Sin Not.

 SUPPLEMENTARY STUDIES IN THE FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN - Part 4. 

"Sin not."

Sin is a small word, but it occupies a large place in human history. The trail of this serpent is upon us all. Upon the holiest of the sons of Adam it has left scars. In all others who have not applied the Divine cure it is a running sore, a virus poisoning the whole soul and threatening eternal ruin. Under God's moral government sin can never be happy. It may, for a short time, be delirious, and sing, and laugh, and dance. But delirium is not felicity. Sin grieves the heart of infinite love. 

This sorrow prompts the attempt to apply the atonement, the only remedy. This must be adapted to man's free agency. It cannot be forced upon him against his consent. He cannot be saved as a thing; he must be saved as a person by a free compliance with conditions, not as a bale of goods from a burning warehouse, but as a person intelligently and providently securing a life preserver and binding it upon him. Such a life preserver God has provided in the blood of His Son, which John in the first chapter of his First Epistle announces as the perfect remedy, "the double cure," saving from wrath and making pure.