men who live by degradation, who have no honest means of livelihood, but live by robbery, theft, and cheating of every kind, so as to prey on the very vitals of society. Now here are two problems connected with this criminal class– what is to be done with them? When they are detected, apprehended, and proved guilty of some theft, or violent highway robbery, or some breach of the law, what is to be done with them? Will you forgive them? Well, if you forgive them, you encourage others to join this horde of criminals; you make society itself scarcely endurable; you fill the country with alarm; you encourage thousands of reprobate characters to join the criminal class, and you give property into their hands to be preyed upon, and spoiled, and robbed. Well, then, you cannot pardon them. So you punish them– and you shut them up in prison for certain periods of time, according to their offences; or if guilty of murder, you hang them, and justly hang them, according to the righteous sentence of God and man.

Now, you see if man were pardoned without any punishment, there would be an infringement of God's justice; and yet if no mercy were shown– and the law has no mercy– if no mercy were shown in the case of those spiritually criminal, where would be that blessed attribute that lay in the bosom of God, and where would be the display of his sovereign grace?

Now take the other problem as regards society. You put the man into prison; you try to reform him; he has his chaplain and his Bible in his cell, and tracts to read, and a number of people trying to reform him. But for the most part he is incorrigible and irreformable, and he comes out a greater villain than he went in. Then what is to be done with him? He may be deterred from crime by punishment, but it has no effect upon his moral nature– he is a criminal still, because a criminal in heart; and therefore, the man is just what he was before.

Now see God's way of solving these two problems, because we are all a criminal class; we have all the halter round our neck; we have all openly or in secret committed crime that has brought us under the stroke of God's justice; we all deserve to be sent headlong into the bottomless pit; there is no man, woman, or child here that does not deserve eternal perdition. We are a criminal class, even if kept from open crime. Then what is to be done with us? Are we all to be tumbled headlong into hell? Is there no mercy to be shown? Must the whole human race perish under God's deserved wrath, and none escape? Where would be God's mercy, goodness, and grace, if we were all sent headlong to perdition– tumbled into hell without mercy? No! the goodness and mercy and grace of God could never allow that; and therefore a way must be devised, whereby mercy can have its claim. And this problem was solved by the incarnation, suffering, blood-shedding, and death of his dear Son. That was God's way of solving the problem– to show his hatred of sin, in laying upon his dear Son, what we should have endured had he not stood in our place and stead.

But now there is the other problem to be solved. Here is this same pardoned sinner. We will say God has pardoned him, washed him in Christ's blood, and clothed him in immaculate righteousness– can he take him to heaven just as he is? Is he fit for heaven because pardoned, because washed in the blood of Christ? Is there no internal fitness for it, no work of regeneration necessary, no conformity to the image of Christ required? How does God solve that problem? By sending the Holy Spirit into man's heart to transform him and make him a new creature in Christ– to give him a nature capable of heavenly bliss– to qualify him for heaven by making him fit for the inheritance, as well as washing away his sins and clothing him in a robe of righteousness. And thus God has solved those two problems. Had I time, I could show you the connection between the two– how it is the same way of salvation that pardons and forgives, as has the means of communicating that new creature and that heavenly birth whereby the soul is made meet for its eternal inheritance.

In opening up the words of our text this morning, I shall endeavor to show–

First, what are the fruits of sin, which are here spoken of as twofold– shame and death.

Secondly, what the gift of God is, to bring us out of this shame and death, which is, "eternal life through Jesus Christ."

Thirdly, what are the fruits and effects of the communication of this eternal life– namely, to make us free from sin, to become the servants of God, to have our fruit unto holiness, and the crowning end to be everlasting life.

I. What are the FRUITS OF SIN? The apostle here appeals to men's consciences; and there is no more powerful way of eliciting an answer to truth than finding an echo in one's own breast. He says to these Roman believers, "What fruit had you then in those things whereof you are now ashamed?" Can you look back and see what fruit you have gathered from those boughs? It was a large, and, as you thought, a goodly tree; it spread itself in all directions; there were fruits that grew upon every branch, either in promise or possession. Now take a view of what fruit you gathered from that tree when you lived under its shadow and when you fed upon its fruit; when you took up your abode there night and day and wanted no other shelter and no other provision. Now, he says, your eyes being opened to see what fruit that tree bore, you found there was nothing but shame; that shame hung upon every branch; and the fruit that was sweet to your taste when you fed upon it, turned into ashes in your mouth; and looking back upon it, you can see nothing but what covers you with shame and confusion of face. And what else? Why death. All you gathered from that tree was what Eve gathered when she ate the forbidden fruit. You gathered death– death temporal, in the separation of body and soul; death spiritual, in being alienated from the life of God; and death eternal, in being cast into the lake of fire. And this is all the fruit you have gathered from those things in which you walked and lived.

But to make the matter a little more clear, I shall take up several characters, and take them up to a certain point and period when they began to be ashamed, and began to see what fruit they had gathered from those boughs, and what the end of sin was in death. And I shall take them in separate cases, and bring them up to that point when shame began to enter their hearts.

