THE DOCTRINE OF HELL FIRE.
IV. Of the Nature of Righteousness and Sin.
IT is not our purpose to enter into a long disquisition on the nature of sin from a metaphysical standpoint. It might be of interest, but of little profit to the soul. It is better for us to study these things in the simplicity of God's school rather than in the musty, befogged halls of theological seminaries. “Righteousness” comes from “right.” A right line is an absolutely straight line, the shortest distance between two points. Any deviation from this makes the line crooked and is destructive of righteousness. Righteousness, in a moral sense, is being in harmony with the perfect law of right, probity, rectitude. Biblically, it is in perfect accord with the great Jehovah, in harmony with His holy law. Therefore Inspiration declares, “All Thy commandments are righteousness.” Ps. 119:172. This law in positive form is summarized in the following two great commandments:— “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.” In both negative and positive forms we have God's moral law summarized in the Ten Commandments, spoken from Sinai. Ex. 20:1-17. This is shown in the completeness of the prohibitions guarding every duty as respects God and man, and the fact that God “added no more” to this law, but engraved it with His own finger on tablets of enduring stone. Deut. 5:22; Ex. 32:15, 16; Deut. 10:1-4. The keeping of this law is what God requires of man. “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep His commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.” Eccl. 12:13, 14. Therefore to be holy, to be like God, is to be in perfect harmony with God's holy law. And therefore, again, that law must be a reflect of His own perfect character, placed in prohibitory form to sinful men, that we may know their true condition. In the channel of that law flows the life of God. “In the way of righteousness is life; and in the pathway thereof there is no death.” Prov. 12:28. If man had ever lived in harmony with its life-filled precepts, he would have known no death, no decay, no decrepitude, no misery nor mourning, no hatred nor hell. But man sinned; he transgressed the law of his life. The best definition of sin that can be given, the most comprehensive, is the Bible definition: “Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law; for sin is the transgression of the law.” 1 John 3:4. “All unrighteousness is sin.” Ch. 5:17. Still stronger than this, if possible, another apostle makes it, and also incidentally defines the law: “By the law is the knowledge of sin.” “Where no law is, there is no transgression.” “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. 3:20; 4:15; 7:7. Another comprehensive definition of sin is the root meaning of the word, “missing the mark.” The thought is expressed in the scripture: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” Rom. 3:23. The glory of God is His goodness. Ex. 33:18, 19. To come short of that glory is to fail of God's righteousness, is to miss the mark of God's holiness; is to walk in a “crooked path,” is to lack the perfect wholeness of normal, moral health. And there is where every soul in this world stands, a sinner before God, swerved from the mark of His perfection. How long, reader, would it take an arrow which had swerved from the direct line to the mark to reach it again? “Never,” you reply, and it is ever so. “It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.” He may try to the day of his death, and he will find himself a sinner still, his heart a fountain of corruption. Sin's virus has poisoned him. Transgression has sown within him the germs which will inevitably result in death. One may be a more fully developed sinner than another; sin's leprosy may have made more awful ravages on character and form; but he is no more surely doomed to death than the one least manifesting outwardly the awful malady. One drop of ink stains the whole glass of water. Our departure from God has placed man in its hopeless bondage, and made him a child of death. For not alone is it true that “the wages of sin is death,” but the death is in the very sin itself. “Sin, when it is fullgrown, bringeth forth death.” James 1:15. As truly as the man afflicted with leprosy is foredoomed to physical death, so, too, the man afflicted by sin is foredoomed to utter extinction, physically and spiritually, unless divine power intervenes. In the very nature of the case it is impossible for sin to exist forever. It poisons to death that which gives it a habitation, and must finally die in the destruction it has itself caused. Therefore, “the soul that sinneth, it shall die.” This does not mean shall live forever in hell fire. It does not mean to suffer forever remorse of conscience. Death means cessation of life. “His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.” Ps. 146:4. In the very nature, therefore, of righteousness, he who is in perfect harmony with its law can not die. And in the very nature of the case, he who is out of harmony with that law can not persist; he must die, must come to naught. God's plan and purpose does not include death, but life. Death is abnormal, and he who puts himself outside of the plan must utterly perish. Therefore say unto all sinners: “As I live, saith the Lord Jehovah, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die?”