The Consequences of Sin

IN THE NEW TESTAMENT THE INCLUSIVE WORD FOR THE CONSEQUENCE OF SIN IS DEATH. GOD'S PURPOSE FOR MEN IS LIFE, life at its fullest and highest. Sin is the refusal of life and of the ways that lead to life; so death is the fruit of sin. That does not mean merely physical death, as might seem from Paul's reference to Adam's sin and the entrance of death into the world in Rom. 5:12. There is a deeper meaning when Paul, having referred to the law of sin in his members, cries for deliverance "from this body of death." So we read of sin, "which leads to death," that "the end of those things in death," that "to set the mind on the flesh is death," just as "to set the mind on the Spirit is life" (Rom. 7:24; 6:16, 21; 8:6). Sin works death; indeed, it is death. "He who does not love remains in death" (Rom. 7:13; 1 John 3:14). The death of the higher is the consequence of sin, and sin itself is a kind of death.

In all this there is nothing arbitrary; death is no mere imposition of punishment. Sin by its very nature brings death. It refuses God and so separates man from the source of all life. It rejects the law of love and sets a man at variance with his fellows. So life becomes narrow, poor, loveless, lonely; and there enter in suspicion, fear, jealousy, bitterness, hatred. In refusing God man remains divided within, for unity can come to man only as he finds that highest will of good and right, in obedience to which he gains freedom and harmony and peace.

Here, as elsewhere, theology has tended to be content with generalities and to move within too narrow limits. We need to look at the consequence of sin concretely and in the full range of man's life. The destructive results of sin may be seen in the total psychophysical life. Sin is man's departure from the way of life, the way to health and well-being of body and spirit. Such sins as lust, drunkenness, and gluttony plainly affect spirit and body alike. Conversely, a man's inner life profoundly affects his physical well-being. Modern psychology has made plain the many ills of body as well as spirit which follow from wrong inner attitudes and social maladjustments. Some of the most terrible consequences of the sins against the body are passed on to others, especially through alcoholism and sexual vice, including blindness, epilepsy, and feeble-mindedness. But the life of sin brings its most serious results in the spiritual realm: the lessened desire for God and good, the blunting of the moral sense, the dulling of spiritual vision, lessening of moral power, growing fixation of habit and character and so loss of freedom, with a general disintegration and ultimate destruction of the higher self.

The full consequences of sin are seen only as we look beyond the individual. The sin of the individual affects those about him. For good or ill, every man's life affects his neighbor. His deeds help to shape their world. His spirit helps to create the atmosphere in which they live. And his sin, with that of community and nation, lives on in ideas and institutions which help to form social environment and are handed down in history. Nor are the evil effects less real or far-reaching if, as is common with the masses, the sin is negative, a slothful and selfish indifference and the failure of that positive goodness which loves righteousness and hates iniquity.

Turning to the associated life of men, a study of the mass evils of the race makes increasingly clear that the great scourges of poverty, disease, and war are ultimately a consequence of sin. The destruction of forests, the depletion of soil, wealth in one land or one class and starvation in another, debasing drudgery and demoralizing idleness are the fruits of sin, of selfishness and greed and indifference. In turn poverty and wretchedness, as the modern age has shown, furnish the opportunity to dictators and the occasion for revolutions and wars. We have the resources and skill to produce enough for all; we have lacked the vision, the unselfishness, the co-operation needed alike for adequate production and right distribution. And this last lack has prevented the elimination of typhoid, tuberculosis, and other plagues which science has conquered in principle and whose needed preventive treatment is known.

The most terrible consequence of sin is sin itself. The casual sin becomes the habit and character of the man. Men receive what they desire. They make self the center, and selfishness, with its isolation and emptiness and loneliness, becomes their lot. They refuse God, and theirs is a life without high purpose or hope, without strength and joy and peace. They choose darkness rather than light, and the light that is in them becomes darkness. In the conflict within they let the lower self have its way until at last there is no other. (So in the classic portrayal of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson.) Nations live in selfish indifference to others, careful only of their own interests, cultivating a narrow loyalty, relying upon intrigue and force of arms. So they receive what they have chosen, a world of suspicion and fear and hate, ending in mutually destructive warfare.

