The Monster Dragged to Light!

Next Part The Monster Dragged to Light! 2

"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

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 sin. 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 sin until 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 people, 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, sin 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 not murder," immediately they say, "I have never broken that Law." But they forget that he who 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.

A man finds it written, "You shall not commit adultery." "Well, well," he says, "I am clear there." Immediately he plumes himself upon the supposition that he is chastity itself. But if he is given to understand that the commandment touches the heart, and that a licentious look is adultery, and that even a desire to do that which is evil, condemns the soul — then immediately he sees things in a very different light, and sees that to be sin, which had never troubled him before.

Commonly — yes, universally — until the Spirit of God comes into the soul, there is a total ignorance as to what the Law means. Men say, with a light heart, "Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this Law." But, if they did but know it, they would say, "Lord, have mercy upon us, and cleanse us of our innumerable infractions of a Law which we cannot keep, and which must forever condemn us as long as we abide under its power!"

Thus you see a few of the reasons why sin does not appear in its true light to the unconverted, but cheats impenitent and self-righteous minds. This is one of the most deplorable results of sin. It injures us most — by taking from us the capacity to know how much we are injured. It undermines the man's constitution — and yet leads him to boast of unfailing health. It makes him a beggar — and tells him he is rich. It strips him and makes him glory in his imagined robes. In this it resembles slavery, which, by degrees eats into the soul and makes a man content in his chains. Bondage at length degrades a man so that at last he forgets the misery of slavery and the dignity of freedom and is unable to strike the blow when a happy hour offers him the chance of liberty.

Sin, like the deadly frost of the northern regions, benumbs its victim before it slays him. Man is so diseased, that he imagines his disease to be health — and judges healthy men, to be under wild delusions. He loves the enemy which destroys him! He warms at his bosom, the viper whose fangs cause his death. The most unhappy thing that can happen to a man, is for him to be sinful and to judge his sinfulness to be righteousness! The Papist advances to his altar and bows before a piece of bread — but he does not feel that he is committing idolatry — no, he believes that he is acting in a praiseworthy manner! Thepersecutor hounded his fellow creatures to prison and to death, but he thought he truly did God a service! You and I can see the idolatry of the Papist and the murder committed by the persecutor — but the guilty persons themselves, do not see it.

The angry man imagines himself to be rightly indignant. The greedy man is proud of his own prudence. The unbeliever rejoices in his independence of mind. These are the aspects under which iniquitypresents itself to the spiritually blind. There is the mischief of sin — that it throws out of gear the balances by which the soul discerns between good and evil! What horrible beings those must have been — who could sink a vessel crowded with living souls — and then, while hearing them shriek and cry for help, could go steaming away from them, leaving them all to perish in the overwhelming waters! To what a state of inhumanity must they have sunk, to be able to do such a thing! The wreck of the vessel is hardly more dreadful than the wreck of the moral sense and common humanity in those who left the hundreds to die when they might have saved them.

To be able to stab a man would be horrible. But, to be so bad that after stabbing him you felt no sense of wrong-doing would be far worse. Yet with every act of sin, there goes a measure of heart-hardening, so that he who is capable of great crimes is usually incapable of knowing them to be such. With the ungodly, this pestilential influence is very powerful, leading them to cry, "peace, peace," where there is no peace, and to rebel against the most Holy God without fear or compunction. And, alas, since even in the saints there remains the old nature, even they are not altogether free from the darkening power of sin, for I do not hesitate to say that we all unwittingly allow ourselves into practices which clearer light would show to be sins!

Even the best of men have done this in the past. For instance, John Newton, in his trading for slaves in his early days, never seemed to have felt that there was any wrong in it. And Whitefield, in accepting slaves for his orphanage in Georgia, never raised or dreamed of raising the question as to whether slavery was in itself sinful. Perhaps advancing light will show that many of the habits and customs of our present civilization — are essentially bad, and our grandsons will wonder how we could have acted as we did. It may need centuries before the national conscience, or even the common Christian conscience, will be enlightened up to the true standard of right — and the individual man may need many a chastisement and rebuke from the Lord before he has fully discerned between good and evil.

O you demon, Sin! You are proved to be sin with a vengeance, by thus deluding us! You not only poison us — but make us imagine that our poison is a medicine! You defile us — and make us think ourselves the more beautiful! You slay us — and make us dream that we are enjoying life! My Brothers and Sisters, before we can be restored to the holy image of Christ, which is the ultimatum of every Christian — we must be taught to know sin to be sin! And we must have a restoration of the tenderness of conscience which would have been ours had we never fallen. A measure of this discernment and tenderness of judgment is given to us at conversion — for conversion, apart from a knowledge of sin — would be impossible. How can a man repent of that which he does not know to be sin? How shall hehumble himself before God concerning that which he does not recognize to be evil in God's sight? He must have enlightenment. Sin must be made to appear as sin to him.

Moreover, man will not renounce his self-righteousness — until he sees his sinfulness. As long as he believes himself to be righteous, he will hug that righteousness and stand before God with the Pharisee's cry, "God, I thank You that I am not as other men are!" As long as it is possible for us to swim on the bladders of our own righteousness — we will never take to the lifeboat of Christ's righteousness. We can only be driven to Free Grace — by sheer stress of sin; and as long as our leaky boat of self-will only keeps us above the flood — we will hold to it.