1. And I take first of all, the man who lives in open sin– one of those profane, ungodly, harum-scarum men whose delight is in all manner of sin and ungodliness. Many of these are manifested to be vessels of mercy. The end proves that God has had thoughts of them of good, not of evil; that their names were written in the book of life; that in the midst of their vileness and profanity, still the eye of God was upon them. During this time, they knew no shame. They are thought to be very jolly companions; they can sing a song, and often not of a very moral character; and they can utter a joke, and they can pop out an oath, and they can drop an filthy expression, and they can stare modesty out of countenance, and they are, as they think, fine fellows, hectoring about as though this world were everything, and eternity nothing. All this time they are strangers to any sense of shame, or any apprehension of death. They are destitute alike of any shame as to their own conduct, or any fear of the consequence of death cutting them down at a stroke and consigning them to the lake of fire. And so they go on, without shame or fear. There may be some here who have lived this sort of wild, profane, ungodly life– I like to throw my net as far as I can, to catch as many fish as possible– there may be those here, who have gone on in the way I have described up to a certain time, and yet, in the infinite mercy of God, have been brought to faith and repentance.

2. Now I will take another character– a man upright, consistent, very different from those wild, profane, ungodly creatures of whom I have been speaking; a man with something like a religion so far as it went, consistent in character, life, and conduct. And yet, all the time this man might have been guilty of many secret sins– a prey to secret lust, carrying on ungodly practices in secret, a sly drinker, a real hater of God and godliness, having great contempt for gospel truth and those who love the ways and works of the gospel, but still maintaining a whitewashed outside profession; keeping the outside clean, and yet with all manner of abominations working within. Now this man knows no shame. Now and then he may have a pierce of conscience, or wish it might be better with him, or hope some day to return and reform; but at present he goes on in his secret practices, without shame or fear of death.

3. Now I take a third case– a man with a strong pharisaical profession of religion; built up on the platform of self-righteousness; a Pharisee to the back-bone; consistent in life, abstaining from practices generally denounced, and maintaining integrity and uprightness in all his dealings. This man knows no shame before God on account of any ignorance he may have of God's truth, any alienation of heart from his ways, any secret contempt of his servants, any delight inwardly in sin though not outwardly practiced, or any sight or sense how in God's sight the Pharisee is a smoke in his nostrils– "a fire that burns all the day."

4. Now I will take another character, just to complete my circle of faces, to make up my drawing, and to present it in as many lights as I possibly can– a man in a profession of religion; and he shall be a Calvinist, an ultra-Calvinist, if you like; a man strong in his knowledge of the doctrines of grace as any real partaker of the grace of God, and as bold an advocate for them– and yet destitute of the life of God, with no divine teaching to make his conscience tender, having no implantation of the fear of God in his soul, no knowledge of the only true God or of Jesus Christ whom he has sent; but bold, arrogant, presumptuous, built up in doctrine, and nothing but doctrine, without anything of the love or fear of God in his soul. This man knows no shame, and is not ashamed of his arrogance, nor his bold claims upon God, nor his ignorance of divine teaching or divine testimony, nor his lack of godly fear, nor his lack of marks and evidences of the teaching of God in his soul. He has no shame. He is as bold as brass. And as to death, he has no fear about it. He has a vain confidence which he thinks will carry him through it. But as to knowing anything of spiritual death in the alienation of his heart from God, or any apprehension of the second death, such things rarely trouble his thoughts.

I have taken all these four characters up to a certain point; I have taken them to the line of death. I have brought them along the broad road, each one really in the broad road, though in seemingly different paths; and I bring them to a certain point, and there they all four stand. They are different as regards many things externally; and yet, viewed by the eye of God, all dead in sin, and therefore destitute of any experimental knowledge of Jesus. Now, having brought them to that line, there I shall fix them.

II. And now I shall, with God's blessing, begin to open something about my second point, which is, the gift of God in eternal life, and this gift of God being through Jesus Christ our Lord. It has pleased the Father that in his dear Son should all fullness dwell, and the fullness of life, for he is the life; and in this fullness we receive grace for grace. Now it is his gracious purpose and heavenly will that life should be communicated to these four characters whom I have brought up to a certain point as in the vision of Ezekiel, where bones in some measure came to bones and flesh to flesh, but life has not entered into them.

Now I come to the point when this eternal life, which was given them in Christ Jesus, was breathed into their souls out of the fullness of Christ and God said "Live." And I shall take this life in its workings in them and upon them, and show, as the Lord may enable, how it operates in their minds and works in their hearts, what it leads them to do and feel, and how it brings them over the line of death and lands them in the line of life, where they are in grace manifested, and will find in the end everlasting life in the mansions of heavenly bliss.

Now for the most part I believe God works very gradually in the soul. I am in no way a friend to what are called sudden conversions; not that I deny or dispute them; but taking the majority of God's people, the life of God is communicated in a very secret way to them. There must be a moment when it is communicated; but we know it more by secret movements, sensations, and feelings, than from being able to say exactly when or how this life was communicated.

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