The Widest Sense of Sin by JOSEF W. HALL

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 19, 1915

The Widest Sense of Sin

By JOSEF W. HALL

JOSEF W. HALL

“SIN is the transgression of the law,” as we so often hear. But transgression is rather the manifestation of sin, its outward appearance and demonstration. Perhaps this would appear more clear to us if it were placed in its true logical order, with the limited term preceding the one which comprehends it—the transgression of the law is sin.

Sin, in its widest sense, is a quality of soul which came into the race in an entirely unnatural way, but which, through the preestablished principle of heredity, became natural to the race. It is that quality of soul which habitually rebels against its Creator and Governor, even as faith, the opposite quality of soul, habitually looks up to and obeys him. “Because the mind of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be.”

But perhaps the most important fruit of this conception of sin is the emphasis it lays on the necessity of the new birth. We are born, in Adam, with this tendency to rebellion unconquerably in our lives. The only escape from it, and consequently from destruction by God as unrepenting rebels against his government, is the rebirth in Christ. When a man is born again, instead of innate sin is substituted innate faith, the gift of God, and that great factor which is man’s part in the plan of salvation. Instead of an inheritor of the spirit of rebellion, the man becomes, by virtue of his new birth as son of God, a child of obedience and salvation. This man, as long as he does not repudiate his adoption, is perfected and saved in the sight of God, although in the absolute sense he is still a sinner. He is in the process of sanctification, which is to be carried on through his faith and God’s Holy Spirit.

Takoma Park, D. C.