WHAT MUST BE DONE WITH THE SINNER?
By Wm. Covert
A writer greatly concerned over the welfare of all mankind inquires in a serious manner, “If the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?” This query can not lightly be thrown aside. It surely needs to be considered well. As all things were created for God’s glory, think of what should be done with him who will not glorify God. What shall be done with the person who refuses to fulfil the purpose for which he was created? As man was by creation placed in perfect harmony with all his environments, that he might be happy, what must be done for him now to give him happiness? Is it not necessary still for him to accord with his own interests, and that eternally? Can he be happy until he does this? If he utterly refuses to do these necessary things, then what should be done with him? By sin, man opposed himself and his Creator. He put himself against himself. He broke away from his own life, and made a covenant with death. He was bartering for the wages of sin, which the apostle says “is death.” “He that sinneth against Me,” says the Lord, “wrongeth his own soul; all they that hate Me love death.” Prov. 8:36. The Lord has a great interest in, and love for, man, and, therefore, when man destroys himself, he is failing to glorify God. Man is destroying that which belongs to his Creator, when he works out his own destruction. When man, by transgression, severed the cord of life, God interposed before the Adamic life had run its course, and gave him a chance to unite with eternal life in Christ. If, under these considerations, man refuses to lay hold on the life provided for him at great cost, what then can he hope for? If he refuses to receive life, must not he then inevitably take death? He can not complain at receiving that which he has chosen for himself. The sinner is told that a wicked man treasures up “wrath against the day of wrath.” Rom. 2:5. He is, therefore, gathering up great stores of punishment, which must some day fall upon his own head. The Sinner Can Not Be Happy.
In support of the above proposition, recollect that the wicked are in pain all their days (Job 15:20), and that they are like the troubled sea, which can not rest (Isa. 57:20, 21). Now it is quite plain that such a life is not one of satisfaction. It does not, when thus used, glorify God, who gave it. It does not bring fulness of joy to man, who has it. Under these circumstances, it can not give the Creator pleasure to extend it even as it is. Certainly He could not then take more pleasure in making it infinitely and eternally worse. The sinner himself is not made happy by it; what, therefore, can be done in such a case? There can be but one solution to the problem, and it is this: Take his life away, and let him not be accounted as among the living. The Lord has given him a fair trial, and he has only used life to make himself and others unhappy. He constantly chooses the wrong things, and if he should be compelled to do that which he will not choose to do, he would be unhappy still. It seems plain that such a person must eventually be counted as wholly out of harmony with the purpose of God. He is certainly negative to that which is for his own good. He should, therefore, become negative as to quantity. The prophet says that such “shall be as tho they had not been.” Obadiah 16. Surely none could in reason complain of this. He that makes the thing which was designed for a blessing, to be only an occasion for sorrow, is not injured by having it taken away. The man who does not rightly use life, and who can not be made happy, has no proper interest in God’s purpose concerning life, and, therefore, he is counted as tho he had not been.