Sin and the Law | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 2, 1862

Sin and the Law.

"For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. Jas. ii, 10.

Like the gospel to the ancient Jew and Greek, this text has been to some a stumbling-block, and to others, foolishness. Yet as that gospel, so this text, needs only to be justly apprehended and it will appear to be glorious to God, and all right as toward man.

A sermon from this text should therefore look toward obviating misapprehensions, and then also toward a just exposition of its true significance.

As shown by the previous context, the case before the apostle's mind is that of "beloved brethren," guilty of respect of persons by giving the richly-dressed a "good place" in their assembly, but the poor man in vile raiment a mere place to stand, or if to sit, yet under the footstool. He argues that this is not fulfilling the royal law—"Love thy neighbor as thyself." He who has respect of persons violates this law, commits sin, and is convicted of being a transgressor. "For," said James, as if to confirm his position by appealing to a comprehensive principle, "whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point he is guilty of all." Even supposing that you, beloved brethren, are correct and blameless in every other point, yet this one sin of respect for your rich against your poor brethren, vitiates all your obedience. He who offends in one, becomes obnoxious in respect to all. He offends against the whole law. The blow he strikes takes effect against the law as a whole.

I do not understand the apostle to affirm that the man who has kept all the rest of the law, but has offended in one point, has literally broken each and every several precept. This may not be true, and plainly it is not what James meant to say. We infer this from his own illustration of these words. He proceeds in the next verse to prove and illustrate his meaning, and says, "For, he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law." Observe his conclusion: not, thou hast committed adultery, but this, "thou art become a transgressor of the law." He does not affirm that a man who has not broken the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth commands, but only the sixth, has yet broken the seventh and all the rest, each and every. He might have used language to mean this, but he did not. But he does mean (as his own exposition shows) that the man who offends in only one point, has broken the law as a whole—has really sinned—is a transgressor of God's law, and has incurred the fearful curse denounced justly upon the law-breaker.

Yet again: it is not necessary that we interpret James to mean that the man who has broken but one precept, is in all respects as guilty as he who has broken them all. His subject did not require him to speak of comparative degrees of guilt. Yet he might consistently with truth have said or implied that in some respects the case of him who has broken but one precept, is as bad as his who has broken all. Thus for example, he might have shown that the man who has broken but one precept, compared with him who has broken them all, as truly outrages God's law; as truly offends against its majesty; as really insults the Lawgiver; shows that he has no real respect for God; shows that pleasing himself is with him a higher principle than pleasing God; and consequently that he will as surely come under condemnation, and if he does not repent will as certainly be cast into hell. He is just as hopeless of salvation on the ground of his good morality, or even (to come more closely to the apostle's thought) on the ground of his being one of the "beloved brethren." He meant to show that it is not safe for even professed Christians to tolerate one sin, though it be but one, and though it may seem in their eyes a very little one.

These points may seem to some of our readers to demand more explanation and proof.

They will perhaps be made more clear by a careful consideration of several principles of the divine law and government. As for example:

1. That the law of God is, in many respects, a unit. It is a unit in the sense that he who breaks any one precept, breaks the law. He who breaks any one precept insults the Lawgiver, and avows his own disregard of him and of his authority.

It is a unit in the sense that the majesty of law resides in each several precept. Of the precepts of this law we may say the logic of the Almighty overspreads and protects them all. His name is in them; his dignity stands pledged to vindicate each and every precept against contempt and abuse. Or rather let us more truly say, His name is in them, so that he must account every disobedience of any one precept as contempt against himself, and hence every perfection of his being stands committed to mark and avenge it accordingly. In all these respects his law is a unit. To

disobey any one precept is to disobey God, and God must so regard it.

Again, God's law is a unit in the sense that a common interest and a common relationship pertains to all its precepts. The law of God is not made up of diverse and conflicting parts, so that you can honor and obey one part sincerely, while you can disown and trample down another part. Some human codes may have this quality; but nothing could more forcibly evince their imperfection. Any code of which this is true is not fit to be a code, and any government that would enforce such a code is not fit to be a government. If the same benevolence requires you to obey one precept and to disobey another, those laws have no common spirit; that code is not like God's law, a unit. But of God's law, it is one of its prime glories that it is a unit, in the sense that each precept is only an expansion and application of the one comprehensive duty—love. Consequently no man can offend against one of its least precepts without offending against the law of love.

