Study Questions
Chapter 6
The consequences
of sin
We have looked at the universality and the nature of human sin. We might prefer to leave this unpleasant subject and pass on immediately to the good news of Christ’s salvation, but we are not yet ready to do so. We need to grasp what the results of sin are before we can fully appreciate what God has done for us and what he offers to us in Christ.
Is sin really so very serious? The best way to understand its evil consequences is to look at its effects on God, on ourselves and on other people.
Alienation from God
Even though we may not realize it now, the most terrible result of sin is that it cuts us off from God. Our highest destiny is to know God, to be in personal relationship with him. Our chief claim to nobility as human beings is that we were made in the image of God and are therefore capable of knowing him. But this God whom we are meant to know and whom we ought to know is a righteous Being, infinite in his moral perfection. The Bible consistently stresses this truth:
For this is what the high and exalted One says –
he who lives forever, whose name is holy:‘I live in a high and holy place...’
The King of kings and Lord of lords, who...lives in unapproachable light.
God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.
Our God is a consuming fire.
Who of us can dwell with the consuming fire?
Who of us can dwell with everlasting burning?
Your eyes are too pure to look on evil;
you cannot tolerate wrong.
All the individuals in the Bible who have caught a glimpse of God’s glory have drawn back from the sight, overwhelmed by the awareness of their own sins. Moses, to whom God appeared in the bush that was on fire but was not burnt up, ‘hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God’. Job, to whom God spoke ‘out of the storm’ in words which revealed the full extent of his majesty, cried out, ‘My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.’ Isaiah, a young man at the threshold of his career, had a vision of God as the King of Israel ‘seated on a throne, high and exalted’, surrounded by worshipping angels who sang of his holiness and glory, and said, ‘Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.’ When Ezekiel received his strange vision of living winged creatures and whirring wheels, and above them a throne, and on the throne a figure like that of a man, enveloped in the brightness of fire and of the rainbow, he recognized it as ‘the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD’, and he added, ‘When I saw it, I fell face down.’ Saul of Tarsus, travelling to Damascus, mad with rage against the Christians, was struck to the ground and blinded by a brilliant light which flashed from heaven more brightly than the sun, and wrote later of his vision of the risen Christ, ‘He appeared to me also.’ The aged John, exiled on the island of Patmos, describes in detail his vision of the risen Jesus in heaven, whose ‘eyes were like blazing fire’ and whose ‘face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance’, and he tells us, ‘When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead.’
If the curtain which veils the indescribable majesty of God could be drawn aside – even for a moment – we too would be unable to bear the sight. As it is, we’re only dimly aware of how pure and brilliant the glory of almighty God must be. However, we know enough to realize that we could never approach such a God while still in our sins. A great chasm yawns between God in his holiness and us in our sin. ‘For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?’ asks Paul.
The fact that sin cuts us off from God was brought home dramatically in Old Testament times by the way the tabernacle and the temple were constructed. Both these structures, designed to house the presence of God among his people, were made in two compartments. The first and larger one was called the Holy Place, while the further and smaller area was known as the Most Holy Place or the Holy of Holies. In this inner sanctuary was what was called the Shekinah glory, the visible symbol of God’s presence. Between the two was the ‘veil’, a thick curtain which barred access into the Holy of Holies. No-one was allowed to pass through into God’s presence except the high priest, and he only on the annual Day of Atonement and then only if he took with him the blood of a sacrifice for sins.
What was visibly demonstrated to the Israelites in this way is underlined by the teaching we find in the Old and the New Testaments. Sin brings inevitable separation, and this separation is ‘death’, spiritual death, the cutting off of a person from God, the only source of true life. ‘The wages of sin is death.’
More than that, if in this life we deliberately reject Jesus Christ, the only one through whom we may find eternal life, we will die eternally in the next world. Hell is a grim and dreadful reality. We must not let ourselves be deceived about this. Jesus himself spoke of it. He called it ‘darkness’ because it is an infinite separation from God who is light. The Bible also calls it ‘the second death’ and ‘the lake of fire’, terms which describe symbolically the loss of eternal life and the dreadful thirst of the soul which are the inevitable result of being banished from God’s presence.