Guilt

Guilt is usually thought of as involving three elements: the fact of wrongdoing, responsibility for the deed and thus blameworthi-ness, and liability to punishment. This is the ethical-personal conception. It stems from the prophets and rests back upon a personal-ethical conception of religion and in turn upon our thought of God. If we conceive of religion in personal-ethical terms, then we shall think of sin and guilt in similar manner. Guilt will not simply mean, this man has done what is wrong and therefore should be punished; but rather, this man knew right and chose wrong and is blameworthy.

Guilt, like sin, attaches to the spirit and attitude of a man, to his character and total course of life, not simply to some single deed or failure. Sometimes persistence in evil choice and refusal of light so darken the mind that evil is done with little realization that it is evil. Yet, responsible for his total life, this man is sinful and guilty. Guilt, like sin, may be social as well as individual; but here too it remains personal and ethical. This does not exclude wide variance in the degree of guilt, both individual and social (Luke 12:47, 48; 20:47). In a democracy the group responsibility, and so the group guilt, is greater than it is in a nation where policy and action are determined by the few. Yet there is no land where the rank and file are wholly without knowledge and power. That is why even Fascist and communist leaders have felt impelled to indoctrinate their people and to gain a popular support. God alone can determine the degree of guilt with individuals or a people, but the fact remains (Rom. 2:12-16). The child is born into a world of evil. Ideals, accepted practices, and daily example create the atmosphere that he breathes. But that does not eliminate the fact of individual sin and guilt, for as the child grows, there enters in the awareness of right and wrong and so personal responsibility.

This position differs from that of the traditional theology which follows the Augustinian-Calvinistic succession. We all recognize the fact of a world that is sinful in spirit and practice, and of a human nature of whose impulses and passions one can say either that they are sinful or that they issue in sin if not controlled or transformed. The difference lies in the interpretation. Augustine declared that this was explained by the fact that in Adam's fall not only his own nature but that of the whole race was corrupted. Hence, as Calvin insisted, man could do nothing but sin; and sin meant guilt. Adam's sin was our sin. This was Augustine's effort to justify God in holding all men guilty: Adam's sin was his free deed, and we are equally guilty with him because, present in him, we shared in this act. This conception of the whole race as present and active in Adam is a piece of speculative metaphysics. Calvin's thinking, too, is metaphysical, rather than personal-ethical, when he speaks of the nature of the newborn babe as "odious and abominable to God," and of these infants as "properly deemed sinful" and thus as under condemnation and guilty. ¹ Back of this is the concept of God which puts absolute sovereignty above the ethical, positing a God who willed that Adam should fall and thus, as a necessary consequence, willed the sin and guilt of all mankind and the damnation of all except those whom his sovereign will selected for salvation,

The Punishment of Sin

By divine punishment we mean those results which according to God's purpose follow upon human wrongdoing and are borne by the sinner. There are those who would repudiate such a conception; they cannot think of a good God imposing suffering upon his creatures. The protest involves a twofold error. One is the idea that punishment is something arbitrarily determined and externally imposed. Rather, the punishment of sin is to be found in those evil consequences, already considered, which follow necessarily upon wrongdoing. The other error lies in failing to see that punishment, rightly conceived, is implied in the very idea of a good God, a God who loves righteousness and hates iniquity, whose face is set against evil just because he loves men.

What is asserted here is not the idea of a jealous and vindictive God but that of a morally ordered universe. The question is whether this universe, morally considered, is one of order or of anarchy. Indeed, it would mean the final destruction of human hope if good and evil fared alike, if it were not true that "whatever a man sows, that he will also reap" (Gal. 6:7). Such an order is not impersonal. It does not operate mechanically. It is nothing less than God .in action, the God of truth and righteousness, of love and judgment.

While punishment is found in the proper consequence of evil, not all such consequences are to be viewed as punishment. There is innocent suffering due to the wrongdoing of others, and there is a vicarious suffering in which men bear the sins of others, Jesus being the supreme example. In neither of these cases is the term punishment rightly employed, for punishment has no place where there is no personal guilt.

Here might well be considered the many Old Testament references to the wrath or anger or indignation of God. Some of the passages are strongly anthropopathic: God roars from Zion, his anger burns, he is full of wrath, he takes vengeance on his adversaries. Some of these expressions represent the more primitive level in the Old Testament. Yet there is something here that belongs to the prophetic teaching. God's judgment on evil is no mere impersonal process in which a divine regent, aloof, unmoved, apportions punishment or award. There is an attitude of feeling as well as of mind and will, though such human terms as anger and indignation but poorly express it.

