Christ follows the vain boast in the text, with the calm, grave,
profound explanation of what He meant: 'Whoso committeth sin is the
slave of sin.' That is true in two ways. By the act of sinning a man
shows that he is the slave of an alien power that has captured him; and
in the act of sinning, he rivets the chains and increases the tyranny.
He is a slave, or he would not obey sin. He is more a slave because he
has again obeyed it. Now, do not let us run away with the idea that
when Jesus speaks of sin and its bondage, He is thinking only, or
mainly, of gross outrages and contradictions of the plain law of
morality and decency, that He is thinking only of external acts which
all men brand as being wrong, or of those which law qualifies as
crimes. We have to go far deeper than that, and into a far more inward
region of life than that, before we come to apprehend the inwardness
and the depth of the Christian conception of what sin is. We have to
bring our whole life close up against God, and then to judge its deeds
thereby. Therefore, though I know I am speaking to a mass of
respectable, law-abiding people, very few of you having any knowledge
of the grosser and uglier forms of transgression, and I dare say none
of you having any experience of what it is to sin against human law,
though I do not charge you—God forbid!—with _vices_, and still less
with _crimes_, I bring to each man's conscience a far more searching
word than either of these two, when I say, 'We all have _sinned_ and
come short of the glory of God.' This declaration of the universality
and reality of the bondage of sin is only the turning into plain words
of a fact which is of universal experience, though it may be of a very
much less universal consciousness. We may not be aware of the fact,
because, as I have to show you, we do not direct our attention to it.
But there it is; and the truth is that every man, however noble his
aspirations sometimes, however pure and high his convictions, and
however honest in the main may be his attempts to do what is right,
when he deals honestly with himself, becomes more or less conscious of
just that experience which a great expert in soul analysis and
self-examination made: 'I find a law'—an influence working upon my
heart with the inevitableness and certainty of law—'that when I would
do good, evil is present with me.'
We all know that, whether we regard it as we ought or no. We all say
Amen to that, when it is forced upon our attention. There _is_
something in us that thwarts aspiration towards good, and inclines to
evil.
'What will but felt the fleshly screen?'
And it is not only a screen. It not only prevents us from rising as
high as we would, but it sinks us so low as to do deeds that something
within us recoils from and brands as evil. Jesus teaches us that he who
commits sin is the slave of sin; that is to say, that an alien power
has captured and is coercing the wrongdoer. That teaching does not
destroy responsibility, but it kindles hope. A foreign foe, who has
invaded the land, may be driven out of the land, and all his prisoners
set free, if a stronger than he comes against him. Christianity is
called gloomy and stern, because it preaches the corruption of man's
heart. Is it not a gospel to draw a distinction between the evil that a
man does, and the self that a man may be? Is it not better, more
hopeful, more of a true evangel, to say to a man, 'Sin dwelleth in
you,' than to say, 'What is called sin is only the necessary action of
human nature'? To believe that their present condition is not slavery
makes men hopeless of ever gaining freedom, and the true gospel of the
emancipation of humanity rests on the Christian doctrine of the bondage
of sin.
Let me remind you that freedom consists not in the absence of external
constraints, but in the animal in us being governed by the will, for
when the flesh is free the man is a slave. And it means that the will
should be governed by the conscience; and it means that the conscience
should be governed by God. These are the stages. Men are built in three
stories, so to speak. Down at the bottom, and to be kept there, are
inclinations, passions, lust, desires, all which are but blind aimings
after their appropriate satisfaction, without any question as to
whether the satisfaction is right or wrong; and above that a dominant
will which is meant to control, and above that a conscience. That is
the pyramid; and as by the sunshine on the gilded top of some spire,
the shining apex, the conscience, is illnmined when the light of God
falls upon it. And when a man is built in that fashion, and keeps to
that fashion, then, and only then, is he free.
I need not remind you of how the metaphor of my text receives its most
tragical and yet most common illustration and confirmation in the awful
fact of the power of any evil thing, once thought or done by a man, to
reproduce itself, onwards and ever onwards. It is a far commoner thing
for a man never to have done some given evil, never to have got drunk,
never to have stolen, or the like, than to have done it only once. I
have heard of a mysterious illness, in which at first medical analysis
detected with difficulty one single bacterion in a great quantity of
blood. But in a few days, so had they multiplied that no drop could be
taken anywhere from the veins which was not full of them. That is how
men get under the slavery of any evil thing; and habit becomes stronger
than anything except that "strong Son of God, immortal Love," whose
Spirit can conquer even it." Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the
leopard his spots? Then may ye that are wont to do evil learn to do
well." The bondage is real and hard.