Question 84

Every sin deserveth—This Answer only casts into a form of words fitting its place in the development of catechetical doctrine what is the universal teaching of Scripture on the nature and heinousness of sin. James, the least doctrinal, so to say, and the most entirely ethical of all the apostles, more than sustains the teaching of the text in that famous passage in which he sets forth the solidarity and inviolability of the divine law: “For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.” “What he means is, that God will not be honoured with exceptions, nor will He allow us to cut off from His law what is less pleasing to us” (Calvin). “For every one vice kills the soul, though every virtue does not make alive. A man is spotted although he have but one stain: he is not clean unless he be all clean. A cup is broken if only the top is broken, but it is not entire unless every part of it is inviolate” (Taylor). “The favourite notion of many people, that the province of morals recognizes a greater or a smaller number of adiaphora [unimportant and indifferent matters], is here emphatically denied” (Lange). “If indeed there be deeper and deeper dyes of guilt: which, though it be a true idea to a creature already in a fallen state, is not so, as I take it, to a creature who hath not fallen, to whom any insurrection of the will, or disobedience of the act, doth constitute the very essence and substance of sin, which may afterwards be varied by particular accidents, but cannot, as I take it, be changed in its essence” (Edward Irving).

“It is well to observe how apparently slight a fault it was for which Moses suffered: for this shows us the infinite difference between the best of a sinful race and Him who was sinless,—the least taint of human corruption having in it an unspeakable evil” (Newman) This great writer also preaches the “inconceivable evil of sensuality.”

God’s wrath—See Answer 19. Such words and thoughts as these are to be purged as far as may be of all association with human passion and corruption. We cannot, in the nature of things, escape the limitation and taint of human ideas and attributes when we think or speak of God; but the safest way is to keep close to scriptural usage and example, and above all to study the revelation of God in His love and in His hatred, in His cursing and in His blessing, as He is revealed to us in the character, and works, and words of His Incarnate Son Jesus Christ. “The Baptist he began that style in the New Testament—the wrath to come—by way of distinction from all that is executed in this life. And the whole New Testament afterwards much useth this phrase. . . . I shall but further superadd that noticed saying of Luther, which out of a deep experience of the wrath of God in his soul at his first humiliation and conversion he had learned: The wrath of God is hell, the hell of devils and all damned spirits” (Goodwin).

“By anger, wrath, zeal, fury, the effects of anger are denoted. Anger and wrath are not properly ascribed to God, but metaphorically, denoting partly His vindicatory justice, whence all punishments flow; partly the effects of it in the punishments themselves” (Owen). “Many schools of religion and ethics are to be found amongst us, and they all profess to magnify, in one shape or other, what they consider the principle of love; but what they lack is, a firm maintenance of that characteristic of the Divine Nature, which, in accommodation to our infirmity, is named by St. John and his brethren the wrath of God. . . . Hence they consider all punishment to be remedial, a means to an end; deny that the woe threatened against sinners is of eternal duration, and explain away the doctrine of the Atonement” (Newman). “From the notion of wrath, when it is applied to God, we must, of course, remove all that pollutes human wrath, personal resentment, and revenge. In God, who is the living good, wrath appears as the holy disapprobation of evil, and the firm resolve to destroy it. But it is false to say, as is often said, that this divine emotion applies only to the evil and not to the evil-doer. The voluntary and determined evil-doer comes under God’s wrath and all its consequences” (Godet). On the wrath of the Lamb, see Rev. W. R. Nicoll’s sermon.

and curse—See Answer 19. What has been said above may all be applied here also. Wrath is not rage: God’s curse is not violent language or cruel treatment: the fire that is not quenched is not kindled with wood or coals, as Goodwin says, “It is a far subtiler fire than culinary or kitchen fire.” “Q. Wherein doth the curse of God consist?—A. In divers things: first, in the guilt of death, temporal and eternal; secondly, the loss of the grace and favour of God; thirdly, guilt and horror of conscience, despair and anguish here; with, fourthly, eternal damnation hereafter” (Owen’s Catechism).

Commenting on the fact that the last word of the Old Testament is “a curse,” Pusey says: “The Jews, who would be wiser and tenderer than the prophet, repeat the previous verse, because Malachi closes so awfully. The Maker of the heart of man knew better the hearts which He had made, and taught their authors to end the books of Isaiah and Ecclesiastes and Malachi with words of awe, from which man’s heart so struggles to escape. To turn to God here, or everlasting destruction from His presence hereafter, is the only choice open to thee.” Compare Bengel’s note on the ending of the Sermon on the Mount: “We see, from the present example, that it is not necessary for all sermons to end in a consolatory strain.”

in this life and that which is to come. “And cannot be expiated but by the blood of Christ” (Larger Catechism). “The least sin which we commit in deed, or word, or thought, is death, without repentance” (Hooker). “A consideration of the future sanctions of religion is our only security of persevering in our duty in cases of great temptation” (Butler). “Wrath and threatening are invariably mingled with the love of God; and in the utmost solitudes of nature, the existence of hell seems to me as legibly declared by a thousand spiritual utterances as that of heaven. . . . Gerizim and Ebal, birth and death, light and darkness, heaven and hell, divide the existence of man, and his futurity” (Ruskin, Stones of Venice, iii. 3).

Uses

1. “Justice reigns in hell, and grace in heaven. Men’s merit makes hell, and Christ’s merit makes heaven (Rom. vi. 23)” (Traill).
2. “My Lord Cardinal,” said Anne of Austria to Richelieu, “God does not pay at the end of every week, but at last He pays.”
3. “No sin which is persisted in is small, no sin great for which forgiveness is sought of God” (Arab proverb).
4. Q. What is the fourth instruction here?—A. It teacheth us what an invaluable mercy the full, free, and final remission of sin is (Ps. xxxii. 1, 2) (Flavel).

Questions

1. Explain the foreign term solidarity as applied to the Divine Law, and support the doctrine from Scripture.

2. Commit these lines of Bunyan, of which Froude asks, Who that has read them can ever forget them?

   Sin is the worm of hell, the lasting fire:
   Hell soon would lose its heat should sin expire;
   Better sinless in hell than to be where
   Heaven is, and found a sinner there.