Hold Fast # 4

Hold Fast # 4

Sin, I need not remind any Bible reader, consists in doing, saying, thinking, or imagining anything that is not in perfect conformity with the mind and law of God. "Sin" as the Scripture says, is "the transgression of the law." (1 John 3:4). The slightest outward or inward departure from absolute mathematical parallelism with God's revealed will and character, constitutes a sin, and at once makes us guilty in God's sight. The Ninth Article of our Church declares that sin is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusts always contrary to the spirit; and, therefore, in every person born into the world, it deserves God's wrath and damnation.

Sin, in short, is that vast moral disease which affects the whole human race, of every rank and class and name and nation and people and tongue, the plague of rulers and statesmen, the divider of churches, the destroyer of family happiness, the cause of all the miseries in the world.

Now I am obliged to declare my conviction, that the extent and vileness and deceitfulness of sin are a subject which is not sufficiently brought forward in the religious teaching these days. I do not say it is ignored altogether. But I do say that it is not pressed on congregations in its Scriptural proportion. The consequences are very serious.

One result, I am persuaded, is the immense increase of that sensuous, ceremonial, formal kind of Christianity, which has swept over England and America like a flood in the last forty years, and carried away so many before it. I can well believe that there is much that is attractive and satisfying - in this system of religion, to a certain order of minds, so long as the conscience is not fully enlightened. But when that wonderful part of our constitution is really awake and alive, I find it hard to believe that a sensuous, ceremonial Christianity will thoroughly satisfy us. A little child is easily quieted and amused with gaudy toys and dolls and rattles, so long as it is not hungry; but once let it feel the cravings of nature within, and we know that nothing will satisfy it but food. Just so it is with man in the manner of his soul. Music and singing and flowers and banners and processions and beautiful vestments and man-made ceremonies of semi-Romish character, may do well enough for man under certain conditions. But once let him awake and arise from the dead, and he will not rest content with these things. They will seem to him mere solemn triflings - and a waste of time!

Once let him see his sin, and he must see his Saviour, in order to obtain rest for his soul. He feel stricken with a deadly disease; and nothing will satisfy him but the Great Physician. He hungers and thirsts; and he must have nothing less than the bread of life. I may seem bold in what I am about to say - but I fearlessly venture the assertion, that one half of the semi-Romanism of the last forty years would never have existed, if people had been taught more fully and clearly the nature, vileness and sinfulness of sin.

I believe the likeliest way to cure and mend this defective kind of religion is to bring forward more prominently, and expound more frequently, the Ten Commandments as the true test of sin. They really seem to me to have fallen into the rear of late, and, with the exception of the sixth and eighth, to receive less attention than they deserve. Let us try to revive the old teaching in nurseries, in schools, in training colleges, in universities. Let us not forget that "the law is good if a man use it lawfully," and that "by the law is the knowledge of sin." (1 Ti. 1:8; Rom. 3:20, Rom. 7:7). Let us bring it to the front once more, and press it on men's attention. Let us expound and beat out the Ten Commandments, and show the length and breath and depth and height of their requirements. It is the way of our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount. It was the way of great divines like Andrews and Leighton and Hopkins and Patrick, whose works on the Commandments are classics to this day.

We would do well to walk in their steps. We may depend upon it, men will never truly come to Christ, and stay with Christ, and live for Christ - unless they feel their sins, and know their need of a Saviour. Those whom the Holy Spirit draws to Christ are those whom the Spirit has convinced of sin. Without real conviction of sin, men may seem to come to Christ and follow Him for a season - but they will soon fall away and return to the world!

I commend this point to your private consideration. I suspect that the prevailing desire to make things pleasant to hearers, and the fear of giving offence by plain speaking, have much to say to the neglect of the law in this day. But the testimony of the Bible is clear - "By the law is the knowledge of sin." (Romans 3:20, 7:7). The words of Lightfoot are most deeply true, "The consciousness of sin is the true pathway to heaven.

~J. C. Ryle~

(continued with # 5)