It is a miracle of Grace to make a man see himself so as to loathe himself and confess the impossibility of being saved by his own works. Yet, until this is done, faith in Jesus is impossible — for no man will look to the righteousness of another — while he is satisfied with his own righteousness. Everyone believes he has a righteousness of his own — until he sees sin in its native hideousness. Unless sin is revealed to you as a boundless evil, whoever you may be — where God and Christ are, you can never come! You must be made to see that your heart reeks with evil — that your past life has been defiled with iniquity — and you must also be taught that this evil of yours is no trifle — but a monstrous and horrible thing! You must be made to loathe yourselves as in the presence of God — or else you never will fly to the atoning blood for cleansing.

Unless sin is seen to be sin — Divine Grace will never be seen to be Divine Grace, nor Jesus to be a Savior. And without this, salvation is impossible! Here, then, we leave this important point — bearing witness, again, that to the natural man, sin does not appear as sin — and, therefore, a work of Grace must be worked in him to open his blind eyes, or he cannot be saved.

These are no soft speeches and fair words, but hard Truths of God — may the Holy Spirit lead many hearts to feel how sorrowfully true they are.

II. This leads us to our second Consideration: WHERE Sin Is Most Clearly Seen — it Appears to Be Sin. Its most terrible aspect, is its own natural self. Sin at its worst, appears to be sin. Do I seem to repeat myself? Does this utterance sound like a mere platitude? Then I cannot help it, for the text puts it so. And I know that you will not despise the text. But, indeed, there is a depth of meaning in the expression, "Sin, that it might appear sin" — as if the Apostle could find no other word so terribly descriptive of sin as its own name. He does not say, "Sin, that it might appear like Satan." No, for sin is worse than the devil — since sin made the devil what he is. Satan is God's creature — and this, sin never was. Its origin and nature are altogether apart from God.

Sin is even worse than Hell — for it is the sting of that dreadful punishment. Anselm used to say that if Hell were on one side and sin on the other — he would rather leap into Hell, than willingly sin against God. Paul does not say, "Sin, that it might appear madness." Truly sin is moral insanity, but it is worse than that by far. It is so bad that there is no name for it, but itself. One of our poets who wished to show how evil sin looks in the presence of redeeming love, could only say — "When the wounds of Christ explored — Sin does like itself appear."

If you need an illustration of what is meant, we might find one in Judas. If you wanted to describe him, you might say that he was a traitor, a thief and a betrayer of innocent blood. But you would finish up by saying, "he was a Judas" — that gives you all in one — none could match him in villainy.

If you wished a man to feel a horror of murder, you would not wish murder to appear to him as manslaughter, or as destruction of life, or as mere cruelty — but you would want it to appear as murder — you could use no stronger expression. So here, when the Lord turns the strong light of His eternal Spirit upon sin, and reveals it in all its hideousness and defilement; it appears to be not only moral discord, disorder, deformity, or corruption, but neither more nor less than SIN. "Sin," says Thomas Brooks, "is the only thing that God abhors. It brought Christ to the Cross. It damns souls. It shuts Heaven and it laid the foundations of Hell."

There are people who see sin as a "bad choice" or a misfortune — but this is far short of the true view and, indeed, very wide of it. How commonly do we hear one sort of sinner called, "unfortunate." This indicates a very lax morality. Truly it is a calamity to be a sinner, but it is much more than a calamity — and he who only sees sin as his misfortune has not seen it so as to be saved from it! Others have come to see sin as folly and so far they see aright, for it is essentially folly — and every sinner is a fool. A fool is God's own name for a sinner — commonly used throughout the books of Psalms and Proverbs. But for all that, sin is more than folly. It is not mere lack of wit or mistaken judgment — it is the knowing and willful choice of evil — and it has in it a certain maliciousness against God which is far worse than mere stupidity. To see sin as folly is a good thing, but it is not a gracious thing, nor a saving thing.

Some, too, have seen certain sins to be crimes — and yet have not viewed them as sins. Our use of the word, "crime," is significant. When an action hurts our fellow men — we call it a crime. When it only offends God — we style it a sin. If I were to call you criminals — you would be angry with me. But if I call you sinners — you will not be at all angry because to offend man is a thing you would not like to do — but to offend God is to many people a small matter, scarcely worth a moment's thought. Human nature has become so perverted, that if men know that they have broken human laws they are ashamed — but the breach of a command which only affects the Lord Himself causes them very little concern.

If we were to steal, or lie, or knock another down — we would be ashamed of ourselves, and so we ought to be. But, for all that, such shame would be no work of Divine Grace. Sin must appear to be sin against God — that is the point. We must say with David, "Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight." With the prodigal we must cry, "Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before You, and am no more worthy to be called Your son." That is the true view of it. May the Lord bring us to confess our transgressions after that sort.

And here lend me your ears a minute or two. Think how odious a thing sin is. Beloved, our offenses are committed against a Law which is based upon right. It is holy and just and good — it is the best Law which could be conceived. To break a bad Law we may be more than excusable, but there can be no excuse for transgression when the Commandment commends itself to every man's conscience. There is not one command in God's Word which is either harsh, arbitrary, or unnecessary. If we, ourselves, were perfect in holiness, infinitely wise and had to write a Law — we would have written just the Law which God has given us.

The Law is just to our fellow men, and beneficial to ourselves. When it forbids anything, it does but set up danger signals where real danger to ourselves exists. The Law is a kind of spiritual police to keep us out of harm's way. Those who offend against it — injure themselves.

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