This separation from God which is caused by sin is not only taught in the Bible; it is confirmed by human experience. I can still remember my own sense of confusion when as a boy I said my prayers and tried to enter God’s presence. I could not understand why God seemed so far away and I could not get near him. He seemed so remote and distant. I know the reason now. Isaiah has given me the answer:
Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save,
nor his ear too dull to hear.But your iniquities have separated
you from your God;your sins have hidden his face from you,
so that he will not hear.
We are tempted to say to God, as does the writer of the book of Lamentations, ‘You have covered yourself with a cloud so that no prayer can get through.’ But in fact God is not responsible for the cloud. We are. Our sins blot out God’s face from us as effectively as the clouds cover the sun.
Many people have told me that they have had the same bleak experience. Sometimes, in emergencies, in danger, in joy or in the contemplation of beauty, they feel that God is near to them. But, more often than not, they find God to be inexplicably absent, and they feel abandoned. This is not just a feeling; it is a fact. Until our sins are forgiven, we are indeed exiles, far from our true home. We have no relationship with God. In biblical terms we are ‘lost’, or ‘dead through the transgressions and sins’ which we have committed.
Our sins blot out God’s face from us as effectively as the clouds cover the sun.
It is this that accounts for the restlessness of men and women today. There is a hunger in our hearts which only God can satisfy, a vacuum which only he can fill. The demand for sensational news, extravagant love or crime stories in the media; the current epidemic of drugs, sex and violence – all these things are symptoms of our search for satisfaction. They betray our thirst for God and our separation from him. Augustine was right in the often-quoted words which come near the beginning of his Confessions: ‘You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you.’ This situation is tragic beyond words. We are missing the destiny for which God made us.
Bondage to self
Sin not only alienates; it enslaves. It separates us from God and it also brings us into captivity.
We need now to consider the ‘inwardness’ of sin. It is more than the wrong things we do; it is a deep-seated inner sickness. In fact, the sins we commit are merely the external and visible indications of this internal and invisible illness, the symptoms of a moral disease. The image Jesus used is that of a tree and its fruit. The kind of fruit a tree bears, he said (whether figs or grapes, for example), and their condition (whether good or bad), depend on the nature and health of the tree itself. ‘For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.’
In this respect, Jesus Christ is at odds with many modern commentators. It is certainly true that we are all influenced for good or ill by our education and environment, and by the political and economic system under which we live. It is also true that we should seek justice, freedom and well-being for our fellow human beings. Yet Jesus did not attribute the evils of human society to these. According to him, the problem lies with our very nature, with what he called our ‘heart’. Here are his exact words:
For from within, out of your hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile you.
The Old Testament had already taught this truth. As Jeremiah put it, ‘The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?’ Indeed, the Bible contains many references to this infection of human nature – what we call ‘original sin’. It is a tendency or bias of self-centredness, which we inherit, which is rooted deeply in our human personality, and which reveals itself in a thousand ugly ways. Paul’s label for it is ‘the sinful nature’, and he sets out a catalogue of what it produces.
The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.
It is because sin is an internal sickness of human nature that we are in bondage. It is not so much particular acts or habits which enslave us, but rather the evil infection from which these spring. This is what lies behind the New Testament description of us as ‘slaves’. We resent it, but it is true. Jesus really upset some of the religious people of his day when he said to them, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’
They retorted, ‘We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?’
Jesus answered them, ‘I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.’
In several of his letters Paul describes this humiliation into which sin brings us.
You used to be slaves to sin.
All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts.
At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures.
The example of our lack of self-discipline which the New Testament writer James focuses on is the difficulty we have in controlling our tongue. In a chapter full of graphic metaphor he says that ‘those who are never at fault in what they say are perfect, able to keep their whole body in check’. He points out that ‘the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts’. Its influence spreads like fire; it is ‘a world of evil’ and ‘corrupts the whole person’. We can tame all kinds of animals and birds, he adds, ‘but no-one can tame the tongue’.
We know this only too well. We have high ideals, but weak wills. We want to live a good life, but we are chained in the prison of our self-centredness. However much we may boast of being free, the reality is that we are slaves.
We need to come to God and admit with sorrow:
It is not finished, Lord,
There is not one thing done,
There is no battle of my life
That I have really won.
And now I come to tell thee
How I fought to fail,
My human, all too human, tale
Of weakness and futility.
