(a) In proportion to his spiritual progress does the Christian recognize evil dispositions within him, which but for divine grace might germinate and bring forth the most various forms of outward transgression.
See Goodwin's experience, in Baird, Elohim Revealed, 409; Goodwin, member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, speaking of his conversion, says: “An abundant discovery was made to me of my inward lusts and concupiscence, and I was amazed to see with what greediness I had sought the gratification of every sin.” Töllner's experience, in Martensen's Dogmatics: Töllner, though inclined to Pelagianism, says: “I look into my own heart and I see with penitent sorrow that I must in God's sight accuse myself of all the offences I have named,”—and he had named only deliberate transgressions;—“he who does not allow that he is similarly guilty, let him look deep into his own heart.” John Newton sees the murderer led to execution, and says: “There, but for the grace of God, goes John Newton.” Count de Maistre: “I do not know what the heart of a villain may be—I only know that of a virtuous man, and that is frightful.”Tholuck, on the fiftieth anniversary of his professorship at Halle, said to his students: “In review of God's manifold blessings, the thing I seem most to thank him for is the conviction of sin.”
Roper Ascham: “By experience we find out a short way, by a long wandering.” Luke 15:25-32 is sometimes referred to as indicating that there are some of God's children who never wander from the Father's house. But there were two prodigals in that family. The elder was a servant in spirit as well as the younger. J. J. Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 41, 42—“In the wish of the elder son that he might sometimes feast with his own friends apart from his father, was contained the germ of that desire to escape the wholesome restraints of home which, in its full development, had brought his brother first to riotous living, and afterwards to the service of the stranger and the herding of swine. This root of sin is in us all, but in him it was not so full-grown as to bring death. Yet he says: ‘Lo, these many years do I serve thee’ (δουλεύω—as a bondservant), ‘and I never transgressed a commandment of thine.’ Are the father's commandments grievous? Is service true and sincere, without love from the heart? The elder brother was calculating toward his father and unsympathetic toward his brother.” Sir J. R. Seelye, Ecce Homo: “No virtue can be safe, unless it is enthusiastic.” Wordsworth: “Heaven rejects the love Of nicely calculated less or more.”
(b) Since those most enlightened by the Holy Spirit recognize themselves as guilty of unnumbered violations of the divine law, the absence of any consciousness of sin on the part of unregenerate men must be regarded as proof that they are blinded by persistent transgression.
It is a remarkable fact that, while those who are enlightened by the Holy Spirit and who are actually overcoming their sins see more and more of the evil of their hearts and lives, those who are the slaves of sin see less and less of that evil, and often deny that they are sinners at all. Rousseau, in his Confessions, confesses sin in a spirit which itself needs to be confessed. He glosses over his vices, and magnifies his virtues. “No [pg 577]man,” he says, “can come to the throne of God and say: ‘I am a better man than Rousseau.’... Let the trumpet of the last judgment sound when it will: I will present myself before the Sovereign Judge with this book in my hand, and I will say aloud: ‘Here is what I did, what I thought, and what I was.’ ” “Ah,” said he, just before he expired, “how happy a thing it is to die, when one has no reason for remorse or self-reproach!”And then, addressing himself to the Almighty, he said: “Eternal Being, the soul that I am going to give thee back is as pure at this moment as it was when it proceeded from thee; render it a partaker of thy felicity!” Yet, in his boyhood, Rousseau was a petty thief. In his writings, he advocated adultery and suicide. He lived for more than twenty years in practical licentiousness. His children, most of whom, if not all, were illegitimate, he sent off to the foundling hospital as soon as they were born, thus casting them upon the charity of strangers, yet he inflamed the mothers of France with his eloquent appeals to them to nurse their own babies. He was mean, vacillating, treacherous, hypocritical, and blasphemous. And in his Confessions, he rehearses the exciting scenes of his life in the spirit of the bold adventurer. See N. M. Williams, in Bap. Review, art.: Rousseau, from which the substance of the above is taken.
Edwin Forrest, when accused of being converted in a religious revival, wrote an indignant denial to the public press, saying that he had nothing to regret; his sins were those of omission rather than commission; he had always acted upon the principle of loving his friends and hating his enemies; and trusting in the justice as well as the mercy of God, he hoped, when he left this earthly sphere, to “wrap the drapery of his couch about him, and lie down to pleasant dreams.” And yet no man of his time was more arrogant, self-sufficient, licentious, revengeful. John Y. McCane, when sentenced to Sing Sing prison for six years for violating the election laws by the most highhanded bribery and ballot-stuffing, declared that he had never done anything wrong in his life. He was a Sunday School Superintendent, moreover. A lady who lived to the age of 92, protested that, if she had her whole life to live over again, she would not alter a single thing. Lord Nelson, after he had received his death wound at Trafalgar, said: “I have never been a great sinner.” Yet at that very time he was living in open adultery. Tennyson, Sea Dreams: “With all his conscience and one eye askew, So false, he partly took himself for true.” Contrast the utterance of the apostle Paul: 1 Tim. 1:15—“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.” It has been well said that “the greatest of sins is to be conscious of none.” Rowland Hill: “The devil makes little of sin, that he may retain the sinner.”
The following reasons may be suggested for men's unconsciousness of their sins: 1. We never know the force of any evil passion or principle within us, until we begin to resist it. 2. God's providential restraints upon sin have hitherto prevented its full development. 3. God's judgments against sin have not yet been made manifest. 4. Sin itself has a blinding influence upon the mind. 5. Only he who has been saved from the penalty of sin is willing to look into the abyss from which he has been rescued.—That a man is unconscious of any sin is therefore only proof that he is a great and hardened transgressor. This is also the most hopeless feature of his case, since for one who never realizes his sin there is no salvation. In the light of this truth, we see the amazing grace of God, not only in the gift of Christ to die for sinners, but in the gift of the Holy Spirit to convince men of their sins and to lead them to accept the Savior. Ps. 90:8—“Thou hast set ... Our secret sins in the light of thy countenance” = man's inner sinfulness is hidden from himself, until it is contrasted with the holiness of God. Light = a luminary or sun, which shines down into the depths of the heart and brings out its hidden evil into painful relief. See Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:248-259; Edwards, Works, 2:326; John Caird, Reasons for Men's Unconsciousness of their Sins, in Sermons, 33.
II. Every member of the human race, without exception, possesses a corrupted nature, which is a source of actual sin, and is itself sin.
1. Proof from Scripture.