Sin and Its Fruit—The One Hope
THE “Scriptures of truth” are very clear as to what sin is. When man attempts to define it apart from the Bible, the explanation befogs and confuses rather than enlightens. For instance, a recent book, “The New Theology—An Exposition,” thus defines sin: “A gratifying of the momentary self without considering others, and without considering that higher self whose enrichment always coincides with ministry to the social good.” Read the Bible definition, and note the differences: “Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law, for sin is the transgression of the law.” 1 John 3:4. Moreover this definition is all inclusive, comprehending all sin. Note the following: “For by the law is the knowledge of sin.” Rom. 3:20. “For where no law is, there is no transgression.” Rom. 4:15. “Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.” Rom. 7:7. “If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture; . . . but if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors. . . . For He that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law. So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty.” James 2:8-12. What law is it which defines sin?—That law which says, “Thou shalt not kill,” “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” “Thou shalt not covet.” What law contains these precepts?—The Decalogue, spoken by the voice of God from heaven, engraved with His own finger on tables of enduring stone. Ex. 20:1-17; 31:18; 32:15, 16. “Righteousness” is the quality of being righteous. And “righteous” is conformed to a right standard. Mathematically, a right line is a STRAIGHT line, the shortest distance between two points. Any deviation from that makes crookedness, perversion, or mathematically, sin. The righteousness which God requires is inherent, exhibited in straightforward, up and down conduct, rectitude, righteousness, with no crookedness in it. Through that channel of righteousness from the great “Fountain,” which is with God, flows the life, the vitality, the power of existence which we have. “In the way of righteousness is life; and in the pathway thereof there is no death.” Prov. 12:28. Outside of that channel is the land of death. “Sin,” in its original sense, means to “miss the mark.” It is the swerving of the line from the right course. It is falling “short of the glory of God;” it is turning from “the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” Rom. 3:23; Phil. 3:14. Righteousness perverted is sin; straightness perverted is crookedness; life perverted is death. “Sin, when it is full-grown, bringeth forth death.” James 1:15. God created man “upright,” and pronounced him “very good.” He received life from God normally. For his physical nature it came through the air he breathed, through the water he drank, through the food he ate. For his spiritual nature it came through God’s Word and by His Spirit. Just so long as man was faithful to God, spiritual life dominated the physical. Death had no place in him. Had he continued faithfully obedient, he never would have died; for “in the way of righteousness is life; and in the pathway thereof there IS NO DEATH.” But man sinned; he perverted the right ways of God within himself. He refused to be guided by Infinite Wisdom; refused to learn by God’s appointed way—faith—the lessons of infinite worth, and to acquire by simple trust in his Maker the character worthy of eternal existence. He took the tempter’s short, selfish way, in the hope that he would gain knowledge of good and evil, and become like God; but he found evil only, and the end of it all, death. Compare Gen. 2:17; 3:4, 5. It is true that the serpent’s old lie has been perpetuated, and the millions of deluded mortals have believed it: “Ye shall not surely die.” Strange, isn’t it, that altho God said, just twelve verses previous in the Sacred Record, “In the day that thou eatest thereof THOU SHALT SURELY DIE,” and elsewhere, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Eze. 18:4), men should believe the tempter, “Ye shall NOT surely die”? It is the only promise of immortality to the sinner in himself in all God’s Book. Do you believe its author? Man died. Adam died. Said God, “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” Gen. 3:19. “And he died!” “and he died!” “and he died!” has been the long, interminable chorus of history and biography ever since. Man has been born, has flourished a few days, has died, has moldered back to dust. “But,” says one, “it was his body that died; his soul lives on.” Who said so? It is playing fast and loose with the words of the Almighty to say that His “thou” in one case means the BODY, in another passage the “thou” means the SOUL. It was the responsible Adam who sinned; it was the responsible Adam who died. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” Eze. 18:4, 20. The erroneous immortal-soul theory, the unscriptural conscious-state-of-the-dead doctrine, are the great road-bed and tracks over which Satan has run his train of heathen gods and demigods, saint worship, purgatory, ever-burning hell, universal salvation, Universalism, Swedenborgianism, Christian Science, Modern Spiritism, and other false, delusive doctrines. Righteousness is life, sin is death. Sin is a disease. Man was originally healthy, normal. But when he departed from God, he perverted the very laws of his being, and all the horrible monstrosities and degeneracies of sin have resulted. The virus is in the bud, and every fruit of man bears the marks of the leprosy of sin. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is desperately sick; who can know it?” Jer. 17:9; R.V. Man has no healing in himself. Standing alone, he has “no hope” and is “without God,” “alienated from the life of God.” Eph. 2:12; 4:18. He may plan and devise ten thousand ways of life; the end thereof will be death. Prov. 16:25. He may imagine ten thousand human saviours; but “none of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him.” Ps. 49:7. He may plan, as he has, a thousand ways to save society and preserve the world, but in the midst of the blazing illumination of righteousness and with myriads of voices calling ever upward, the great tide of human corruption rolls on toward the night of endless perdition. There is but one hope, only one, for poor, dying humanity, and that is the righteousness and life of Jesus Christ, an all-sufficient Saviour and Redeemer. He gives life by giving righteousness, and He gives it freely to all who will take it in His way—the only way.