Chapter IV: The Effects of Actual Sins, § 17.
CHAPTER IV: ON THE EFFECTS OF ACTUAL SINS
§ 17. There are various effects of actual sins: (I) The grief of conscience. In Gen. 3:10, Adam heard the voice of God after the fall and was afraid. Clearly, a fatal grief follows every wicked deed. Chrysostom (on 1 Timothy 1): “Sin has this sort of nature: before it is perpetrated, it has desirability; but when it has been committed, the desire ceases and gradually disappears, but immediately a great remorse and sadness enter.” Chrysostom again (on Genesis, homily 64): “As when a drunken person guzzles much wine and feels no loss from the wine, but afterward feels how much damage there is, so also, when sin is being committed, it darkens and corrupts the mind as if with a dense cloud. Then the conscience revolts and gravely gnaws at the mind like an accuser and points out the stupidity of the act.”
There is a memorable example in Dio [Cassius] in his life of Nero [Vita Neronis], who, fleeing after his mother was killed, trembled at everything, [even] if a cat would meow a little or a hen cluck or a shrub move.
(II) The wrath of God. The Prayer of Manasseh, v. 5: “The wrath which You threaten over sinners is intolerable.”
(III) A curvature, obliquity, and filthiness of the soul. For as a man who turns his face away from the sun remains turned away until he again turns his face toward the same sun, and as a finger deliberately bent retains that curvature until it is again straightened by a contrary action, so also the will which departs from God through an act of sin remains in that departure until it again comes back to God through repentance.
(IV) Guilt, which some claim is of two kinds: the guilt of fault (which is the worthiness of hatred, the unworthiness of grace, and the merit of punishment) and the guilt of punishment (which is the arrangement of or obligation of punishment). For even though a corrupt action may pass after it has been committed, yet the iniquity of the deed remains in the sight of God, is carefully observed, and is written in a book, so to speak. Hence the sighs of the devout: “No more remember my iniquities; erase my sins,” etc. [cf. Ps. 25:7; 51:1].
(V) Vicious habits inclining toward other sins. For sin is fertile, and where it begins, there it does not stop. John 8:34: “Whoever sins becomes a slave to sin.”
(VI) Temporal and eternal punishments of all kinds. One never leaves a former crime but punishment comes limping after.1 Thomas ([ST,] 1.2., q. 82, art. 1):
Because sin is a disordered act, it is obvious that whoever sins acts contrary to an order, and thus the consequence is that one is pushed away from the order itself, and the pushing away is the punishment. Whence according to the three orders to which the human will is subject, man can be punished with three punishments. (1) Human nature is subject to the order of its own reason; (2) to the order of the governing, exterior man; (3) to the universal order of divine governance. But each of these orders is perverted by sin, and thus man incurs threefold punishment: one from himself, which is the prick of conscience; the second, from man; and the third, from God.
The accidental effects.
§ 18. Sins, through accident, cause a person to be more cautious when repentance occurs, and they commend the mercy of God toward us. Rom. 5:20: “Where sin abounds, there grace is more abundant.” Rom. 8:28: “All things work together for good to them that love God.” Here the Glossa [ordinaria] adds: “even sins themselves.” Dr. Luther (commentary on Genesis 20): “Not only do passive evils which are imposed upon us turn into good, but even the active ones which we ourselves do.”2 He has taken this from the ancients. Augustine (Soliloq., ch. 28): “For the elect, all things, even sins themselves, work together for good, not by their nature but by the virtue and wisdom of God.” This is something that Chrysostom proves with the example of the physician “whose skill makes medicine out of poison.”
Others use this parallel: as fields are enriched and fertilized by manure, which in itself is disgustingly filthy, so also, out of the limitless grace of God, our sins become salutary to those who recognize their filthiness and become more humble and cautious. Lactantius ([Div. inst.,] bk. 6, ch. 24): “Also, when dumb animals are caught by trickery, if in some way they free themselves and take flight, they later become more cautious and always avoid all the things in which they sense tricks and traps. In the same way, penitence makes a person cautious and careful to avoid sins into which he once fell by deceit.”
Anselm (De mensur. crucis): “The goodness of God knows how to use our evils for good, for it often causes our defects to be profitable for the increase of humility, so that it may be true that the righteous man falls seven times a day and rises up stronger [cf. Prov. 24:16].” Savonarola (on Psalm 31): “Does not the apostle write: ‘All things work together for those who love God’ [Rom. 8:28]? Does not the misfortune through which they become more humble and more cautious work together for their good?” Here the wellknown statement of Gregory pertains: “God often corrects the hidden pride of the mind through an obvious destruction of the flesh”; and these words of his: “O happy fault, which merited so great a Redeemer!”3 This certainly must be understood as an accidental effect of sin. In respect to the proper effect of sin, it is more rightly said, “O wretched fault, which has made us unworthy of so great a Redeemer!”
1 Horace, Odes 3.2.31–32 (LCL 33 [1999], p. 176).
2 Cf. Lectures on Genesis (1535–45/1544–54), AE 3:334 (WA 43:115).
3 This is a reference to the “Exsultet” of the Easter Vigil liturgy, part of which reads: “O marvelous dignity of Your kindness toward us! O inestimable love of charity: to redeem a slave, You handed over Your Son. O certainly necessary sin of Adam, which was wiped out by Christ’s death! O happy fault, which merited having such and so great a Redeemer!” See Missale Gothicum, CCSL 159D, p. 438, lines 27–31; Philip H. Pfatteicher, Commentary on the Lutheran Book of Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1990), 269.