Iv. How to think about sin - Chambers, Oswald

Then the lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin: and the sin, when it is full grown, bringeth forth death. James 1:15 (RV)

How do we think about sin habitually, as Christians? If we have light views about sin we are not students in the school of Christ. The fact of sin is the secret of Jesus Christs cross; its removal is the secret of his risen and ascended life. Do we think along these lines? It is quite possible to be living in union with god through the atonement and yet be traitors mentally. It is easy to be traitors unless we are disciplined along the lines that jesus taught, viz. , the need to submit our intellect to him as he submitted his intellect to his father. Do we think along the line that salvation is only possible through the cross? We do not think, and we do not like to think, along Jesus Christs line, we are told it is old-fashioned and ugly, and so it is; it is awful, it is so awful that it broke gods heart on Calvary. Every subject we have touched on during this series of talks has been important, but the subject of sin is the vital pivot on which all the rest turn. The slightest deflection from the real truth about sin, and all the rest of the reasoning goes wrong. Once placed fundamentally right regarding the doctrine of sin, and the reasoning follows in good order. If you read care- fully the modern statements regarding sin you will be amazed to find how often we are much more in sympathy with them than with the bible statements. We have to face the problem that our hearts may be right with god while our heads have a startling affinity with a great deal that is antagonistic to the bible teaching. What we need, and what we get if we go on with god, is an intellectual re-birth as well as a heart re-birth.

The trouble with the modern statements regarding sin is that they make sin far too slight. Sin accord- ing to the modern view simply means selfishness, and preachers and teachers are as dead against selfishness as the new testament is. Immediately we come to the bible we find that sin is much deeper than that. According to the bible, sin in its final analysis is not a defect but a defiance, a defiance that means death to the life of god in us. Sin is seen not only in selfishness, but in what men call unselfishness. It is possible to have such sympathy with our fellow-men as to be guilty of red-handed rebellion against god. Enthusiasm for humanity as it is, is quite a different thing from the enthusiasm for the saints which the bible reveals, viz. , enthusiasm for readjusted humanity. Sin intellectually viewed is never anything else than defective development, because the intellect will not allow for gaps that destroy its main principle of outlook. The bible supplies the facts for the gaps which intellect will not accept. According to the bible, sin is doing without god. Sin is not wrong doing, it is wrong being, deliberate and emphatic independence of god. That may sound remote and far away from us, but in individual experience it is best put in the terms of my claim to my right to myself. Every one of us, whether we have received the holy spirit or not, will denounce selfishness, but who amongst us will denounce my right to myself ? As long as my right to myself remains, i respect it in you, you respect it in me, and the devil respects it in the whole crowd, and amalgamates humanity under one tremendous rule which aims at blotting the one true god off his throne. The bible shows that human nature as it is is one vast strike against god. Paul states that through one man sin entered into the world (Romans 5:12 RV); but we must remember that that man was not a man like you or me, he was the federal head of the human race. Sin entered into the world through that mans disobedience to gods rule (see genesis 3). From that moment the strike against god began and has gone on all down the dispensations, and never was there such a big, massive, organised strike as there is to-day against god and gods rule.

All the great movements of the modern mind are on the line of a combine that swamps individual value. Men detest the doctrine of individual responsibility, and react against a doctrine of salvation through Jesus Christ because it fixes on the value of the individual. The bible reveals that the losing of the sense of personal responsibility is the result of sin (see genesis 4:89). The characteristic of sin is to destroy the capacity to know we sin, and the bible talks about unregenerate men as dead, not dead physically, but dead towards god (see Ephesians 2:1).

The recovery of the bible affirmation about sin is what is needed. The bible distinctly states that sin is not the natural result of being a finite being, but a definite stepping aside from what that finite being knew to be right. How one wishes that people who read books about the bible would read the bible itself ! Read the 18th chapter of ezekielthe soul that sinneth, it shall die; and again for the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). The bible does not deal with sin as a disease; it does not deal with the outcome of sin, it deals with the disposition of sin itself. The disposition of sin is what our lord continually faced, and it is this disposition that.

The atonement removes. Immediately our evangelism loses sight of this fundamental doctrine of the disposition of sin and deals only with external sins, it leaves itself open to ridicule. We have cheap- ened the doctrine of sin and made the atonement a sort of moral lavatory in which men can come and wash themselves from sin, and then go and sin again and come back for another washing. This is the doctrine of the atonement: him who knew no sin (not sins)him who had not the disposition of sin, who refused steadfastly, and to the death on Calvary, to listen to the temptations of the prince of this world, who would not link himself on with the ruling disposition of humanity, but came to hew a way single-handed through the hard face of sin back to god he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of god in him.

The disposition of sin that rules our human nature is not suppressed by the atonement, not sat on, not cabined and confined, it is removed. Human nature remains unaltered, but the hands and eyes and all our members that were used as the servants of the disposition of sin can be used now as servants of the new disposition (see Romans 6:13). Then comes the glorious necessity of militant holiness. Beware of the teaching that allows you to sink back on your oars and drift; the bible is full of pulsating, strenuous energy. From the moment a man is readjusted to god then begins the running, being careful that the sin which doth so easily beset us does not clog our feet. I believe that god so radically, so gloriously, and so comprehensively copes with sin in the atonement that he is more than master of it, and that a practical experience of this can take place in the life of any- one who will enter into identification with what Jesus Christ did on the cross. What is the good of saying, i believe in Jesus Christ as the saviour of the world if you cannot answer the blunt question, what has he saved you from? The test is not in theories and theologies, but in practical flesh and blood experience. Jesus Christ is our saviour because he saves us from sin, radically altering the ruling disposition. Anyone who has been in contact with the lord when he alters the ruling disposition knows it, and so do others. But there is a painful, tremendous repentance first. The whole teaching of the bible on the human side is based on repentance. The only repentant man is the holy man, and the only holy man is the one who has been made so by the marvel of the atonement. And here comes the wonder let the blunders of lives be what they may, let hereditary tendencies be what they like, let wrongs and evils crowd as they will, through the atonement there is perfect readjustment to god, perfect forgiveness, and the gift of a totally new disposition which will manifest itself in the physical life just as the old disposition did (see Romans 6:19). Jesus Christ comes as the last adam to take away the abnormal thing (which we call natural), the disposition of my right to myself, and he gives us a new disposition, viz. , his own heredity of unsullied holiness, holy spirit.