p. 265 | PRESUMPTUOUS SIN by Western Christian Advocate

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 27, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 17.

PRESUMPTUOUS SIN.

By Western Christian Advocate

WHAT a sad mistake men make who construe God's goodness into a license for sin, who imagine, because God does not inflict summary judgment on presumptuous sinners, that he is not displeased at sin, and that he will not punish sin at all!

This dreadful delusion some persons are hugging to their hearts and persisting in holding. A rude awakening awaits such self-delusion. God's holiness will compel him at last to visit iniquity so high handed. The terrible threatenings of God's word will find fulfillment.

This abuse of God's forbearance is a monstrous perversion of his goodness, which is intended to lead men to a better life. Words cannot depict its turpitude. To disregard the claims of divine justice is to be guilty of great sin. To refuse to repent when unspeakable love invites and urges men to repentance, is worse; but most criminal of all is it to misconstrue and pervert God's lenity and forbearance into presumptuous sinning.

There are some sins whose enormity defies description. A man who preys on the misfortunes of others, when they are powerless to resist him and to protect themselves, is justly abhorred for his utter depravity. When, a few years ago, the hungry flames were devouring Chicago, there were those who took advantage of the consternation and terror induced by the fire to plunder and rob, thus shocking the public sense by their awful greed. When the plague was decimating London, there were ghouls who preyed on the dead and who even robbed the sick and the dying.

Of like moral enormity is it when a man whom God has spared and preserved in life, so that God may thereby incite and assist him to reform, takes advantage of such infinite forbearance and love, and, instead of being made better by such amazing tenderness, perverts all this to evil uses, and goes on from bad to worse.

Language fails to describe the deep infamy thus displayed. Its enormity is unmeasured and immeasurable. God seeks by his forbearance to act upon men's moral nature, and to lead them to repentance. When this benevolent design is thwarted, what else can await them but utter, hopeless disaster? Their end is to be burned. The smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever. When justice utterly fails, and even infinite love is spurned, resisted, and trampled underfoot, then only irremediable destruction awaits.

Though hand join in hand, though men encourage themselves in an evil matter, yet the wicked shall not go unpunished. It will still be found irreversibly true that "wickedness overthroweth the sinner." However right the way of sin may seem to the wrongdoer, "the end thereof are the ways of death."

The motive pressing Christians to hasten to the rescue of sinners so presumptuous and so imperiled, is seriously urgent.—Western Christian Advocate.