Sin and Crime

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jul 23, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 28.

Not all crimes are sins. When a human government enacts a law contrary to God's law, it is crime to disobey that law, but it is sin to obey it. Crime in that case is not sin. It was criminal to refuse to bow down to the golden image which Nebuchadnezzar set up, but to bow down was sin. Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego were criminals, but not sinners. It was a crime in the Medo-Persian empire to ask a petition of any being save the king for a certain thirty days, but it was sin to obey the law. Daniel continued to worship God, and was because of that condemned as a criminal, but he was not condemned of God as a sinner.

The only way for a Christian to do, is to serve God, and to submit himself to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake. But when man institutes an ordinance which to obey is sin before God, the Christian can not submit to it for the Lord's sake. It is his duty to obey God. He will say to the human government, "Whether it be right in the sight of God to harken unto you more than unto God, judge ye;" and his conclusion will inevitably be, "We ought to obey God rather than men." See Acts 4: 19; 5: 29.