Sin and Superabounding Grace
By Samuel Chadwick
The very essence of sin is this: “We have turned every one to his own way.” Man has rejected the authority of the will of God, and so set up in opposition thereto his own will and his own way. The act is an accident—an accident of temperament and of circumstance. The thing lies deeper down than the accidental manifestation of his rebellious will. That explains how it is that men take to various forms of transgression. Have you ever thought why one man is a drunkard, another a thief, another an adulterer, and another a Pharisee? You do not often find that a man is the whole lot. I never find a man very bad in one direction, but he is a hypocrite in another. I believe there are far more hypocrites outside the church than in it. There is self-righteousness among the vicious as well as among those who pretend to virtue. Go to a man who is given to getting drunk. He says, “Yes, I know my little infirmity; I do not keep very steady, but at any rate I thank God I never robbed anybody. There is So-and-so, who goes to your chapel; I could tell you a tale about him.” And he regards himself as a very righteous man because he does not rob, though he does get drunk. The thief admits his offense. “Yes,” he says, “I have not been very honest; there are lots of things that have not come straight down by the line; but at any rate I thank God I never made a beast of myself.” One man will tell you unblushingly that he is guilty of some flagrant transgression of the law; but he will boast with great unctuousness that he has kept the seventh commandment. One man drinks, another steals, another yields to lust. Why does one man give way to drink, another to dishonesty, another to adultery? There is some explanation behind it, and the explanation is to be found in this: the particular manifestation of a man’s sin is determined by the accident of his temperament and his circumstances.11If a man gets drunk, given other temperamental conditions and circumstances, he will do anything. A man who will steal, under other conditions would commit murder. A man who would lie, under other conditions would commit adultery. The particular commandment that he breaks is settled by the peculiarities of his temperament and the peculiar circumstances in which he is found. The explanation of his sin is found not in the accidents of temperament and circumstances, but in the revolt of his will. And that is how it is that the apostle claims that he who transgresses in one point is guilty in all. “No, no,” he says, “I am not; I may break one, but I keep the other nine.” If you break one, says the apostle, you are guilty of the lot. How?—Because the law is one, and the sin is not in the particular transgression, but in the revolt of the will against the authority of the eternal God. Another thing the Bible emphasizes is, the result of sin is always the same: that it brings into human life three things,—guilt, disorder, death. . . . God’s Word rings out with no uncertainty in its sound, that sin means guilt, that sin involves man in terrible and eternal ruin. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” And the result of sin is not only that it brings guilt, it also brings disorder. That which is uppermost becomes degraded; that which ought to be the controlling element becomes a slave; that which ought to be the slave becomes the master; man’s nature becomes dislocated, and the elements being deranged brings the whole life into disorder, and the shadow of misery into the world. The Most Terrible Thing in the World
Sin is the most terrible thing in God’s universe. Sin is the blackest word of human speech. Sin dug the bottomless pit. Sin kindled the unquenchable fires of hell. Sin cast a shadow over heaven itself. Sin broke the very heart of God. And, brethren, respectable or disreputable, chapel-goer or public-house loafer, in this there is no difference. We “all have sinned,” we have all brought upon ourselves the wrath and indignation of heaven; and there is only one prayer that is appropriate upon our lips, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.” But over against this dark and terrible word, thank God, there is another and a greater: “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” Grace is a greater and stronger word than sin. We “are saved by grace.” Sin not only brought ruin, but it so degraded and enfeebled man that he has no power of restoration. If ever he is to be saved, he must be saved, not by any effort of his own, but by the grace of God. Grace means— without regard to merit on the one hand or obligation on the other. We have no claim. God was under no obligation, but of his mercy he saved us; and the salvation he wrought was “not of works, lest any man should boast,” but of grace through faith. Grace triumphed over sin in the person and death of Jesus Christ. God sent his own Son into the world to deliver us from the curse of sin. Jesus Christ laid aside the glories of the Godhead; and