Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadQuiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Personal Problems: 06. The Logical Result of Sin.
TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Personal Problems (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 06. The Logical Result of Sin.
Other Subjects in this Topic:
The Logical Result of Sin.
This cold, calm, strange sentence says that the wages of sin is death. What is death? There is no question much harder to answer. I can tell what it is not, and that will help to clear the ground a bit. It is not the passing of life out of the body merely. That is the thing we all think of first and most when death is spoken of. Yet that is a very small item, a mere detail of death, painful in itself, and with distressing results to those who tarry behind, but the smallest part of death. And death is not ceasing to be, cessation of existence. That cannot be. A spirit does not cease to be and cannot, and man is essentially a spirit-being. Good were it for some men if death meant for them an utter cessation of existence.
And it can be said with great positiveness that death is not arbitrary punishment meted out by God. God has sometimes been held up to criticism as a cruel, unfeeling sort of tyrant, taking pleasure in dealing out punishment to sinful men; not so much of late years as formerly, but still a good bit; always too much. Any is too much and a slander upon Him. We borrow our ideas of punishment from men, and among men punishment is very largely arbitrary. That is, it is decided upon, chosen out to be inflicted upon the guilty one. A child in school disobeys some rule and perhaps persists in the disobedience. The teacher decides upon some punishment, either whipping, or detention, or extra work, or to be deprived of some privilege. That of course is arbitrary, discretionary, decided as the teacher judges to be best. A soldier breaks the rules of camp, or of the discipline of army life. His officer decides what punishment shall be inflicted upon him. A man is found guilty of an offence, and in most instances there is discretion with the judge to decide what punishment he shall suffer.
Let it be said very plainly that death as a result of sin is not in any way like that. It is the logical result of sin. It is included in the sin. Sin and death are only different parts, or phases, or stages of the same thing. Sin is death begun. Death is sin finished, worked out to its conclusion. Sin is death in the green; death is sin dead ripe. Sin is the seed; death is the fruitage of that seed. Death is the logical culmination of sin, the final stage. Death begins with the beginning of sin. All unsuspected by those standing by, the beginnings of the pallor of death have already come where sin is done.
All unconsciously to the man committing the sin, the tide of life has already begun its faint, imperceptible ebb. All living men are partially dead. Death is a gradual state until finally complete. In its essence death is separation from God. All life is the breath of God. Sin is cutting one's self off from God. It is like gripping a man by the throat with tightening clutch until the breath of life departs. Sin is choosing to leave God out. The very act cuts off the source of life. The grammar of the verb to sin is peculiar to itself. It is this: present tense, to sin; first future tense, following instantly on the present, to suffer; in the second future tense the verb changes its form, it becomes a noun—hell.
That hateful, ugly word hell, which the lips utter only by compulsion when they must, for the sheer pain of it, is simply the name given to the place where death reigns; where God has been excluded. They who prefer to leave God out will gather together at some time by a natural moral affinity, or gravitation. The name used for such meeting-place in this old Book is that hurting word hell. Hell is death's abode. God shut out, no life, death, death regnant—that is hell.
Is there anybody listening here who has not sinned? If so, I'll wait a moment for you to withdraw, please, for to-day's talk is not for you. We all seem to be staying in. Well, then, by our own confession, .we are under the action of this law of sin. There is a death sentence written over every face here. Sometimes it can be plainly seen. Sometimes to our dim eyes there seems to be no suggestion of such a thing. But were our eyes keener to read spirit-lines and spirit-fact, we would find through the flashing eye, the clear ruddy skin, the firm rounded flesh, a distinct tracing of this strange thing called death.
I have no doubt that many, maybe most, of these listening so kindly and patiently are members of the Christian Church. But as I run my eye over your faces I cannot say who are church members and who are not. And I am glad for the purpose of this talk to-day that I cannot. For this law of sin recognizes no such distinctions. There has been a thoughtless thinking, without it being said in so many words, that being within the secure walls of church membership shields one from the action of this law of sin. But that is not so. Whoever is thinking so, maybe half unconsciously thinking so, is befooling himself here. This law of life which is a law of death applies fully wherever there is life, and—sin.
Well, then, we are all under the action of this law and all under sentence of death, sin's logical conclusion. What can we do about it? Of ourselves we cannot do a thing to relieve the situation. The thing we need is life in place of death; the utter cutting out of the seeds of death and the putting in of new seed, the seed of life, a new life. There are only three ways that anything can be gotten, that is, proper ways: by inheritance, by purchase, and by gift. We have lost our inheritance of life. It has been forfeited by our alliance with the one thing that is utterly opposed to life. There is not enough wealth in the vaults of London and New York, Paris and St. Petersburg, nor in the mines, to buy any. The wealthy people are merely money-wealthy, not life-wealthy, so far as their gold is concerned. And we have none for ourselves, much less to give away. What shall we do? We are all in bad shape. It is a blind alley we are all heading up in. Would it sound any better, or less bad, if instead of "blind alley" I used a foreign word for it, cul-de-sac, and hid the ugliness of the truth behind that? Better just use blunt old English, that the plain truth come more plainly, bluntly home.