MISSING THE MARK | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 4, 1900

MISSING THE MARK.

New York Observer.

SIN is the translation of a New Testament word signifying literally the missing of a mark. This suggests that other familiar word, of Latin derivation, transgression, which denotes a stepping over a bound, or limit, somewhat in the manner of a trespasser.

It is perfectly evident that there is in the world a great deal of missing of the mark. The marks are of all kinds, and they are set by various hands, and for very various purposes.

Man has his little marks everywhere. Many of these are the mere arbitrary chalk lines drawn here or there at the instance of an arbitrary whim, but some are goals and bounds set at the further end of life’s race-courses to incite the ardent runner to utmost efforts to obtain the coveted prizes there to be bestowed. Many, alas! quite miss the mark in life, stumble and fall in the race, or wander off from the arena altogether. Failures are numerous, misfits are observable everywhere. Humanity finds difficulty in keeping itself up to regulation standard, even when the norm is simply that of a social etiquette, a conventional morality, or of current ethics.

There is a mark which vastly transcends these petty by-laws and “Do’s” and “Don’t’s” of men, though it may include some of them, and that is the law of a Sinaitic holiness, the pure prescription of the absolutely righteous commandment of Jehovah. When now it is man’s little mark that is missed, we call it “bad form,” or a “great mistake,” or perhaps a misdemeanor, which is the word of the statute books. But when it is God’s great mark of holiness that is missed, there is no term for it but that little, awful monosyllable, “sin,” compact with infinite terrors, fraught with endless consequences, which is the word of the Bible. Sin brings in the idea of a wrong committed against God, of an offense which is not a contempt of court in the earthly sense, but which strikes at Heaven, a crime against the Creator, a failure to attain the goal of that perfection on which God rightfully insists.

There are many earthly marks and standards of which, if a man fail, no great harm is done. There are more “necessary” things in the world which, after all, could be dispensed with, than men think. . . . The emphasis, after all, is not on man’s mark and man’s prize, but on God’s high, shining mark of holiness. None can afford to miss that mark. To miss that mark is sin. To continue to miss it is eternal condemnation. No life can be a failure that meets the demands of the divine law through the merits and grace of the Son of God, but human speech can not describe the terror of disappointment and remorse which is certain to pursue those who, in the presence of all God’s pleas and promises, deliberately and steadily miss the mark of his will.

Moreover, this terror deepens into keenest anguish as he who misses the mark of the divine will realizes that not only does God not will his failure, but, rather, desires his success in reaching the mark. Does God not, indeed, stand ready to give him power to become a child of God? While it is true that God warned Israel that the sinning soul must die, he also told Israel, when he persisted in sinning, that he was self-destroyed.