These, then, are the four classes whom Jesus warns, and it is clear from the consideration of them that his view of sin is very different from those current in that day. Men set sin down as an external thing that drifted on to one like a floating burr—or like paint, perhaps—it could be picked off or burnt off. It was the eating of pork or hare—something technical or accidental; or it was, many thought, the work of a demon from without, who could be driven out to whence he came. Love and drunkenness illustrated the thing for them—a change of personality induced by an exterior force or object, as if the human spirit were a glass or a cup into which anything might be poured, and from which it could be emptied and the vessel itself remain unaffected. Jesus has a deeper view of sin, a stronger psychology, than these, nor does he, like some quick thinkers of to-day, put sin down to a man's environment, as if certain surroundings inevitably meant sin. Jesus is quite definite that sin is nothing accidental—it is involved in a man's own nature, in his choice, it comes from the heart, and it speaks of a heart that is wrong. When we survey the four groups, it comes to one central question at last: Has a man been in earnest with himself about God's dealings with him? Hardness and lust make a man play the fool with human souls whom God loves and cares for—a declaration of war on God himself. Wilful self-deception about God needs no comment; to shilly-shally and let decision slide, where God is concerned, is atheism too. In a word, what is a man's fundamental attitude to God and God's facts? That is Jesus' question. Sin is tracked home to the innermost and most essential part of the man—his will. It is no outward thing, it is inward. It is not that evil befalls us, but that we are evil. In the words of Edward Caird, "the passion that misleads us is a manifestation of the same ego, the same self-conscious reason which is misled by it," and thus, as Burns puts it, "it is the very 'light from heaven' that leads us astray." The man uses his highest God-given faculties, and uses them against God.
But this is not all. Many people will agree with the estimate of Jesus, when they understand it, in regard to most of these classes; perhaps they would urge that in the main it is substantially the same teaching as John the Baptist's, though it implies, as we shall see, a more difficult problem in getting rid of sin. Jesus goes further. He holds up to men standards of conduct which transcend anything yet put before mankind. "Be ye therefore perfect," he says, "even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Matt. 5:48). When we recall what Jesus teaches of God, when we begin to try to give to "God" the content he intended, we realize with amazement what he is saying. He is holding up to men for their ideal of conduct the standard of God's holiness, of God's love and tenderness. Everything that Jesus tells us of God—all that he has to say of the wonderful and incredible love of God and of God's activity on behalf of his children—he now incorporates in the ideal of conduct to which men are called. John's conceptions of righteousness grow beggarly. Here is a royal magnificence of active love, of energetic sympathy, tenderness, and self-giving, asked of us, who find it hard enough to keep the simplest commandments from our youth up (Mark 10:20). We are to love our enemies, to win them, to make peace, to be pure—and all on the scale of God. And that this may not seem mere talk in the air, there is the character and personality of Jesus, embodying all he asks of us—bringing out new wonders of God's goodness, the ugliness and evil of sin, and the positive and redemptive beauty of righteousness.
The problem of sin and forgiveness becomes more difficult, as we think of the positive ideals which we have not begun to try to reach. Let us sum up what it involves.
Jesus brings out the utter bankruptcy to which sin reduces men. They become "full of hypocrisy and lawlessness" (Matt. 23:28), so depraved that they are like bad trees, unproductive of any but bad fruit (rotten, in the Greek, Matt. 7:17); the very light in them is darkness, and how great darkness (Matt. 6:23). They are cut off from the real world, as we saw, and lose the faculties they have abused—the talent is taken away (Matt. 25:28); "from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that which he hath" (Matt. 25:29). The nature is changed as memory is changed, and the "overflow of the heart" in speech and act bears witness to it. The faculty of choice is weakened; the interval in which inhibition—to use our modern term—is possible, grows shorter. The instincts are perverted and the whole being is disorganized. In a word, all that Jesus connotes by "the Kingdom of God" is "taken from them" (Matt. 21:43), and nothing left but "outer darkness" (Matt. 22:13). The vision of God is not for the impure (Matt. 5:8). Meanwhile sin is not a sterile thing, it is a leaven (Matt. 16:6). If our modern medical language may be applied—and Jesus used the analogy of medicine in this very case (Mark 2:17)—sin is septic. In the first place, all sin is anti-social—an invasion "ipso facto" of the rights of others. The man who sins either takes away what is another's—a man's goods, a widow's house, or a woman's purity—or he fails to give to others what is their due, be it, in the obvious field, the aid the Good Samaritan rendered to the wounded and robbed man by the roadside (Luke 10:33), or, in the higher sphere, truth, sympathy, help in the maintenance of principle, or in the achievement of progress and development (cf. Matt. 25:43). Sin is the repudiation of the concepts of law, duty, and service, in a word, of the love on God's scale which God calls men to exercise. And its fruits are, above all, its dissemination. Injustice, a historian has said, always repays itself with frightful compound interest. If a man starts to debauch society, his example is quickly followed; and it comes to hatred.
What, we asked, did Jesus mean by "lost"? This, above all, that sin cuts a man adrift from God. In the parable of the Prodigal Son this is brought out (Luke 15:11-32). There the youth took from his father all he could get, and then deliberately turned his back on him forever; he went into a far country, out of his reach, outside his influence, and beyond the range of his ideas, and he devoted his father's gifts to precisely what would sadden and trouble his father most. And then came bankruptcy, final and hopeless. There was no father available in the far country; he had to live without him, and it came to a life that was not even human—a life of solitude, a life of beasts. Jesus draws it, as he does most things, in picture form, using parable. Paul puts the same in directer language; sin reduces men to a position where they are "alienated from the life of God" (Eph. 4:18; Col. 1:21), "without God in the world" (Eph. 2:12), "enemies of God" (Rom. 5:10; Col. 1:21); but he does not say more than Jesus implies. Paul's final expression, "God gave them up" (thrice in Rom. 1:24, 26, 28), answers to the Judge's word, in Jesus' picture, "Depart from me" (Matt. 25:41).
O Wedding-guest, this soul hath been
Alone on a wide, wide sea:
So lonely 'twas, that God himself
Scarce seeméd there to be.
So Jesus handles the problem of sin, but that is only half the story, for there remains the problem of Redemption. The treatment of sin is far profounder and truer than John the Baptist or any other teacher has achieved; and it implies that Jesus will handle Redemption in a way no less profound and effective. If he does not, then he had better not have preached a gospel. If, in dealing with sin, he touches reality at every point, we may expect him in the matter of Redemption to reach the very centre of life.[30] How else can he, with his serious view of sin, say to a man, "Thy sins are forgiven thee"? (Mark 2:5). But it is quite clear from our records that, while Jesus laid bare in this relentless way the ugliness and hopelessness of sin, he did not despair: his tone is always one of hope and confidence. The strong man armed may find a stronger man come upon him and take from him the panoply in which he trusted (Luke 11:21, 22). There is a great gulf that cannot be crossed (Luke 16:26)—yes, but if the experience of Christendom tells us anything, it tells us that Jesus crossed it himself, and did the impossible. "The great matter is that Jesus believed God was willing to take the human soul, and make it new and young and clean again." But the human soul did not believe it, till Jesus convinced it, and won it, by action of his own. "The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost"; and he did not come in vain.
CHAPTER VIII
THE CHOICE OF THE CROSS
By what they said, I perceived that he had been a great warrior, and had fought with and slain him that had the power of death (Hebrews 2:14), but not without great danger to himself, which made me love him the more—"Pilgrims Progress", Part I