WHAT IS SIN?

"And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there he wasted his substance with riotous living." — Luke xv. 13.

In dealing with the nature of naan in the previous section, it was impossible to avoid altogether some anticipation of what has to be said here about the nature of sin; but the endeavour was made to confine the treatment there to the possibility in man of sinning. Now we are to fix our attention rather on the actuality of sin; but, as we are being guided by the story before us, we must consider only those aspects of sin which it suggests. These are three: (1) There is abuse of God's gifts; "not many days after, the younger son gathered all together." (2) There is absence from God; "and took his journey into a far country." (3) There is abandonment of God's purpose; "and there wasted his substance with riotous living."

1. There is Abuse of God's Gifts.

What is the tragedy and the crime of sin is that it is God's goodness alone which makes sin possible; it is man's dignity as made in the likeness, and for the fellowship of God which is both the occasion and the measure of his degradation. The stars move in their courses with unchanging order, subject to unvarying laws; even the lower animals are guided by instinct, and are kept within the bounds of their being. But man turns his glory into his shame. Had man not a mind that could think truth he could not devise falsehood; had he not a heart that could delight in God he could not find pleasure in evil; had he not a will that could choose the right he could not prefer the wrong. We must ever look at sin in the light of what God has made man, and meant man to be. Where there is the actuality of falsehood, hate, and iniquity, there is also the possibility of truth and love and righteousness. The very same faculties which abused make man beastly and selfish, would, if exercised according to God's will, make him angelic and godlike. We must measure the depth to which man sinks by the height to which he may soar. The standard by which the abuse of manhood which sin involves must ever be measured is the character of Christ Himself. In this we see the Father's gifts of mind and heart and will ever exercised according to the Father's will in truth, love, and holiness for the Father's glory. On the one hand we see mankind because of sin clothed with shame and scorn; but we see on the other hand Jesus crowned with glory and honour. It is not with some imagined primitive state of man that we are to compare man's actual condition; but with the possibility of his manhood, as it is realised perfectly in Jesus Christ. Accordingly it is only as we know Christ that we can know what sin is, for we see in Him realised what God meant man to be, and thus we can measure how far short man has fallen in what he now is. The abuse of the best is surely the worst.

2. There is Absence from God.

(1) At home in the father's presence the prodigal could not have abused his father's gifts; he must put a distance between himself and his father that he might get licence for himself. Wickedness must ever lead to godlessness. Sin involves, and cannot but involve, a spiritual separation from God. It is true that no man can escape God's omnipresence; and there are times in the experience of the sinner when the presence of God is a terror to him, but, nevertheless, it is possible for a man to depart from and forget God. His mind can be so filled with falsehood that it has no room for truth; his heart may be so possessed with hate that love cannot there make its habitation; his will may be so controlled by evil that good may lose all sovereignty over it; the appetites may expel all the ideals and the aspirations. If the thought of God does and will obtrude itself in memories of better days of childhood's innocence, or in pleadings and warnings of present human love, then as God's existence cannot be denied, His love is distrusted, and His claim is defied. Paul in his doctrine of human depravity in Romans i. and ii. makes godlessness the cause of wickedness, and not wickedness the cause of godlessness; and sees even in wickedness the divine penalty on godlessness: and Jesus here follows the same course; before the prodigal wastes his substance, he goes into the far country. It is probable that wickedness and godlessness act and react. It is as the consciousness of God becomes obscure, that the conscience of evil becomes indistinct; it is as men banish God from their thoughts, that they come under the power of the world and sin. It is probable that the grosser forms of immorality are possible only as the restraints of belief in God are cast off. Indulgence in sin involves distrust and defiance of God, and the further the estrangement from God goes, the greater is the abandonment likely to be. If a man lives, conscious of God's presence, responsive to God's appeal in conscience, receptive of God's grace through His Spirit, evil is excluded by the possession of mind and heart and will by good. If, however, the soul be empty of God, it will soon be filled with wickedness. Had the prodigal loved his father, he would not have asked for his portion. Had he not left home for the far country, he would not have wasted his substance in riotous living. We must not try to answer the question, whether godlessness or wickedness comes first; for each goes with and begets the other.