Again, that God's law is a unit, we see in yet another light, when we consider that the spirit of true obedience is evermore one and the same—the same for every precept—the same for all times and all circumstances.

He who has truly the spirit of obedience as to one precept, has it as to all the rest. It is utterly impossible he should obey any one precept without sincerely acknowledging God's supreme authority, and without heartily committing himself to yield his whole soul to that authority. These points being settled in his mind and ruling in his heart, he will obey every known precept; these points not being settled, he obeys none.

2. Again we have essentially the same idea, but in other phrase, when we say, The violation of any one known precept evinces all the essential elements of sin. To break one of God's least known commands is transgression of his law. He who does it shows that (at least for the time being) his selfishness is supreme, and carries him despite of whatever regard he may suppose himself to have for God's glory and authority, or for man's good. His least known sin has in it of necessity that same disregard for God's authority and for God's expressed will that makes all sin so terribly guilty. The same contempt for God as Lawgiver, shines out in small sins as in great—in any one special variety of sin, as in every other.

3. The man who violates any single known precept, shows that nothing is wanting but the temptation and the occasion, to induce him to violate every precept of the entire law. For plainly he is restrained by no true regard for God; if he were, he would not offend in the one point. He has not the spirit of obedience; if he had, he could not practice one known sin.

4. In the same sense in which God is no respecter of persons, he is also no respecter of precepts. He can have no partiality for one precept of his law over another—certainly none of such sort and degree that he can let some one precept drop out of his regard and take no cognizance of offences against it. No sinner need count upon God's becoming indifferent to some of the many precepts of his law, and need not presume that under cover of this remissness on God's part, he can probably or possibly offend in some one fortunate point, and not be held guilty of sin against the majesty of the whole law and of its great Author. The one

point may seem to the offender never so trivial; yet let him beware how he assumes that his disobedience in this one point will appear trivial in the eye of the great Lawgiver.

5. Yet again, let it be considered that the chief guilt of all sin lies in its relations to God. All else but this is comparatively trivial. David's sin in the matter of Bathsheba had borne most cruelly against Uriah; it was an awful sin against Bathsheba; it was a sin of appalling magnitude against the whole nation; and yet though David, penitent, saw all these hearings, yet he cried out, "Against thee and thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight." The hearings of his sin against God eclipsed every other view, and apparently he could see nothing else but this.

Now when men feel as David did about the guilt of sin as lying in its relations to God, they will not plead either to others or to their own conscience that this one point is a very small thing, and that probably God will scarcely mind it—that it hurts nobody much, and that judged by current public sentiment, it is one of the least of all sins. No such apologies can possibly be admitted by one who sees how all sin lies against God. It is only when sinners lose sight of God's abhorrence of sin, and forget that its chief guilt lies in its relations to him, that they can comfort themselves in the notion that their sins are few and small.

Let all these principles be duly considered, and none can be surprised that an inspired apostle should say, "For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all."

IN CONCLUSION.

1. This text is of great value for the just views it gives us of the guilt of sin as against God. Whoever shall set himself to study this text thoroughly, and go to the bottom of the principles involved and implied in it, will surely find himself embossed and impressed with this great truth—that the chief mischief, malignity, and wrong of sin lie in its relations to God. He will surely see these qualities of sin when he contemplates it on its side toward God, and not exclusively on its side toward man. And the violation of even one known point of God's law necessarily involves all this fearful guilt of rebellion against God! Therein lies its enormity—its awful, appalling guilt!

2. The passage is eminently useful in giving us the true view of the certainty and justice of damnation for even one sin. In the light of it we see the reason why God ought to punish him who offends in one point only. It is because he is a traitor at heart against God—a rebel against the King of kings. It needs but one known sin to evince this fact. Not even one sin could be committed, but for this spirit of treason and rebellion. And it is this spirit that God abhors—this that God, as a righteous ruler, must visit with stern, decided retribution—unless repentance and faith in Christ bring pardon, and revoke the deserved condemnation.