took upon him the form of a servant, and became subject unto death, even the death of the cross. To save us from sin he bowed his head on the cross, was made a curse for us, and so took away the curse which hung over our race. The Bible leaves no doubt that man is saved solely by the sacrifice of the Son of God; that it was necessary that he should die, if man should live. Sin’s penalty had to be paid, and Jesus Christ has paid it all. That is our gospel, the gospel of the cross as we have it in Isaiah 53. “The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all,” and “with his stripes we are healed.” The operation of grace in the world is explained again and again in the epistles. You find that by the grace of God as manifested in the death of Jesus Christ and in virtue of his atoning blood, the whole race of sinners is pardoned without condition. Says the apostle Paul, “We thus judge [or we reason], that if one died for all, then were all dead.” “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.” The gospel we have to preach is a gospel of immediate and full and complete forgiveness for every man that stands a sinner before God. This is the message that the evangelist brings, and the preacher proclaims in and out among all sorts and conditions of men, YOU ARE PARDONED, . . . not, You may be pardoned, but you are pardoned. Not on certain conditions you can have the pardon; it is here, and now by the grace of God every sinner stands forgiven. You say you are not conscious of pardon, but, on the contrary, are conscious of guilt. You are pardoned, if there is any truth in the Word of God. You are a pardoned man as you sit in that seat. But you say you have not repented. Who said anything about repentance? You say, “I am a sinner.” Of course you are, and that is why I bring you forgiveness. You say, “But my heart is not broken.” It has nothing to do with the breaking of your heart. I am here simply to tell you that all the penalty of your sin, all the curse of your transgression, all the accumulated penalty of the world’s sin, have been borne upon the broken heart of Jesus Christ, and he has taken it away, and it is gone. Universal Pardon Proclaimed
“Well,” but you say, “I am not forgiven; at any rate, I do not feel as if I were, and I have an uneasy sense in my conscience that I am not; I am wrong somewhere. What is wrong I have tried to put right.” In 1887 I was in Edinburgh, my first circuit. I was going over George the Fourth Bridge when I met a most picturesque procession. All the people looked as if they had come out from a picture-book. They were clad in all sorts of out-of-date costumes. The band was playing, and there were no end of folks. I wondered what was the matter, and I turned and followed. They went to the Market Cross, and when they got there, four men stood one at each of the four corners of the cross and blew a tremendous blast on the trumpets; and then the high sheriff, representing her majesty the queen, stepped forward, and unrolling a document, read a royal proclamation to this effect—that her majesty, in recognition of the mercies that had attended her reign for fifty years, hereby proclaimed a full and unconditional pardon to all deserters from her army and navy throughout the United Kingdom. The instructions to these forgiven deserters was that they should go, and sign their names at some military or naval depot within twenty-one days, and every man so signing would receive his pardon; for the queen had forgiven him. It was only necessary for him to go out and put his name to it, to indorse it, and to claim it. I stood beside two fellows, and I heard their conversation. One of them was a deserter, and he was concerned in the proclamation. He said, “I think I will go right away and put my name down.” That is exactly the position in which you stand with regard to God’s proclamation. There is the proclamation; you are pardoned for the sake of Jesus Christ and his death on the cross; you are forgiven. There is no condition except that you shall accept it right on the spot. If you believe it and will take it, you may rejoice in God’s own forgiveness of your sins. Coming to God and accepting forgiveness means a return to allegiance. And all the gospel and the only condition we have to proclaim is this: If any man, however great a sinner, and however bad his record, will only return, our God will abundantly pardon him. I preach to you this gospel of forgiveness through the blood of the everlasting covenant. If ever you are damned, it will not be because you are not forgiven. If ever you are a lost man, you will be damned because you thrust away God’s offer, and because you have taken his pardon, and flung it in his face. Every man who goes down to hell tramples God’s pardon under his feet. Where sin abounded, grace, GRACE, GRACE doth much more abound. “As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: . . . even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.”—Rev. Samuel Chadwick.