(2) It is important to-day to insist on this companionship; for there is an attempt to detach morality from religion, and to represent it as altogether independent of religion. There are, it is true, moral men who are irreligious; but then they accept the morality of a society which acknowledges the authority of God in conscience. The real issue is not whether one man can be moral without religion; but whether, if religion died in a society, its morality would be as living. A morality based on necessary social relations might survive; but would the morality of a perfect ideal and a holy aspiration live on? But without pursuing this question further, we may insist on the practical consideration that sin and God are mutually exclusive; if a man chooses his own will, he disobeys and defies God's. If he thinks falsely he excludes God as truth; if he feels hate, he shuts out God as love; if he does wickedly he withstands God as righteousness. To be thus mentally, morally, and spiritually separated from God is a very serious and perilous condition. It is as fatal to the truest, best, and most blessed life of man, as it would be to a man's bodily life were he deprived of air for him to breathe, heat to warm him, or food to nourish him. Estrangement from God means the atrophy of the mind and the heart, the paralysis of the will. It is the disease and at last the death of his spiritual nature; it is the defeat of his destiny unto a blessed and a glorious immortality, for it is in God alone man has eternal life.

We should not, however, be adequately interpreting the mind of Jesus if we did not insist that man's estrangement frojn God is not only his own, but also God's loss. As the father of the prodigal missed his son, so God feels the want of the trust and the love, the honour and the service of His children. Man's absence from God means for man the loss of the blessings love confers; but for God the loss of the blessedness of bestowing these gifts; and it is the father's rather than the son's loss on which Jesus lays stress in the parable.

3. There is Abandonment of God's Purpose.

(1) When the prodigal got into the far country, away from all the restraints of home, the passions and the appetites had then full and free sway, and all his wealth was squandered in their indulgence. This descent of the soul into vice is effected in two ways by the departure from God. Firstly, man is made for God's fellowship with a hunger and thirst of the soul after God; and if he does not meet that need in God's companionship, there will be an insatiable craving for some other satisfaction. Man's appetites are so exaggerated in comparison with the lower animals', just because of the infinitude of the need which God alone can satisfy. Intemperance and sensuality go far beyond the satisfaction of a bodily need, because man is seeking through animal appetites to meet a want which can be met only through spiritual aspiration. Lust is perverted love; sensuality is inverted spirituality. Secondly, if man turns from God to the flesh, the restraints which the love of God would put on all satisfaction of the legitimate necessities of the body is removed; and it is the characteristic of the animal appetites in man that unless kept under rigid restraint by conscience, they become rebellious; and, when the lawful sovereignty of God in the soul has been overthrown, even tyrannous. The man who seeks freedom by pleasing himself becomes enslaved to his own appetites; and there is imposed on him an ever-increasing bondage, which, making ever greater demands on him, brings ever less satisfaction to him.

(2) It would be incredible, did not human life abound in instances, how completely men waste their substance, wealth, health, home, happiness, character, and reputation with riotous living. In our own land we have but to think of the victims of intemperance to realise how low man will sink, if he refuses to soar, and allows himself to be mastered by the lust of sin instead of the love of God. We must, however, beware of the error that it is only in the indulgence of the animal appetites that the soul can be lost. Social morality rebukes such indulgence; its immediate consequences often produce a revulsion of feeling; and at least the soul is not allowed to rest in a false peace. There are sins of greed, pride, envy, which are more secret and subtle; and for that very reason all the more dangerous. Jesus seems to have judged the condition of the publicans and sinners as more hopeful than the state of the Pharisees. It is, we must insist, not only the sin which arises from self-indulgence in its varied forms that is ruin to the soul. Avarice, Ambition, Vainglory, Hate — all these sins of the soul, having no relation to bodily needs at all, may be as destructive, if not even more destructive, of the love of God, and the fulfilment of the end of the life of man. In whatever way man abandons God's purpose of truth, holiness, and love, and follows the flesh, the world, or the self along the paths of his own devising, and not of God's appointing, he is sinning, and in sinning is abusing God's gifts, and is separating himself from the love of God.