3. The text shows the utter fallacy of all hopes of heaven built on good morality (so called), yet a morality coupled with a few small sins, on what are conceived to be small and trivial points. But what saith the word of the Lord to such cherished hopes? "For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all." What then becomes of his refuge? How can he find a hiding-place under a few small sins? What can it avail him though he should prove, and though God were to be convinced that he had offended in only one point? Alas, he only proves himself to be guilty of all! A rebel, a sinner against God, what can his heartless observance of all other points of law avail him toward salvation? Ah, there cannot be a more miserable delusion than this! To follow the logic of this apostle, it is as if a man indicted and convicted for murder should plead and prove that he had not committed adultery. What if he had not? he has broken the law.

4. The apostle James should be read and loved preeminently for his power in revealing the true nature and real malignity of sin. This is one of the rare merits of this epistle. He aims steadily to reveal sin. He gives us its natural history: "Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed." He shows its relation to knowledge and benevolence: "To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to

him it is sin." He searches out and exposes the popular sin of giving honor to wealth and rank, but dishonor to poverty coupled with piety. And finally, inasmuch as some men in his time prated much about their own faith and piety, while yet they made small account of obedience; he set before them the perfect law of God, and gave them to understand that God's favor goes only to those who live in honest obedience to all known duty. The men who choose which precepts they will obey and which not, are law-breakers. They will find that God honors none of their proposals to off-set their good morality against a few small sins. For the pungency and power of this apostle in rebuking such delusions, let him be read with care and God be thanked for sending us such truth in such forms.

5. In the respects last mentioned, this epistle is eminently adapted to our times. For is it not very manifest that the masses of people in our times have very shallow views of the guilt of sin? Is it not sadly evident that only a few are ever very deeply convicted of their own fearful guilt? Great multitudes reach what they suppose to be conversion, without much antecedent conviction of sin. Of course they cannot love much, having not had much forgiven. In many of these cases, the after life seems to prove that there has been no real conversion—and manifestly for the reason that conviction of sin was so shallow.

The sin of respect of persons which James rebukes so sharply, yet so justly, is not unknown in our times. Idolatry of wealth is one of our national sins. It would be a higher glory to the American churches than they have earned yet, if they had kept themselves altogether free from this sin. Must we not say that the respect of persons described by James, is so common in thousands of churches as to show that, practically, it is not accounted as being sin at all? If so, then surely such preaching as this in the second chapter of the general epistle of James, is the very preaching needed in our times and fitting close to our own sins.

6. Incidentally this passage reveals the glorious excellence of God's law. For it is by virtue of its very excellence and perfection that James is enabled to say with so much truth and force, "Whosoever keepeth the whole law, and yet offendeth in one point, is guilty of all." For if any single precept were a bad law—like the American fugitive rendition law, demanding a sinful act and punishing an act of justice and mercy—then James could not say, He who breaks this breaks all. This can be said only of a code in which every particular precept is perfect, and obedience to it the demand of justice and obedience.

7. One most legitimate inference from our text and subject must be obvious—it is a fearful thing to be a sinner at all! To be so much of a rebel at heart against God as to make light of his supreme authority, and let the small good that can come from sinning be a temptation to us to contemn God and disregard his will, even though in some one thing only—this is a horrible state of mind? What would be thought of it in heaven? What would be thought of it even here on earth, if only we had just views of God as holy, great, and good? By what right or reason do any of us dare to despise one of the least of God's commandments? On what ground can we justify ourselves for placing such an example before beings so easily tempted as our fellow-sinners on earth are? And O, how can any of us afford to incur the dreadful guilt and the appalling doom of rebels against Jehovah?

8. Obviously there is no safe and right position save in penitence, faith, and holiness. God has mercifully opened our prison-doors, so that, though sinful and guilty, we may come forth from under condemnation, forgiven through faith in the blood of Him who bore our sins in his own body. Here lies our hope touching the sins of the past. And the same glorious gospel makes ample provision also to save us from sinning more in the future. Thoroughly applied, it would make us abhor single sins and small sins, and would ensure us grace to help in all such seasons of need. For such a world of temptation as ours, this provision of grace to help, and spiritual power to stand, is beyond measure precious. Why should not every Christian stretch out his hand in faith and take it? Why not the whole world fly to this city of refuge and be at peace with Him whom we have by our sins so deeply abused and offended."—Ob. Evang.