[1] The tempter persuadeth the sinner that it cannot be that
God should make so great a matter of sin, because the
thoughts of a man's heart, or his words, or deeds, are
matter of no great moment, when man himself is so poor a
worm, and whatever he doth is no hurt to God. But if God so
much regard us as to make us, and preserve us continually,
and to become our Governor, and make a law for us and judge
us, and reward His servants with no less than heaven; then
you may easily see that He so much regardeth us, as to
observe whether we obey or break His laws. He that so far
careth for a clock or watch, as to make it and wind it up,
doth care whether it go true or false. What do these men
make of God, who think He cares now what men do! Then He
cares not if man beat you, or rob you, or kill you, for
none of this hurteth God. And the king may say, "If any
murder your friends and children, why should I punish him?
he hurt not me." But justice is to keep order in the world,
and not only to preserve the governor from hurt: God may
not be wronged, though He be not hurt. And He will make you
pay for it, if you hurt others; and smart for it, if you
hurt yourself.--_Baxter,_ 1618-1691.
[2] Our sin is not so much a violation of a law that lies
outside of the bosom of God, as it is a disregard of the
feelings and nature of God Himself. You will by a moment's
reflection see that there is a marked distinction between
personal feeling infringed upon and law transgressed. The
magistrate sits upon the bench, and a culprit is brought
before him. There are two ways in which that culprit may be
considered as transgressing. He may have broken the law of
the land, which the magistrate represents officially, but
not personally. The magistrate regards him as a culprit, to
be sure. But suppose that, in the exercise of truth and
justice by a pure administration or decision, the
magistrate arouses the anger of the culprit, and he insults
him to his face, and in his own court; is there any
difference between his former crime, which was the
violation of the law of the land, and in his latter crime,
which is a transgression of the feeling of the magistrate,
sitting as a magistrate?
It is the same everywhere. When you employ men in your
affairs, you know that there is a distinction between a
disregard of the rules of business, and a personal
disagreement with yourself. You know that when a man
offends against you, his wrong is more heinous and
provoking than when he offends against your rules or laws.
We know that a child may violate the laws of morality as
they are established by the Word of God and by the consent
of the community; that he may violate the civil law of the
land in which he dwells; that he may violate the rules and
regulations of a well-ordered family; and yet, though all
these courses of conduct are grievous wrongs which shock
the parent, not be as culpable as when he treads on the
feelings of the parent. There are exigencies in which the
child flies, as it were, in the heart of the father and
other, and does not so much violate their command as their
living feeling; intolerable and more flagrant than simply
setting aside and forgetting or transgressing a law. In
other words, it is possible to break a statute; that is one
kind of transgression. It is possible, also, to sin by
directly infringing upon the heart and the feeling; that is
another kind of transgression, and one that is considered
more stinging, more intolerable, and more unforgivable than
any other.
Now God and His law are one, in the sense in which we
approach Him as moral beings--one in such a sense that when
we offend against His moral law, we offend against His own
personal feeling. He is not a magistrate for whom a system
has been framed, and to the administration of which He
comes under a sense of justice. He is a universal Father,
administering according to His own instincts, His own
tastes, His own affections, His own feelings, among His
children. God's law is God's self, pervading the universe,
and our transgression is a personal affront of God Himself.
Just as when your taste, or your love, or your conscience,
is violated by the direct act of another person against
yourself, the offence is greater than if any exterior canon
were broken; so it is when we violate the Divine commands.
This conception of God should quicken every moral
sensibility, and make a life of sin painful and distasteful
to us. It is one thing to sin against a government, and
another thing to sin against a being. There are a great
many children that will sin against the family
arrangements, who would not sin against their mother. There
is many a child to whom the mother says, "My dear child,
you know your father has made a law in this family, that
such and such things shall not be done, and you know you
have broken that law three of four times; now, for my sake,
avoid breaking it again." The child feels, when the mother
interposes herself, that there is something that touches
him which did not when it was only a law of the family that
he was setting aside.
Now, God puts Himself in just that position, and the motive
of obedience and righteousness is this: that God is the
tenderest, the most patient, the gentlest, and the dearest
friend that we have; that He knows everything within and
without; and that though we are sinful and wicked, He, in
His infinite compassion and mercy, forgives us, and says,
"Do not sin against me, nor against mine."--_Beecher._
When a man defrauds you in weight, he sins against _you,_
not against the scales, which are only the instruments of
determining true and false weight. When men sin, it is
against God, and not against His law, which is but the
indicator of right and wrong. You care little for sins
against God's law. It has no blood in its veins, no
sensibility. Now, every sin that you commit is personal to
God, and not merely an infraction of His _laws._ It is
casting javelins and arrows of base desire into His loving
bosom. I think no truth can be discovered which would be so
powerful upon the moral sense of men, as that which should
disclose to them that sinning is always a personal offense
against a personal God. Law without is only an echo of
God's heart-beat within.--_Beecher._
[3] Is there any human being who so hates the sin of a child,
or the companion of that friend? To whose eye so much as to
the eye of the lover is a defect a thing to be abhorred? Is
there anywhere in the world such compassion as is found in
a father or in a mother over the sin or fault of the child?
