Mistakes and Charity

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jul 14, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 27.

Mistakes and Charity

ONE of the most precious Christian graces is charity for those who have sinned grievously, especially in ways considered disgraceful by the world. Professedly Christian people have no difficulty in recognizing as one of their “set” men who deny some of the most important doctrines of Christianity, while they would spurn from them the man who had stolen a dime to satisfy his hunger. Adultery and robbery are overlooked if the wealthy sinner escape the law, while, if poor, he would be utterly despised.

Among Christians there are two classes which frequently show less charity than others. The one is composed, strange to say, of those who have committed heinous sins themselves, which, in a public way, have never come to light, and of which they have never truly repented. They are outspoken against the sinner in order to lead people to believe that they are better than is he. Like the guilty child, they in a sense declare that they are not guilty of such things before they are accused of them. It is a bad reputation, however, that must needs build itself up on another’s downfall.

The other class is made up of those who have never fallen in open sin, who are strong because of early training, whose failures do not lie in the direction of the despised sinner,—who are strong, perhaps, “for lack of test.”

The remedy for the lack of charity in both classes is to get low at the foot of the cross and there see their own sins in the light of Christ’s sinlessness and love.

Charity, or love, is the crowning grace of the Christian character, that which is absolutely needed to fit one for the society of heaven, without which we are profited nothing. God is anxious that we should obtain it, that “the love of Christ” should “constrain” us to persuade sinners to come to Him; but if we do not know that wondrous love, if we will not exercise it toward our fallen brother or sister, God will permit us to fall, that we may be taught charity by seeing how weak we are when standing in our own strength and righteousness.