“ALL THESE THINGS” – Charles Spurgeon
SINS OF OMISSION
Some men have not enough force of character in them to be downright wicked; they are mere chips in the porridge with nothing of manhood in them; they are so idle that they are not even good enough to be diligent servants of Satan! There are some who would, if they could, I think, lie in bed and rot of slothfulness, to whom it would be their most supreme bliss to have nothing to do forever, and nothing to think of except maybe a little eating, and drinking by way of variety. Because this laziness abounds, many men sleep on, and awake not to righteousness and to the service of God. For them to repent is troublesome; to believe in Jesus Christ requires the exercise of thought; to be a Christian is too laborious; to watch their conduct and conversation is too much to require of them! If heaven could be reached in a sound sleep, and sleeping cars could be run all the way to the Celestial City, they would be among the best of pilgrims, but they cannot rub their eyes even to see Jesus, or leave their couch to win heaven itself! How these simpletons will wake up one day when they find that their life of trifling has brought them within the fast-closed gates of hell! God is not to be trifled with! He does not make immortal beings that they may sport like butterflies from flower to flower; He does not create souls, and give them lives to spend in child’s play, fashionable frivolities, and killing of time! Yet in the face of eternity, life, death, heaven, and hell, multitudes upon multitudes are ruined simply because they neglect the great salvation and are absolutely too idle to concern themselves about eternal matters. They doze into damnation! They sleep into eternal fire! But what a waking! O my fellow men and women, run not the risk, run not the risk!
IGNORANCE AS A CAUSE OF SINS OF OMISSION
Ignorance, too, is a more excusable, and, perhaps, less fruitful cause of sins of omission, but still a prominent one. Some men neglect to serve God because they do not know His word, His mind, or His gospel. But with many, the ignorance is willful. In every land, the subject is supposed to know the law—and though our magistrates very rightly are often lenient to prisoners who commit the first offense against a new law, yet such leniency lasts only for a case or two. And if after the law has been made for years, a prisoner pleaded that he did not know a law, he would be told that he ought to have known it. Especially is this the case with us who have the law here in the Bible, and who have it moreover written upon our consciences, so that when we sin, we sin not as the heathen do, but sin against the light of God, and knowledge. If a man sins through ignorance, he is so far excusable as the ignorance is excusable, but no further. And in this country, an ignorance of Christ, an ignorance of gospel duties, an ignorance of the law of God is without excuse, since in almost every street Jesus Christ is preached, and the word of God is within every man’s reach! If he is but willing and desirous to know the mind of God, he may soon discover it. Yet, I doubt not, ignorance in many, many cases—willing, witting ignorance—does cause many sins of omission.
THE EXCUSE OF A MORE CONVENIENT SEASON
Sins of omission, again, are very plentiful because men excuse themselves so readily about them by the pretense of a more convenient season. “I have not repented,” says one, “but then I mean to do so; I have not believed, but I shall do so before long; it is true I neglected prayer today, but then I intend, by and by, to give myself to supplication.” So that men imagine that God is to be served by them at their own times and seasons! God is to wait until it pleases them to do His bidding, and when they have a more convenient season, then will they listen to His word, and to His Spirit! Ah, but, sirs, the excuse of some future improvement is pitiful—it holds no water, for we are always bound to serve God at once, and the postponement of service is the perpetuation of rebellion. Many neglectors of God’s will excuse themselves by the prevalence of the like conduct. To omit to love and serve the Lord is the custom of the majority; wherever custom endorses a good thing, then it becomes unfashionable as well as sinful to break through the rule—and there are thousands of people who would sooner be wicked than be unfashionable! But when a right thing is not commonly observed in society, men straightaway begin to think that it is not necessary, and so they leave it undone; as if a prisoner brought before the bench should say, “It is true I am a thief, but then all the people in the court where I live are thieves, too; therefore I ought not to be punished. It is true, sir, that I could not keep my hands from picking and stealing, but then none of my family ever could; they were brought up to it, and you would not have a man forsake the customs of his father and mother, would you? My father and mother were professional thieves, and therefore I cannot be blamed for following their example.” But enlightened conscience warns us that custom is no excuse for sin. To your own Master each one of you will stand or fall! And, sirs, however graceless may be the parish in which you live, you have not to account for the parish, but for yourselves! And however covetous may be the times in which your lot is cast, you are not accountable for the times, but for yourselves! I charge you, in the name of God, let not custom ever be an excuse to your soul for sin, for custom will be no plea at the bar of God, nor will the multitude of those who are lost be any alleviation to your pain when you, too, are cast away with them into outer darkness!
Need I multiply reasons for the commonness of sins of omission? They grow on every plot of wasteland in our hearts, and their seeds are carried everywhere, as the down of the thistle, and as many as the seed of the poppy.
