RELIGIOUS WORLD.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIV, Issue 177, 26 July 1913, Page 14

RELIGIOUS WORLD.

WKB. "WAGES or SIN. (By REV. WM. BEATTV. M.A.) Roman, vL ,>::._- For the wages of sin is death: but the gift of God i* eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lird." The Epistles and Gospels for the Sundays artcr Trinity have taught us that since (rod is love, and we are His children made in Hi, image and likeness. We are bound to obey the law of love to renounce and resist (l, e | aw of S elfi_, ness . I hey have shown us that if the love of God is dwelling in and possessing our hearts, it will bring forth in us good and wholesome affections and tempers of mind which will infiuencc our dealings and intercourse with our fellow-men The Epistle for this dav impresses upon us the great truth that the law of love is a law of life, the law of selftshuess is a law of death. The Romans to whom St Paul wrote had f„ uril ] . DV sad and shameful experience that the law of selfishness and .self-indulgence was a law of death. Thev had yielded their members' servants to tindeanness, and to iniquity issuing in fresh iniquity They had found that when they were the handservants of sin thev were rebels against, the wholesome and blessed law of righteousness. They had gathered no fruits, or fruits that.'were poisonous, from the tempers and prac-1 tices of which they were now ashamed. They had made the awful discovery that the end of those things was death. The' Gospel of Christ had revealed to them in their depravity and wretchedness that Christ had redeemed them from servitude to sin and enabled them to serve God. The fruit of that service they had found to 'be holiness, purity o"f apirit and body, of thought and 'wordi and act. and the end of it. that to which it tended and led—eternal life. The apostle then sums up the whole matter in this brief and pregnant statement! "The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our T-ord." Now. people often think and say that if we believe what is irue. and do what is right. God will reward us hereafter; if we do not believe, and if we do what is wrong. Co,] will punish us hereafter. Now. this way of putting things is radically different from the teaching of Scripture here and also elsewhere. St. Paul, you will_ noticedoes not speak of punishment, but of wages: does not speak of reward, hut of a gift; does not speak of what will be done hereafter, but of what is taking place now. Wages is the just and proper payment for service, the rendering to us of what we have worked for and earned. And the payment follows close on tbe performance of the work—is nni postponed to some distant, nn d uncertain date. So long as the Romans had been the servants of sin, they had actually "been receiving the wages of dee.!],. For death in iis highest, deeprs; . truest, most awful sense is not the death of the mortal body. but the separation of the spirit from God who is life. At the very beginning of the "Bible we are told that God said to Adam. In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. Adam did eat. and, unless God's words were vain and emptv and misleading, he did die. Choosing to be independent and self-willed, be "cut himself off from the free and open fellowship, communiin. intercourse that he had enjoyed with God. ami sank into a stale of darkness, isolation, a-nd soli tmle. which vvas spiritual death. And 6n sit the very outset of the divine revelation we are taught most simplv and practically what the death is which we have to dread. a nd from whicli Christ died and rose again to save us. In the parable of the prodigal son our Lord makes the father say: -This my -on was dead and is alive again: he was lost, and is found." We can be spiritually dead and spiritually lost in this world as well as in another. There is not the slightest justification to be found in Scripture for the notion that the departed are dead or lost in any other sense than that in which we may be dead and lost while on earth. If we realise this, it would clear away from our minds a cloud of notions and fancies which darken and bewilder and confuse them, and which at one time make us prone to presumptuous dogmatism and inhuman judgment, at another time drive us to despair. Again and again- the apostles speak of men being dead in trespasses and sins, of having passed from death nnto life. Death, then, in its true and original sense, is not the death of the body, the deliverance from the burden of the flesh, the putting ou of incorruption and immortality; it is separation from God, imprisonment in the dark and dismal and dreary and noisome dungeon of our own selfishness, self-will, selfabsorption, the arrest and paralysis of those affections, emotions. energies, which find their due and rightful exercise and employment in fellowship with God aud man. Imagine a man utrerlv loveless, hopeless, faithless, joyless, pitiless, restless, heartless: would not his manhood be dead even while his bodv lived and moved and worked and ate? And the natural and necessary effect of 6erving sin and self instead of serving God is to produce such a condition in greater or less degree. Xow. surelv it is a far more solemn and awful message that we may day by day be killing our manhood by indulging in sins of the flesh, in sins of the spirit, in worldly ssins. than that at some vague and uncertain time in the future, in some unknown region, tied will punish us by torments which stand in no relation and bear no proportion to our offences. The one is a present and undeniable fact; the other a remote and speculative risk. which we are all gamblers enough to bc ready to take for the sake of present pleasure or present gain. The wages of sin is death. We should have known that without the Bible. It is written large on the history of the world, receiving tremendous continuation from the decay of one empire, nation, race, after another. It is brought home to each of us as a truth by every day's exexperience. What we could not have known without the Bible is that man is not doomed by liard necessity to reap the wages of death for the service of sin. thai we are not tied a.nd bound by an iron chain of inevitable cause and effect. . There is a power within us dragging us down to death, but there is a power within lis raising us up "to life. The words —as in the Adam, the sinful fleshly man—all are dying, even so iu the Christ —the,divine and heavenlv man —shall all be made alive, are true of our spirits, "our minds, oar affections, as well as of our bodies. In •ihe death of the Son of Man we and all mankind died to sin, were freed from its dominion; in the. resurrection of tbe bon of Man we and all mankind rose I fSz'n unto righteousness, and so were justified before G ':!. r; : ,t for our merits, f.. -':,- i-rri!,. , the perfect and ■who iv i:"'' ■' ' ' • -^ in 5 ireeg::: ' "'-' £ ou "*

of a justification which we could never have deserved, follows the free gift of eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord, who is the life of each one of us. because He is the life of the world. This is the sure ground for trust, for hope, for courageous resistance of temptation, for patient striving after good.- Sin is not our master: if we serve sin. we renounce the freedom which Christ has won for us. and take on us a yoke from which He has delivered us; we oppose Ood's will -and purpose, we seek our own loss and misery. If we live as those in whom Christ dwells as the source a-nd spring of life, who are joined to Him as the limb to the body. the branch to the vine, if we yield to His mighty inward working, surrendering our wills to His. then we receive in ever-increasing abundance the free gift of eternal life; are made partakers in our measure of the life of love, truth, righteousness, goodness, mercy, joy. and "blis-s which the Eternal Father lives with the Son in the unity of the Holy Ghost. '"This is life eternal.*' says He who ante and died to bestow it. on all flesh—"that they might know Thee, the only true <rt>d. and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." We can have this saving, life-giving knowledge now by faith, and. after this life, have the fruition of _is glorious Godhead. This is not some vague superstition of individual rewards in the futnrc—it is the hope which the Gospel sets before each of us and'before all mankind.