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. 

Lest the perverse heart of the sinner should abuse this merciful provision and regard the scheme of reconciliation as a license for sinning, the inspired writer sets up a safeguard: "My little children, I write these things unto you, not to encourage you in sinning, but that ye sin not even once." Paul, after having declared that God's plan of salvation is such that "where sin abounded, grace did much more abound," is constrained to set up a similar safeguard against perverting the greatness of God's mercy into a motive for plunging more deeply into sin. "Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid." John gives the same precautionary warning in the words, "These things I write unto you that ye sin not." He might have spoken in more general terms and said, " The things written in all the Holy Scriptures have this purpose, that ye sin not." 

The historical parts of the Bible evidently have this design. They portray sin and its wretched consequences; the sin of Adam and Eve, and the cause of exile from Eden, a life of toil and sorrow ending in the grave; the sin of Cain and the brand of God's displeasure set upon him; the sin of the antediluvians and the all-engulfing deluge, God's broom, with which he swept the earth clean from sinners; the sin of Sodom and the shower of fire and brimstone; the sin of Israel and the captivity in Babylon; the sin of Jerusalem and its predicted overthrow by the Roman armies; the sin of Ananias and his wife, and their judicial death beneath the stroke of Divine justice. What are all these events but so many preachers crying out, "Sin not"? 

Should we study God's character of goodness, holiness, justice and truth, we should have another group of Gospel heralds proclaiming, "Sin not." Then should we gather together all the precepts and prohibitions of God's word in proverb, in psalm, in prophecy and in parable, we should have another multitude of preachers reiterating the same text, amplifying it and applying it in all the languages and dialects of the Babel earth into which this Book of books has been translated. 

"All the Divine purposes, words and judgments have for their aim to oppose sin, either to prevent its commission or to destroy it." (Bengel.)

We now raise this pertinent question, "Is the God of the Bible aiming at an end which is practicable, or at an ideal impossible to be realized in this world? " If we say that He is aiming at an ideal which He knows cannot be realized, we reflect on His wisdom and the efficacy of His remedy in the blood of His Son and the gift of His Spirit. Both are failures if they are insufficient either to prevent the commission of sin by a believing soul, or to destroy it, root and branch, as a principle within. The only escape from this is either probation extended beyond death where the blood of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit will have a higher efficacy — for which doctrine we must have another Bible — or a probation after Christ's second advent when the Holy Spirit will be superseded by a more successful agency, the visible presence of our glorified Lord Jesus overwhelming sinners with His awful majesty, and sanctifying believers and keeping them pure by the very resplendence of His glory. But we have yet to find the text in the New Testament in proof that one sinner will be regenerated or one believer will be entirely sanctified after Jesus shall come with all His holy angels to judge the quick and the dead. This theory is as baseless as that of probation beyond the grave, so far as revelation is concerned.

Hence we are shut up to this alternative, either the whole plan of salvation in the Bible is a stupendous failure, or it is possible for the provisions of grace to destroy sin in a believing soul, and to prevent its subsequent commission.

But does not John in the same verse imply that no one will be able to keep from acts of conscious sin when he says, "And if any man sin, we have an advocate"? Is this hypothesis designed for the rule, or for an exception? The answer is found in iii. 9, "Whosoever has been born of God (implying that he continues thus) is not committing sin (as a habit), and he cannot be sinning." 

"The possibility of his sinning is not absolutely denied; but this is affirmed that the new birth and sinning cannot exist together" any more than theft and honesty. (Bengel.)

It is a moral cannot, such as Joseph implies when solicited by the siren in Potiphar's house. "How can I do this great wickedness?" It is the cannot of a person, the whole tenor of whose character, all the moral purposes and the fixed bent of his will, under grace, are all set as a flint against sin. Such a person does not spontaneously, deliberately and intelligently give himself up to a course of sin. But while losing sight of Christ, and under a cloud, he may be so sophisticated by the devil as to yield to some sudden, strong impulse, and commit a single act of sin contrary to the fixed purpose of his mind. Now what is he to do? He can throw down the oars in despair, and go down the Niagara of damnation. This is what Satan desires. But the tender and compassionate Holy Spirit, through John, says to the sorrowing penitent, "You have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous." The whole Trinity is interested in your salvation. Try again in the name of Jesus Christ.