THE SINFULNESS OF SINS OF OMISSION
I come now, in the third place, to say a few words by way of setting forth the sinfulness of sins of omission. I wish I had the power to speak upon this subject as I would, for I long to see broken hearts among us convinced of their innumerable shortcomings. Broken hearts are God’s sacrifices; there are some among us who complain that they cannot believe in Jesus because they do not feel their need. I only wish they might be made to feel their need while, this morning, they are reminded of what they have left undone. Now I pray the Holy Spirit to make you feel the guilt of omissions as they are seen in the following light. Consider for a moment what would be the consequences if God were to omit, for one minute, to supply you with breath; if the Lord should omit, for a second, to supply you with life! Suppose the infinite God should omit His long-suffering mercy for an hour! Suppose He should refuse for an hour to restrain the axe of judgment—where would you be then? Suppose that the great preserver of all should make but one day’s intermission of goodness in His dealings with the universe? The sun would not shine; the air would fail to fill the lungs; and life would forget to be! The world would cease to exist, and the whole universe would subside into the nothingness from which it sprang! One moment’s forgetfulness on God’s part would be annihilation to all His creatures! Suppose that Jesus had left an omission in the plan of salvation? If only one part of our salvation had been left unfinished, then all must be forever accursed; then must you put your hands upon your loins, this morning, and go up and down through this hopeless world in desperate sorrow, saying one to the other, “There is no hope! Salvation is unfinished, and consequently unavailable! The Savior omitted one necessary item, and none of us can, therefore, be saved!”
If you will digest these two thoughts, you may, perhaps, taste the blessedness which lies in neglect of necessary things. Omissions cannot be trivial, if we only reflect what an influence they would have upon an ordinary commonwealth if they were perpetrated there as they are in God’s commonwealth. Think a minute—if one person has a right to omit his duty, another has, and all have; then the watchman would omit to guard the house; the policeman would omit to arrest the thief; the judge would omit to sentence the offender; the sheriff would omit to punish the culprit; the government would omit to carry out its laws. Then every occupation would cease, and the world die of stagnation. The merchant would omit to attend to his calling; the farmer would omit to plow his land! Where would the commonwealth be? The kingdom would be out of joint. The machine would break down, for no cog of the wheels would act upon its fellow. How would societies of men exist at all? And surely, if this is not to be tolerated in a society of men, much less in that great commonwealth of which God is the King—in which angels and glorified spirits are the peers, and all creatures citizens! How can the Lord tolerate that here there should be an omission, and there an omission, in defiance of His authority? As the judge of all the earth, He must bring down His strong right hand upon these omissions, and crush out forever the spirit that would thus revolt against His will.
THE RESULT AND PUNISHMENT OF SINS OF OMISSION
Think for a minute of how you would judge omissions towards yourselves; you have said to yourself, “As long as I do not drink or swear, or curse, or lie, or steal, it is a small matter that I neglect to be devout towards God.” Now listen. There is your servant—he has never stolen your goods, he has never set your house on fire, he has never held a pistol to your ear, and yet you have discharged him. Why? “Why,” you say, “because the fellow neglects everything about the house! I do not find that any command which I give him is carried out. He must be master, or I must—and if he will not do what I tell him, of what service is he? Let him go his way.” That is how you judge your servant, is it? And is God to let you neglect His service, and yet to allow you to go unpunished? Take a soldier in the army. To commit an act of mutiny, it is not necessary for the soldier to fix his bayonet, and kill his colonel; when he is ordered out on guard, he can just stay at home, or when the battle rages, he may, if he chooses, just ground his arms, and say, “No, I am not going out to fight.” Who could tolerate such mutiny—how could it be allowed? The omission is as vicious as the commission! Your child, the other day, smarted beneath the rod, and why? He had not lied or pilfered; there was no direct vicious act, but you had told him to go on an errand, and he had refused to go. And when you told him again and again, (and remember, God has commanded you a great many more times than you ever told your child), there he stood in stolid obstinacy, and would not move; and then, very rightly he was made to feel that such things could not be permitted in your household. Now, if in our house we cannot tolerate this from a child, much more shall the Great Father not endure these obstinate omissions from us!
“Ah, but,” you say, “I have not omitted towards God to go to church or to meeting regularly; I have not omitted the form of singing and prayer, and so on; all I have omitted is the spiritual matter, I have not loved Him.” And suppose, dear friends, suppose you have a wife, and the only thing that she has omitted is that she has omitted to love you—what would you think of that? Well, the house and domestic arrangements may show great cleanliness and order, but she is no wife to you if she has no love for you! The omission of love you feel to be a fatal one! And so that absence of love to God is such a dreadful absence, too! It is such a taking away of everything, that I only wish you could feel, you who have not loved Him, how guilty you are!
It may also help us, if we will consider for a moment what God thinks of omissions. Saul was ordered to kill the Amalekites, and not to let one escape, but he saved Agag and the best of the cattle, and for that, though he had positively done nothing but simply stayed his hand, and refused to do so, the Lord said, “I have put you away from being King over Israel.” Ahab was commanded to kill and slay Benhadad on account of innumerable cruelties; Benhadad was taken captive, but Ahab treated him with great leniency—and the result was, “Because you have let this man go, therefore your life shall be for his life.” Non-obedience ruined Ahab.