We see this more clearly when we look at the converse, at God's attitude of justice and mercy, of love and righteousness. God's righteousness is positive, creative, devoted, one may even say passionate. So is his love; it has in it an unselfish devotion, a deep concern, a sorrow, a pity. The word applied to Jesus belongs here: "Thou hast loved righteousness and hated lawlessness" (Heb. 1:9). Here again Jesus is the revelation of God. We read of the anger of Jesus (Mark 3:5), of his indignation at the disciples who sought to keep the little children from him (Mark 10:14). We note his burning words spoken against those leaders who "shut the kingdom of heaven against men," while they themselves refuse to enter (Matt. 23:13). What stirred Jesus in these cases was the sin against men, the sin against love. It was in the name of love that he was angry with those who sought to block the coming of the kingdom of love and righteousness and to keep from men the gifts of the kingdom.

As regards the Old Testament it should be noted, first, that in the prophetic teaching anger and judgment have an ethical meaning; they indicate the divine attitude toward evil. Second, wrath and judgment are always related to mercy as part of God's action in establishing a rule of righteousness and love on earth. Sometimes words of judgment and mercy stand side by side (Isa. 54:7-10; 55:6-9; Pss. 103:8-13; 145:8; Jer. 29:11-19).

There are few references to God's wrath in the New Testament. They occur mostly in the book of Revelation, which shares this emphasis on wrath and judgment with the Jewish apocalypticism of that day to which it is so closely related. Significantly the term is not found on the lips of Jesus. In one passage Paul refers to the final judgment as "the day of wrath." Religion necessarily uses language taken from human life and relations, but Christian theology can find better terms than "wrath" for God's attitude and than "day of wrath" to describe his judgment.

The Purposes of Punishment

In human society the purpose of punishment has varied greatly in theory and practice. In earlier stages it was often vindictive. Again it took the form of compensation to the injured party or his group. The idea of retribution has been widespread and persistent, the state being viewed as entrusted by God with this function. The modern tendency is to stress the protection of society and the prevention of crime. Increasingly, however, society is coming to recognize a duty to the offender also; and so it plans for his training and rehabilitation. It realizes, on the one hand, that the vindictive or purely penal attitude shuts the door to the offender's conscience, embitters him, and confirms him in his evil, while penal institutions may even serve as schools of crime. At the same time it recognizes that wrongdoing is rarely, if ever, purely individual. Society shares in responsibility directly or through remissness in home, community, school, economic condition, and other relations. So there is increasing recognition of the fact that the removal of causes of wrongdoing must go hand in hand with its punishment.

Religious thought has reflected these forms of social theory. Thus punishment has been conceived as retributive, or even as vindictive, with God demanding satisfaction for his violated honor. For those who believe in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ the ultimate purpose of punishment will be seen as disciplinary and redemptive. Back of it is not only righteousness but love and hope. ² So it is with God. Sin in its beginning is not a matter of deliberation with full awareness of its meaning. Rather it is at first tentative, almost casual. It may be simply an easy acquiescence in the standards and practices of the social environment, with little appreciation of the evil of sin and its meaning in relation to God. Punishment helps to bring that meaning home and so to lead to repentance.

But discipline is not its only meaning. Punishment is not mere medicine for the ill or training for the immature, ceasing when it proves ineffective. The difference between right and wrong is an eternal one—in its nature and in its consequences. Sin is no mere deed of a moment; it is a basically wrong life attitude. Its consequences are inevitable, and they remain as long as that attitude persists. If discipline is to accomplish the end of making the sinner realize his sin and its meaning, it can only be as the sinner sees the eternal opposition of right and wrong, the meaning of his evil life in the light of a holy God and his high purpose, and the rightness of God's judgment upon him. Without this realization God's forgiveness and man's salvation are not possible. Nor have we ground for social hope except as we can believe in an inescapable moral order with its inevitable judgment upon evil. The ancient Latin word was, "Let justice be done though the heavens fall." What we need to realize is that unless justice is done, the heavens will fall. So the retributive element remains in punishment as part of an order which is at once moral and redemptive.

1) Op. cit., BK. II, ch I.

2) "Punishment ... is an expression of social hope—the hope of remaking or saving the man, by revealing to him in the language of deeds the meaning of his own deed." W. E. Hocking, Human Nature and Its Remaking, p. 258.