I. God’s sensibility to human sin. God is unchangeable; with Him there is no fickleness or caprice (James i. 17); this is one of the glories of His nature. But how strangely have philosophers and theologians interpreted this sublime declaration! They have presented us with a deity impassive as the stars, which shine with equal splendour upon the display of great virtues and the perpetration of hideous crimes, calm, serene, undisturbed by anything that takes place on earth. Not such is the God of the Bible. He thrills with intensest emotions of delight or of disapprobation, of joy or of sorrow (Jer. ix. 24; Nahum i. 6; Zeph. iii. 17; Gen. iii. 6). Let philosophers call these “anthropomorphic representations” if they will, but words have no meaning if such declarations do not teach that God is stirred by emotions which are determined by the character and conduct of men. He is no cast-iron deity: He is “the living God.” Sin is hateful to Him, because 1. It is an infraction of that order which He has established for the moral well-being of the universe. As the Sovereign of the universe, He is bound to resent and to punish any injury done to the meanest of His subjects.[1] 2. It is a defiance of His authority. Every sinner is a rebel against the authority of the King of kings; and that king would be unworthy of his crown who could see his authority defied without feeling any emotion of displeasure, or without taking steps to vindicate his authority. It was precisely this selfish and pusillanimous weakness that made our Stephen despised and hated by his subjects. With God there is longsuffering and tender mercy, but there is no weakness. Sin is more than a defiance of God’s authority; it is—3. An offence against His feelings. It is contrary to what we may call His instincts.[2] That which is contrary to our best instincts fills us with disgust and anger. What profound emotion is stirred in a man of generosity and benevolence by a story of oppression and wrong! e.g., the effect upon David of Nathan’s parable (2 Sam. xii. 5). Whole communities have been roused to uncontrollable indignation by a crime of unusual atrocity, even though no member of the community has been directly affected thereby. “Lynch Law.” So all sin, as sin, arouses the Divine disgust and indignation. “My soul hateth.” 4. It is a degradation of those whom God loves. We all condemn and loathe drunkenness; but who of us loathes it as does that mother who is being hurried by it to an untimely and dishonoured grave? God loves us more than any mother ever loved her son, and His hatred of sin is proportioned by His love for us whom it degrades and destroys.[3] 5. It is often a wrong inflicted on those whom He loves. Few men sin without wronging others as well as themselves. Now with what anger do we burn when we detect our children defrauding and oppressing each other! But between the sputtering of a lucifer-match and the glowing fires of a volcano, there is not so much disparity as between the anger which the spectacle of sins against brotherhood kindles in us and that which it rouses in God (Jer. ix. 9). To form any adequate conception of the offensiveness of sin to God, we must remember that these considerations do not operate singly, but operate in combination to make it hateful to Him. How marvellous, then, is His endurance of it! Consider, then—

II. God’s patience with human sin. He speaks here of being “troubled” by the worship of ungodly men; it is a burden of which He is “weary.” Why, then, does He bear it for a moment? Why, then, does He not give quick vent to the indignation that burns within Him, and consume His troubles with swift destruction? He bears with us—1. That by His patience He may appeal to our better feelings. He does us good, and not evil (Matt. v. 45), that we may be made ashamed to sin against such generosity. When men are not altogether hardened in iniquity, there is nothing so likely to overcome them as a requital of wrongs by blessing,[4] especially where he who so requites it has full power to avenge himself. By His long-suffering, God has led countless thousands to repentance. 2. That He may set us an example of self-restraint. It is because He is Himself so slow to anger, that He is able to warn us against vindictiveness. God does not only lay upon us precepts of excellence: He Himself embodies them. 3. That He may place the righteousness of his judgments beyond dispute. A space of grace and forbearance seems necessary to enable onlookers to perceive that the awful doom which at length will come upon sinners is fully deserved, and is perfectly consistent with His own mercifulness. If “Wisdom” had not “called,” reproved, counselled, “stretched out her hands” in entreaty, the stern words in which she announces the awful and irrevocable doom of her despisers would shock us (Prov. i. 20, 32). 4. That a moral probation may be rendered possible. If punishment always instantly and obviously followed transgression, the world would be ruled by terror so overwhelming that free agency would be destroyed, and virtue consequently rendered impossible. For such reasons as these, God bears with sinners, and “sentence against an evil work” is not executed speedily.