Our Lord Jesus Christ was the gentlest of all men, and yet there was one miracle which He performed which had a degree of vengeance in it—and what was that? He stood by a fig tree, and saw leaves but no fruit, and He said, “Henceforth there shall be no fruit on you forever,” as if to show that fruitless things provoked His anger—not so much brambles which bear their thorns, but fig trees which ought to bear figs, and do not. Remember, too, the parable which we read this morning in your hearing. The man with the one talent was condemned, if you remember, and his condemnation was for this—not that he had squandered his lord’s money, but that he had not increased it; so that, in God’s opinion, the not doing of good is sufficient to condemn men even if they have not committed positive evil.
When the Holy Spirit convicts men of sin, what is the special sin which He reveals? The sin of adultery? The sin of robbery? No, of an omission. “Of sin, because they believe not on Me.” Omitting to believe in Jesus is the master sin of which the Holy Spirit convicts the world!
Remember that solemn question of Paul when he asks, “How shall we escape if we—what? If we swear? If we frequent the tavern? No—“if we neglect so great a salvation?” The life-long neglect of God’s salvation involves us in danger from which there is no escape!
THE RESULT AND PUNISHMENT OF SINS OF OMISSION
Much more might be said, but time fails me, and therefore let me remind you very solemnly of what will be the result and punishment of sins of omission. Sins of omission will condemn us! Take the parable with which we closed our reading this morning—the king said to those on His left hand, “I was hungry, and you gave Me no meat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me no drink.” He did not say to them, “You were frequenters of evil houses; you were common drunkards; you were dishonest; you were fraudulent bankrupts; you were neglectors of the Sabbath, you were common profane swearers.” No, but He said, “I was hungry, and you gave Me no meat.” It was the absence of virtue, rather than the presence of vice, which condemned them! “Without holiness, no man shall see the Lord.” “But, Lord, the man has no vice about him; he has not plunged himself into the kennel of open iniquity.” “Ah, but that suffices not! If there are not the positive fruits of the Spirit producing in him holiness of life, he shall not see the Lord.”
O sirs, let none of us deceive ourselves! God will not accept our profession of religion because it simply keeps us chaste and polite, and makes us civil to our neighbors; we must have worked in us, by the Holy Spirit, a righteousness better than that of the Scribes and Pharisees, or we shall by no means enter into the kingdom of heaven! There must be worked in us as a work of divine grace—a deep abhorrence of sin, an earnest clinging to purity, a resolute pursuit of everything that is peaceful, and lovely, and of good repute, or else let us prate as we may, we shall have no inheritance in the kingdom of God!
I preach not salvation by works in any sense or degree, or shape, or form, but salvation by grace alone! Yet still I hear in my ears the echo of the Baptist’s words, “Now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which brings not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.” Not only the tree that brings forth bad fruit is burned, but the tree which is barren and unprofitable is hewn down, and cast into the fire! If we bring not forth the fruits of true saving faith, we may be sure that such faith is not in our possession!
Sins of omission not only bring condemnation, but if persevered in, they effectually shut against us the possibilities of pardon. I mean that sins of omission against the gospel deprive us of gospel privileges. “He who believes not”—is there pardon for him? “He who believes not”—is there rescue for him? No! He “is condemned already, because he has not believed on the Son of God.” He that repents not—will divine grace reach him? Will the mercy of God blot out sins that are unrepented of? No, not so! As long as we cling to sin, sin will cling to us as the leprosy did to the house of Gehazi. God forgives all sins through Jesus Christ, and He is willing to forgive the vilest of us if we come to Him trusting alone in Jesus; but if we have not faith in Jesus Christ, it is not possible for us to receive from the Lord the forgiveness of sins which He promises only to those who believe in Jesus!
In the marriage feast of which we read in the gospels, there were many who would not come, and they perished because they would not come; they are not charged with having actually committed anything wrong, but they perished for not coming. There was one who came to the feast, but he had not on a wedding garment; I do not read that he had put on rags, or had decorated himself with anything offensive to the master of the house—but he had failed to put on the wedding garment, and that was the deadly sin. And what was the sentence? “Bind him hand and foot, and deliver him to the tormentors.” So I could not charge some of you, today, with anything outwardly contrary to morality, but, O sirs, if you have not—mark this, if you have not put on the righteousness of Jesus Christ by a living faith in Him, the tormentors must have you at the last! O that this truth of God might sink into your ears, and into your hearts! There is pardon for all omission to be found in the flowing wounds of Jesus! There is life in a LOOK at Him! Over the heads of these multiplied shortcomings, God’s mercy will come to all believers. So, remain not in your unbelief! May the Holy Spirit, by His own mighty power give you grace now to repent, and to believe— and yours shall be the salvation, and God’s the glory, world without end! Amen.
Portion of Scripture Read Before Sermon—Matthew 25.
Charles Spurgeon