Individual and National Sins by L. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 12, 1906

Individual and National Sins

By L. A. S.

A “CHRISTIAN citizenship” institute is to be conducted at Winona Lake, Ind., by the National Reform Association, August 13-18. Among the subjects announced to be considered are, “Nations, Moral Beings,” and “The Forgiveness of National Sins.”

The National Reform theory of government is built upon the idea that nations are moral beings. If this idea be true, then nations, apart from individuals, are under moral law, and can commit sin. And if they can commit sin, they can also be pardoned and obtain eternal salvation. There is only one moral law and one remedy for sin, and the same remedy that applies to the case of an individual must apply to the nation if the nation is a moral being, and the same result must follow the forgiveness of its sins. To receive forgiveness of sins and be saved, a nation must, on this theory, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be baptized. Are these theorists prepared to explain how a nation, apart from the individuals composing it, can be baptized?

There are, indeed, national sins, and nations have been punished by the Lord; but God punished such sins by punishing individuals for their individual sins, and when individual accountability has been reckoned with, there is no other accountability left. A national sin is a wrong practise in which so large a proportion of the people participate that it becomes national in its scope. Sabbath-breaking, for example, may be called a national sin; but God will punish it by punishing the individuals who have been guilty of this sin; and only such as have been guilty will be punished. But the nation taken as a government—the civil power—includes all citizens, good and bad alike; and if it could be punished as such, both good and bad would be punished with it, the innocent with the guilty, unless there could be a punishment of a nation as an abstract personality apart from its citizens, and which none of them would feel. The National Reform theory, however, does not contemplate the nation in the sense of an aggregation of individual citizens, but as a moral personality in itself, and holds that it must, as such, execute the will of God; that it must be a moral government. This conception is necessary to the National Reform program, which aims at national regeneration by the subjecting of the individual citizens to the compulsion of the civil power. Its program could never be realized by subjecting individuals to the pressure of moral suasion only.

God deals with individuals, and with them only. He deals with nations only Only individuals can believe on Christ, be baptized, and obtain salvation in the kingdom of God. God made individuals, and them he will save in his appointed way. He made a government, and that government he will perpetuate, but it is wholly unlike any of the governments of earth, the “powers that be.” There can be no such thing as governmental salvation. When the stone seen in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream smites the image (representing earthly governments) upon the feet, all the image is broken in pieces, and swept away like chaff, and the stone (the kingdom of God) becomes a great mountain and fills the whole earth. The National Reform conception of nations as moral beings is contrary both to reason and to revelation.

L. A. S.