'Sin hath reigned in death' (as the accurate translation has it);
'Grace reigns unto eternal life.' The one has established her
dominion, and its results are wrought out, her reign is, as it were,
a reign in a cemetery; and her subjects are dead. If you want a
modern instance to illustrate an ancient saw, think of Armenia. There
is a reign whose gifts to its subjects are death. Sin reigns, says
Paul, and for proof points to the fact that men die.
Now, I am not going to enter into the question here, and now, whether
physical death passes over mankind because of the fact of
transgression. I do not suppose that this is so. But I ask you to
remember that when the Bible says that 'Death passed upon all men,
for all have sinned,' it does not merely mean the physical fact of
dissolution, but it means that fact along with the accompaniments of
it, and the forerunners of it, in men's consciences. 'The sting of
death is sin,' says Paul, in another place. By which he implies,
I presume, that, if it were not for the fact of alienation from God
and opposition to His holy will, men might lie down and die as
placidly as an animal does, and might strip themselves for it 'as for
a bed, that longing they'd been sick for.' No doubt, there was death
in the world long before there were men in it. No doubt, also, the
complex whole phenomenon gets its terror from the fact of men's sin.
But it is not so much that physical fact with its accompaniments
which Paul is thinking about when he says that 'sin reigns in death,'
as it is that solemn truth which he is always reiterating, and which
I pray you, dear friends, to lay to heart, that, whatever activity
there may be in the life of a man who has rent himself away from
dependence upon God--however vigorous his brain, however active his
hand, however full charged with other interests his life, in the very
depth of it is a living death, and the right name for it is death. So
this is Sin's gift--that over our whole nature there come mortality
and decay, and that they who live as her subjects are dead whilst
they live. Dear brethren, that may be figurative, but it seems to me
that it is absurd for you to turn away from such thoughts, shrug your
shoulders, and say, 'Old-fashioned Calvinistic theology!' It is
simply putting into a vivid form the facts of your life and of your
condition in relation to God, if you are subjects of Sin.
Then, on the other hand, the other queenly figure has her hands
filled with one great gift which, like the fatal bestowment which Sin
gives to her subjects, has two aspects, a present and a future one.
Life, which is given in our redemption from Death and Sin, and in
union with God; that is the present gift that the love of God holds
out to every one of us. That life, in its very incompleteness here,
carries in itself the prophecy of its own completion hereafter, in a
higher form and world, just as truly as the bud is the prophet of the
flower and of the fruit; just as truly as a half-reared building is
the prophecy of its own completion when the roof tree is put upon it.
The men that here have, as we all may have if we choose, the gift of
life eternal in the knowledge of God through Jesus Christ His Son,
must necessarily tend onwards and upwards to a region where Death is
beneath the horizon, and Life flows and flushes the whole heaven.
Brother! do you put out your whole hand to take the poisoned gift
from the claw-like hand of that hideous Queen; or do you turn and
take the gift of life eternal from the hands of the queenly Grace?