III. God’s protest against human sin. God suffers under human sin, but He does not suffer in silence: He vehemently protests against it. Two reasons should lead us to heed this protest:—1. Gratitude. He might have sent vengeance without warning. His protests and threatenings are proofs of His love. All that is noblest and best in us should lead us to give instant and thankful heed when God appeals to us, and says, “Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate!” (Jer. xliv. 4). But if sin has so debased your nature that higher considerations such as this cannot move you, then I appeal—2. to your instinct of self-preservation. God’s protest against sin is no unmeaning form: His threatenings against sin are no empty words (Prov. xxix. 1). Rightly considered, the sinner’s untroubled condition is the most awful of all warnings.[5]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The tempter persuadeth the sinner that it cannot be that God should make so great a matter of sin, because the thoughts of a man’s heart, or his words, or deeds, are matter of no great moment, when man himself is so poor a worm, and whatever he doth is no hurt to God. But if God so much regard us as to make us, and preserve us continually, and to become our Governor, and make a law for us and judge us, and reward His servants with no less than heaven; then you may easily see that He so much regardeth us, as to observe whether we obey or break His laws. He that so far careth for a clock or watch, as to make it and wind it up, doth care whether it go true or false. What do these men make of God, who think He cares now what men do! Then He cares not if man beat you, or rob you, or kill you, for none of this hurteth God. And the king may say, “If any murder your friends and children, why should I punish him? he hurt not me.” But justice is to keep order in the world, and not only to preserve the governor from hurt: God may not be wronged, though He be not hurt. And He will make you pay for it, if you hurt others; and smart for it, if you hurt yourself.—Baxter, 1618–1691.

[2] Our sin is not so much a violation of a law that lies outside of the bosom of God, as it is a disregard of the feelings and nature of God Himself. You will by a moment’s reflection see that there is a marked distinction between personal feeling infringed upon and law transgressed. The magistrate sits upon the bench, and a culprit is brought before him. There are two ways in which that culprit may be considered as transgressing. He may have broken the law of the land, which the magistrate represents officially, but not personally. The magistrate regards him as a culprit, to be sure. But suppose that, in the exercise of truth and justice by a pure administration or decision, the magistrate arouses the anger of the culprit, and he insults him to his face, and in his own court; is there any difference between his former crime, which was the violation of the law of the land, and in his latter crime, which is a transgression of the feeling of the magistrate, sitting as a magistrate?

It is the same everywhere. When you employ men in your affairs, you know that there is a distinction between a disregard of the rules of business, and a personal disagreement with yourself. You know that when a man offends against you, his wrong is more heinous and provoking than when he offends against your rules or laws. We know that a child may violate the laws of morality as they are established by the Word of God and by the consent of the community; that he may violate the civil law of the land in which he dwells; that he may violate the rules and regulations of a well-ordered family; and yet, though all these courses of conduct are grievous wrongs which shock the parent, not be as culpable as when he treads on the feelings of the parent. There are exigencies in which the child flies, as it were, in the heart of the father and other, and does not so much violate their command as their living feeling; intolerable and more flagrant than simply setting aside and forgetting or transgressing a law. In other words, it is possible to break a statute; that is one kind of transgression. It is possible, also, to sin by directly infringing upon the heart and the feeling; that is another kind of transgression, and one that is considered more stinging, more intolerable, and more unforgivable than any other.

Now God and His law are one, in the sense in which we approach Him as moral beings—one in such a sense that when we offend against His moral law, we offend against His own personal feeling. He is not a magistrate for whom a system has been framed, and to the administration of which He comes under a sense of justice. He is a universal Father, administering according to His own instincts, His own tastes, His own affections, His own feelings, among His children. God’s law is God’s self, pervading the universe, and our transgression is a personal affront of God Himself. Just as when your taste, or your love, or your conscience, is violated by the direct act of another person against yourself, the offence is greater than if any exterior canon were broken; so it is when we violate the Divine commands.

This conception of God should quicken every moral sensibility, and make a life of sin painful and distasteful to us. It is one thing to sin against a government, and another thing to sin against a being. There are a great many children that will sin against the family arrangements, who would not sin against their mother. There is many a child to whom the mother says, “My dear child, you know your father has made a law in this family, that such and such things shall not be done, and you know you have broken that law three of four times; now, for my sake, avoid breaking it again.” The child feels, when the mother interposes herself, that there is something that touches him which did not when it was only a law of the family that he was setting aside.

Now, God puts Himself in just that position, and the motive of obedience and righteousness is this: that God is the tenderest, the most patient, the gentlest, and the dearest friend that we have; that He knows everything within and without; and that though we are sinful and wicked, He, in His infinite compassion and mercy, forgives us, and says, “Do not sin against me, nor against mine.”—Beecher.