Yea, with evil associates, with growing bluntness of
feeling, with accumulating evasions and deceits, with a
development of serpent passions, with a life by day and by
night that emasculates manliness, the mother sees her boy
going steadily down, step by step; and in her nightly
vigils, with strong crying and tears, she pours herself out
before God, abhorring with unutterable detestation all
these terrible evils that threaten the life and immortality
of her son; and for years she carries in her soul the
suffering that ought to be in his, and bears his sin, his
sorrow, and his shame, and lies humiliated, and bowed down
in the dust, the just for the unjust.--_Beecher._
God hates sin, because it destroys what He loves. He could
live high and lifted up above all noise of man's groaning,
all smoke of his torment; but His nature is to come down
after man--to grope for him amid all the dark pollutions of
sin, and, if possible, to rescue and cleanse him.
God hates sin very much, as mothers hate wild beasts. One
day a woman stood washing beside a stream. She was in a
wild frontier country, and the woods were all around. Her
little, only child was playing about near her. By and by
she missed the infant's prattle, and, looking about, she
called its name. There was no answer. Alarmed, the mother
ran to the house, but her babe was not there. In wild
distress the poor woman now fled to search the woods, and
there she found her child. But it was only its little
_body_ that she clasped to her heart. A wolf had seized her
treasure, and when, at last, she rescued it from those
bloody fangs, its spirit had gone. Oh, how that mother
hated wolves! And do you know that this is the very figure
Christ uses to show what feeling He has towards the sin
that is seeking to devour His children?--_Beecher._
It makes a difference to God how we act. His happiness is
affected by the conduct of His children; for His heart is
the heart of a father. If, when my child sins, a pang goes
through my own soul, and I fly to rescue him from further
iniquity, it is because God struck into my breast a little
spark of what in Him is infinite.--_Beecher._
[4] A group of rough men were assembled at a tavern one night.
One man boasted that it did not make any difference what
time he went home, his wife cheerfully opened the door, and
provided an entertainment if he was hungry when he got
home. So they laid a wager. They said: "Now, we'll go along
with you. So much shall be wagered. We'll bet so much that
when you go home, and make such a demand, she will resist
it." So they went along at two or three o'clock in the
morning and knocked at the door. The door opened, and the
man said to the wife: "Get us a supper." She said: "What
shall I get?" He selected the articles of food. Very
cheerfully were they provided, and about three or four
o'clock in the morning they sat down at the table--the most
cheerful one in all that company the Christian wife--when
the man, the ruffian, the villain, who had demanded all
this, broke down and said: "I can't stand this. O what a
wretch I am!" He disbanded that group. He knelt down with
his Christian wife and asked her to pray for the salvation
of his immortal soul, and before the morning dawned they
were united in the faith and hope of the Gospel. A patient,
loving, Christian demeanour in the presence of
transgression, in the presence of hardness, in the presence
of obduracy and crime, is an argument from the throne of
the Lord Almighty.--_Talmage._
[5] Since we know God to be grievously displeased with sin,
here is something awful in His keeping silence while it is
committed under His eye. If a child comes home conscious of
having offended a parent, and the parent says nothing all
that night, but merely looks very grave, the child is more
frightened than he would be by a sharp rebuke or severe
punishment, for if such rebuke or punishment were
inflicted, he would at least know the worst; but when the
parent is silent, he knows not what may be hanging over
him. So when we remember how many things plainly offensive
to God are going on all around us, it is a terrible thought
that He is still silent. We fear that He is but getting
ready to take vengeance on those who defy Him. And so that
passage which we have quoted from the Psalms carries on the
train of thought in what follows. "God is a righteous
judge, strong and patient, and God is provoked every day.
If a man will not turn, He will whet His sword, He hath
bent His bow, and made it ready."
In countries where earthquakes happen, a dead silence
always goes before the earthquake. Nature seems hushed into
an awful stillness, as if she were holding her breath at
the thought of the coming disaster. The air hangs heavily;
not a breath fans the leaves; the birds make no music;
there is no hum of insects; there is no ripple of streams;
and this while whole houses, and even cities sometimes, are
hanging on the brink of ruin. So it is with God's
silence,--it will be followed, when it seems deepest, by
the earthquake of His judgments. And so the holy Apostle
writes to the Thessalonians: "When they shall say, Peace
and safety" (from the fact of God's being so still and so
dumb), "Then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as
travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not
escape."--_Goulburn._