W. E. HANCOCK by W. E. Hancock

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 18, 1915

W. E. HANCOCK

By W. E. Hancock

The Motives of Service — No. 3

W. E. HANCOCK

The Nature of Sin a Motive for Service

A MOTIVE of service which is not sustained and directed by a true conception of the relation of the terrible nature of sin on the one side, and God’s infinite love and grace on the other, is a temporary enthusiasm which will wane when its expectations are not realized. Sin is of such a nature that it cannot be tampered with without involving eternal loss. It is a mistake so to emphasize the sovereign grace and infinite love of God as to obscure the dreadful nature of sin. God’s infinite grace can save from its eternal penalty, and through his unbounded love he does forgive sin and pardon the sinner; but, on the other hand, it ought to be realized that sin involves eternal loss which neither God’s grace nor his love can restore to us. We need to realize today, perhaps as never before, that sin is the deadly foe of the human race; we ought to take a more positive attitude toward it in all its phases, social, national, and personal. When we truly sense the eternal loss which sin in any of its phases means to human souls, whether in Christendom or in heathendom, there will be a mighty work of conversion in the church as well as in the world.

Saving Not Only the Lost but the Loss

Hitherto we have been chiefly concerned in plucking brands from the burning. The promise held out to the sinner has been that he needed only to come to Christ in order to have all his past sins, with all their results, removed in a moment, and be as if he had never sinned. But such is only a partial view, and does not fully set forth the nature of sin as God sees it. Sin is the one thing in all the universe that God hates. He hates it because of its eternal and dreadful results upon character. He has declared eternal war upon it, and Christ is the leader in this warfare. God promises, through Christ, to end sin, to destroy the devil with all his followers: through Christ he offers to make our sins as white as snow, and to save us from death, the penalty of sin; but we are not to believe that the catastrophe of sin does not involve an eternal loss to every soul: nor are we to gain the idea thereby that it can be indulged in by the individual without eternal loss to his character, although he may escape damnation and destruction.

Not Less Work to Save From Sin, but More Effort to Prevent Evil

To realize truly the nature of sin is to understand better God’s infinite love and justice. The converse of this is equally true; the more we know of God’s love and character, the more ‘exceedingly sinful’ sin becomes. It was a view of God’s character which caused Job to repent in sackcloth and ashes. It was the same experience in Paul that made him a mighty warrior against sin, and sustained his unflagging zeal in one of the most arduous lives of the Christian era. This same motive is needed in the church now to help us personally to keep from sinning, and to stir us to aggressive activity against the great evils of the time which, in the young, undermine morality, destroy faith in God and religion, and put an inerasable blight upon millions of lives. We ought not to work less for the individual already degraded by sin, and down in the gutter; but we ought to do all we can to prevent men and women from reaching that condition, thus heeding the admonition to Peter, “Feed my lambs.”

What It Means to Hate Sin

To hate sin identifies our efforts and aim with those of Christ. When sin is seen in all its hideousness, contrasted with God’s goodness and righteousness, we are not satisfied with a personal escape from condemnation. Our aim becomes at once blended with God’s. We love righteousness, and we hate sin; we declare war upon sin; and we live in actual opposition to it. In his strength, we rise superior to the sorrow which sin brings; we gain strength from every temptation, and receive discipline from all the pain which it causes us. In this experience we learn individually that —

“Our crosses are hewn from different trees, But we all must have our Calvaries; We may climb the height from a different side, But we each go up to be crucified; As we scale the steep another may share The dreadful load that our shoulders bear; But the costliest sorrow is all our own, For on the summit we bleed alone.”

But the end of all this experience is not merely individual salvation. It lifts us into nobler and more sympathetic relation with the world about us. Our aims and efforts become identified with God’s in saving men and women from the eternal loss which sin and sinning involves. We come to realize that the highest aim of the Christian life is not reward, but service; that we cannot be saved individually without saving others about us. We learn that we are blessed only as we become a blessing to others. Like Christ, we are not content to experience any joy wholly for personal gratification. With such a motive wrought into our lives by the inner experience of truth, a passion for serving others will be our supreme joy.