Voices From The Past

by J. Miller | Category: General | Aug 1983

The apostle asked a vital question when he said, "Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?" He answered his own query by saying, "May it not be." How many lives are lived in a spiritual "blackout"! The causes for such things are well-nigh innumerable, but all have the same source and root from which they spring, namely, sin. What is sin? It literally means a missing of the mark, error. In its essence and nature it is lawlessness (1 John 3:4); it is the violation of what is right. Sin in its infancy may appear very innocent, and such aberration from the path of virtue may seem worthy of toleration or even commendation and those who would correct apparently innocent disorders would be deemed very puritanical, or a product of the Victorian era and not of modern thought and conditions.

Let us remember that a lion's cub has a lion's nature. It may seem innocent and playful as a kitten, but given time to grow it will kill as all its kind will do. The thornbush has no thorns when it first pushes its tender green shoot through the ground; it is then so nice, as all tender plants are (as He our Lord was who never grew any thorns, Isaiah 53), but in due time it will grow its thorns and its leaves. So sin in youth seems so unhurtful, but it is lawlessness in youth as in maturity. James indicates the process of its growth and its end:

Lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin: and the sin, when it is full-grown, bringeth forth death (chapter 1:15).

Lust is over-desire, and there may be some considerable undefined margin between desire and over-desire: a desire which is lawful may in time become unlawful, if it develops. Then it gives birth to sin, and how often earthly or worldly-minded believers want to know what's the wrong in this and what's the wrong in that! Apparently they do not stop to consider what good is in it, what profit will accrue, and wherein by their actions grace will abound to others. Self-pleasing and self-gratification are spiritually septic sores of which there is no healing save by anointing with the salve of the self-sacrifice of the Lord of Glory.

J. Miller | Aug 1983
General