The Depth of Sin by Clarence Santee

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Aug 22, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 33.

The Depth of Sin

By Clarence Santee

IN these days when crimes on every hand, even in high places, are excused and condoned by many, there is an equal disregard for the one standard of righteousness—right doing—that God has placed among men. Our ransom has been purchased at an infinite cost; yet men will boast of being saved, while no visible change appears in their obedience to that divine law. Contact with evil has made the heart reckless and unfeeling. A writer has given a vivid expression of the words of inspiration when comparing the days of Adam, even after he had fallen by sin, with the hardened, unfeeling heart of the present generation. I read: “As they witnessed, in drooping flower and falling leaf, the first signs of decay, Adam and his companion mourned more deeply than men now mourn over their dead.”—“Patriarchs and Prophets,” page 62.

God compares the unregenerate heart to a stone; yet in love He promises—through divine grace—to remove the stony heart and again give a heart of flesh. This promise is found in Eze. 36:26: “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.”

As one stone in the clay will spoil the vessel in the hands of the potter, so the stony heart will make of no avail all the efforts of infinite love that otherwise would change the life into the Master’s image.

It has been said that the Christian should show the love of Christ by willingly sacrificing to save the sinner. But the love of Christ goes farther. Another will say, He should sacrifice this present life for the salvation of the sinner if called upon to do so. This is also true. But he who would be like Christ must go farther. He must be willing to lose all these, and his hope of eternal life as well, if by this loss some sinner might be saved.

Hear Moses as in importunate prayer he pleads with God to spare the rebels, or to blot out his own name from the Book of Life (Ex. 32:31, 32); or Paul, who could appeal to the Holy Spirit of God as a witness to his truthfulness when he said, “For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.” Rom. 9:1-3. If today the church were imbued with such love for sinners, who could resist its pleading!

What has the introduction of sin cost?—The ruin of a bright and glorious world; the innocence of a race created for God’s glory; mourning in the courts of heaven

over the death of the sinner; the test of the “everlasting love” of God (Jer. 31:3) in the gift of the only one who could save; and that love being manifested for one who had made choice of sin, and was still in sin. “But God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Rom. 5:8.

The Dying Agonies of Christ

Christ died the sinner’s death. As the Father’s face was turned away from the terrible scene of the cross, every ray of hope was banished from the agonized heart of the dying Son of God; and crying out, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” His last choice was made. It was that, looking out into total darkness, He would drink the cup, that the promise of God through His death might bring other sons of Adam back to God.

Sin has marred the face and form of the Son of God until in prophetic vision John saw Him as “a Lamb as it had been slain.” Rev. 5:6. Christ, looking down the ages, upon His tried and doubting church, encourages them by saying, “I have graven thee upon the palms of My hands.” Isa. 49:16. This evidently refers to the prints of the nails. It will be asked of Him in glory, “What are these wounds in Thine hands?” His answer will be, “Those with which I was wounded in the house of My friends.” Zech. 13:6.

The scars will forever remain upon Christ as the price—in part—of our salvation. But a deeper scar even than these, will ever remain in the heart of God. The yearning which causes a gift, must be deeper than the gift, else the gift would not be given. God assures the sinner that He has loved him “with an everlasting love;” and this scar will be caused by the loss of those for whom He willingly gave all, who yet turned away and were lost. Like the heart of the parent who, seeing the prodigal son or daughter turn away from all counsel that love would indite, leaving the home to return no more, ever has the aching void that no time can fully heal, so the heart of God will ever yearn for the rebellious who, going out from His presence, turning a deaf ear to His entreaties, return no more. No insults, no hard, unfeeling speeches, nor falls into ruin, can destroy the true parent’s love. The name may never be mentioned; but there is a chamber in the heart that is dedicated to memory, and there the erring one is written. This is perhaps more nearly godlike and unselfish than any other heritage. Even so eternity itself will not remove the love of God for the lost ones. Sin has cost all this. When God decided the “struggle” and gave His Son to die, He knew the heart pangs that it cost. It was no imaginary, unreal conception. It cost blood and pain and tears. When Abraham had passed through the conflict between love and duty in offering his son Isaac, he was called “the friend of God.” There was a bond of sympathy in their experience that caused him to place a truer estimate upon the love of God than ever before. He could appreciate in God that which he could not have understood before.

A Father’s Heart Changed Him

A man was placed upon a jury, and upon evidence he quickly condemned as guilty a young man for his crime. As years passed by, he became a father; and as the son grew to manhood, he spurned parental control, and was classed with criminals. The father’s heart was bowed with grief, but he followed that son with prayers and a love that could not be cast off. How often he repeated the hope, “The day will come when he will see and return!” He was again placed upon a jury to decide upon the case of a young man; and upon his plea alone, the other jurors gave a different verdict from that intended, and by his personal effort the young man was saved to a better life. The difference was not that he was now older, but it was that he better understood the struggles of the boy, and his heart could say, In him I see my own boy sitting there alone, listening to the unfeeling testimony, seeing only the cruel eyes of condemnation, as he looks to the right and to the left for one tender face, one glance of sympathy.

When God gave His only Son to die, condemned, that Son looked for some to pity, but there were none. He heard His Son cry out for help, but none heeded. Now that father could better understand the heart of God. Not a new but a deeper vein of tenderness actuated him because of his own heart sorrow. With this thought, we can better understand the tender solicitude of God for His people, that will deepen His love and care for the saved, even because of the void caused by the lost.

O, sin has caused all this! Can we afford to carry it further? Shall I deepen the wound in the heart of God by adding another name to the list of lost ones? Shall you?