It is no use giving us rules about how to behave; we cannot keep them. However much God might say ‘You shall not’, we shall – right to the end of time. A lecture will not solve our problem; we need a Saviour. The education of the mind is not enough without a change of heart. Humanity has discovered the secrets of physical power and been able to harness the immense resources of nuclear energy. Now we need spiritual power, to set us free from ourselves, to conquer and control ourselves, the power to give us moral character to match our scientific achievement.
Conflict with others
But our list of the terrible consequences of sin is still not complete. There is one more to consider: the effect it has on our relationships with others.
We have seen that sin is a deep-seated infection of human nature. It lies at the root of our personality. It controls our ego. In fact, sin is self. And all the sins we commit are assertions of the self against either God or other people. The Ten Commandments, although a series of negative prohibitions, set out our duty to God and to others. This is made even clearer in the positive summary of God’s law which Jesus made when he linked a verse from Leviticus (19:18) to a verse in Deuteronomy (6:5): ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbour as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.’
It is important to notice that the first commandment concerns our duty to God, and not our duty to other people. We are to love God first; and then we are to love our neighbour as ourselves. So God’s order is that we put him first, others next, self last. Sin is the reversal of the order. It is to put ourselves first, our neighbour next, and God somewhere in the background. Peter Ustinov, who wrote his autobiography and entitled it Dear Me was simply giving expression to what we all think of ourselves. When the ice cream is brought into the children’s party, the cry goes up, ‘Me first!’ As we grow up, we learn not to say that kind of thing; but we still think it. William Temple’s way of describing original sin expresses this truth perfectly:
I am the centre of the world I see; where the horizon is depends on where I stand...Education may make my self-centredness less disastrous by widening my horizon of interest; so far it is like climbing a tower, which widens the horizon for physical vision, while leaving me still the centre and standard of reference.
This basic self-centredness affects all our behaviour. We do not find it easy to adjust to other people. We tend either to despise them or to envy them, either to feel superior or to consider ourselves inferior. We rarely think of ourselves with the ‘sober judgment’ which Paul urged upon his readers. Sometimes we are full of inappropriate self-pity, at other times of self-esteem, self-will or self-love.
All the relationships of life are complicated – parents and children, husband and wife, employer and employed. There are many reasons for society’s problems with the younger generation, and much is due to lack of security in the home; but the fact is that unruly young people are (for whatever reason) asserting themselves against society. Hundreds of divorces could be prevented if people were humble enough to blame themselves more than their partner. Whenever couples have been to see me because their marriage was under threat, I have noticed that each tells a different story - a story sometimes so different that one would not guess they were describing the same situation.
Most quarrels are due to a misunderstanding, and the misunderstanding is due to our failure to appreciate the other person’s point of view. It is more natural to us to talk than to listen, to argue than to submit. This is true in industrial disputes as much as in domestic quarrels. Many conflicts in the world of employment could be resolved if both sides first examined themselves critically and then examined the other side charitably, rather than our normal practice of being charitable to ourselves and critical of others. The same could be said of complex international unrest. The tensions of today are due largely to fear and foolishness. Our outlook is one-sided. We exaggerate the virtues in ourselves and the vices in others.
It is sadly all too easy to write in this way about social relationships today. The only reason for doing so is to show how human sin or self-centredness is the cause of all our troubles. This is what brings us into conflict with each other. If only the spirit of self-assertion could be replaced by the spirit of self-sacrifice, our conflicts would cease. And self-sacrifice is what the Bible means by ‘love’. While sin draws in to itself, love spends itself for others. The characteristic of sin is the desire to get; the characteristic of love is the desire to give.
Love ever gives,
Forgives, outlives,
And ever stands with open hands,
And while it lives it gives.
For this is love’s prerogative,
To give – and give – and give.
What man needs is a radical change of nature, what Professor H. M. Gwatkin called ‘a change from self to unself’. We cannot do this for ourselves any more than patients needing surgery can perform their own operations. Again, we need a Saviour.
Writing about sin like this has only one purpose. It is to convince us of our need of Jesus Christ, and to help us understand and accept what he offers. Faith is born out of need. We shall never put our trust in Christ until we have first despaired of ourselves. As he himself said, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’ Only when we have realized and faced up to the seriousness of what we are suffering from will we admit our urgent need for a cure.