sin - Chambers, Oswald

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world . . . Romans 5:12

God intended that Adam should develop, not from evil to good, but from the natural to the spiritual, by obedience; it was to be a natural progress; but adam stopped short, and sin entered in by his stop- ping short. The sin which has come down to us from Adam is not an act, but an hereditary disposition; the bible nowhere says that a man is held responsible for having inherited a disposition in which he had no choice: the redemption deals with sin. No man can be forgiven for a disposition, we are forgiven for acts of sin; the disposition of sin must be cleansed by the miracle of gods grace. The son of god came to alter the basis of human life: the first Adam put it on a wrong basis, the basis of self-realisation; Jesus Christ makes the basis redemptive. The redemption means that god paid the price of sin. If you have never realised the impossibility of god dealing with sin on any other ground than that of the redemption, you are living in a fools paradise rationally. Sin is a positive10 thing, it is the enthronement of human independence, because mans pride must wor- ship itself.

Sin has nothing to do with circumstances or with temptation on the outside, it has to do with the bias on the inside; it is an opposing principle and has nothing to do with human nature as god constituted it. The diabolical nature of sin is that it hates god, it is not at enmity against god; it is enmity. When you get the nature of sin revealed by the holy spirit, you know that this phrase is not too strongred-handed anarchy against god. None of us is conscious of this spirit of anarchy against god; the devil is the only being in whom sin is absolute, conscious anarchy. We would fly from sin in terror if we knew its nature, but it presents itself as a most desirable thing (cf. Genesis 3:6). We need never know in conscious experience that we are anarchists because we may receive the salvation of Jesus, any more than we need ever know what the human heart is like as Jesus diagnosed it if we will hand over the keeping of our heart to him.

. . . That the body of sin might be destroyed. (Romans 6:6)

The bible refers to two mystical bodies the body of Christ and the body of sin; the head of the one is god, the head of the other is the devil. Sin in me is a disposition of self-sufficiency which connects me with the body of sin; the connection is not in my human nature, but in my claim to my right to myself, which is the essence of sin ill do what i like. When i am born again i am willing to go to the crucifixion of that claim. Through the redemption we not only have deliverance from the disposition of sin which is in us, but severance from the body of sin to which we are connected by our old man; that is, we are absolutely and completely delivered from sin in disposition and in dominationbeing then made free from sin

. . . For by the law is the knowledge of sin. (Romans 3:20)

is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, i had not known sin, but by the law. (romans 7:7) once conscience begins to be aroused it is aroused more and more till it reaches the terrible conviction that i am responsible before god for the breaking of his law; i know that god cannot forgive me and remain god; if he did i should have a clearer sense of justice than he has. There is nothing in my spirit to deliver me from sin, i am powerless sold under sin. Conviction of sin brings a man to this hopeless, helpless condition; until he gets there the cross of Christ has no meaning for him. It is of the mercy of god that no man is convicted of sin before he is born again; we are convicted of sins in order to be born again, then the indwelling holy spirit convicts us of sin. If god gave us conviction of sin apart from a knowledge of his redemption, we would be driven insane. When conviction of what sin is in the sight of god comes home to me, language cannot support the strain of the verbal expression of its enormity; the only word that expresses it is cal- vary. If i see sin apart from the cross, suicide seems the only fools way out

. . . . Being justified freely by his grace. (Romans 3:24)

But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. (Romans 5:20)

Justification means two things first, that gods law is just, and second, that every sinner is unjust; therefore if god is to justify a man he can only do it by vindicating the law, and by destroying the sin- ner out of him. We put it that Jesus Christ came to

Save sinners; he did not say so, he said, i came to call sinners to repentance (see Matthew 9:13). This phrase, god loves the man, but hates the sinner, although not scriptural, conveys the idea. God dare not love the sinner. When god saves a sinner, profoundly speaking, and only profoundly speaking, he does not save the sinner: he saves the man who is a sinner by removing the sinner out of him. When once a man receives the humiliating conviction that he has broken gods law, and is willing to accept on gods terms the gift of forgiveness and of a new life, he will find he is brought to the place where he can live a holy life in order to vindicate god in forgiving him. This is evangelical repentance, and it is fundamentally different from the reformation which springs from remorse awakened by an overwhelming self-respect. A sinner can never stand in the presence of god; there is no justification whatever for sin in his presence, that is why a man convicted of sin has such a desperate time, he realises with the psalmist against thee, thee only, have i sinned, and done this evil in thy sight. Beware of attempting to deal with sin apart from a complete reliance on the redemption, and when you see men sinning, remember, your heart should be filled with compassion, because if you have ever had the slightest dose of conviction of sin yourself, you will know what awaits them when the recognition of sin comes home.

For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin. . . .

Bear in mind that what makes Christs glory is his severity, i. E. , his love for gods holy law rather than his love for man: Jesus Christ stood on gods side against man. On the cross men crucified the son of god and god forgave them while they did it. It is blasphemy to make little of sin. The final issue in every life is god must kill sin in me, or sin will kill god out of me. If the gospel is made to mean merely that it is better being good than bad, men like to listen to it, but immediately it shows me that sin, self-realisation, self-interest, must be put to death, i resent it. If god is to be just, that is what must hap- pen. It is the shallowest nonsense that makes people say, god will forgive us because he is love; once we are convicted of sin we never talk like that again. The love of god is spelt on the cross and nowhere else; there his conscience is satisfied. God deals with every bit of sin in the light of the purest justice.

. . . That we might be made the righteousness of god in him. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

The effect of being justified by gods grace is that he begins to entrust us with the realisation of what sin is. It is the saint who knows what sin is; it is the man who has been identified with the death of Jesus who begins to get the first inkling of what sin is, because the only being who knows what sin is, is not the sinner, but god. The only one who knows what the elemental human heart is like, is not the sinner, but Jesus Christ. It takes the last reach of the atonement the revelation of the perfections of Jesus as he is made unto us . . . Sanctification, to make us know what sin is, because sin is what he faced on Calvary. We are not always in the condition to understand the cross, but it is of vital importance that we let god bring us at times where every commonplace mood is stripped off, and we take the shoes from off our feet and stand alone for one moment while god spells out to us the a b c of what the cross of Christ means. For in that he died, he died unto sin once.

. . . Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin. (romans 6:1011)

The only one who can reckon he is dead indeed unto sin is the one who has been through identification with the death of Jesus; when he has been through that moral transaction he will find he is enabled to live according to it; but if i try the reckoning business without having gone through identification with the death of Jesus, i shall find myself deceived; there is no reality. When i can say, i have been crucified with Christ (RV), a new page of consciousness opens before me, i find there are new powers in me, i am able now to fulfil the commands of god, able to do what i never could do before, i am free from the old bondage, the old limitations; and the gateway to this new life is the death of Jesus.

This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom i am chief. (1 timothy 1:15)

Before you were convicted of sin you thought the saints exaggerated in what they said about them- selves; when you have been convicted of sin by the holy spirit you will never think it possible to exaggerate. Knowledge of what sin is is evidence that i am delivered from it; ignorance of what sin on the inside is is evidence that i have never been touched by the atonement. Knowledge of what sin is is in inverse ratio to its presence. To mistake conscious freedom from sin for having been delivered from sin through the atonement is to make the grand error of the christian life. But if we walk in the light, says john, as he is in the light if we walk there, with nothing folded up, no humbug, no pretence, no end of our own to serve, if we walk there, then comes the most amazing revelation god ever gave to man the blood of Jesus christ his son cleanseth us from all sin, not to our consciousness; the conscious part is walk- ing in the light, as god is in the light.