Sin. “For the wages of sin is death.” One of the biblical definitions of the word ‘sin’ is ‘offense.’ Anything less than perfect obedience to God is an offense. To sin is to offend God by falling short of his holy law. We all fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3.23.) The wages for our offense is death; but ‘the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ Far from falling short, we no longer aim to obey God, do we? But we seldom call our shortfall ‘sin.’ This word ‘sin’ has become an unacceptable word in our society. The more wickedness is done and encouraged, the less mention is there of wickedness being sinful. Abiding sin has made us hate the word ‘sin.’ Our society scoffs at the mention of something as ‘sin.’ But should something that we are condemned to hell for doing be something to scoff at? The reason for the scoffing is that we wish to live in denial of what we permit ourselves to wallow in day after day. Sin is tolerated, while being held responsible for it is unpopular. Righteousness makes us uncomfortable because righteousness is a light that points out the darkness of sin. The next time you see something wrong being done, yell out the word ‘sinner’ and then observe the reaction. It is a myth that people are dumb to the word ‘sin.’ They know that it means an accusation of guilt. This is why they hate hearing the word brought up. Compare how indifferent people are to cursing, to how terrified they are of praying, in a public place. Terrified faces show a horror of holiness and righteousness. When a young woman took a man aside in the mall in order to pray for his soul, I stood back and watched the reactions. Bystanders were visibly uncomfortable at what they saw and heard. Who else but guilty sinners can curse God thoughtlessly one minute, and in the next be embarrassed by, or insulted at, God being prayed to?
When confronted with reverence to a holy God that he is at odds with, the sinner turns away in disgust. This world is dark and mean and lewd. These are the days when, “The wicked walk on every side, when the vilest men are exalted” (Psalm 12.8.) Our heroes consist of entertainers, villains, and cheaters. Man pays tribute only to what feeds his lust, pride, and greed. Most songs are about fornication, adultery, and violence. Movies are degenerate. Professional sports are corrupt. And if celebrities are wicked, and if they are nevertheless admired, then the vilest men are indeed exalted among us. They are idols, and are even spoken of that way. These are the days when evil is called good while good is called evil (Isaiah 5.20.) Virginity is laughed at while promiscuity is praised. Serious literature is shunned while trashy books fly off the shelves. So far are we from acknowledging sin that we have been inventing euphemisms to make allowances for vicious behaviors. A young hulking thug, for example, who stomped his teacher almost to death because she took his digital game away, was said to be suffering from ‘Oppositional Defiance Disorder’ and ‘Reactive Explosive Disorder.’ He had been detained, before this, not in a prison or asylum, but in an ‘Intensive Behavior Group Home.’ When sin is no more sin, pretty soon crime is no more crime; and then law-abiding citizens are targeted by both brutal ruffians and their political abettors, which is persecution of the best persons among us by a combination of anarchy and tyranny. The Western world has been stabbing itself for a long time now; it’s finally slitting its throat. ‘Oppositional Defiance Disorder’ and ‘Reactive Explosive Disorder,’ by the way, are dreamed up diseases that make drug manufacturers a lot of money.
What will the end of these things be? We are going backwards nationally and running after hell individually. Each man must come to the end of his life on earth; and each one must begin his future in another world. For sinners who will never repent, the sooner their life on earth ends, the better it will be for them in hell. “Sinners are little sensible that hellfire grows hotter every day they live in sin; by their sins, they increase the heat of that furnace more than the heat of Nebuchadnezzar’s was increased for the three children. If they go on in sin therefore till they die, it is no advantage to ‘em to live long; the sooner they die the better for them. If they should live twenty years longer and then die in sin, it would be a great Calamity to them that they lived so long” (Jonathan Edwards, Unless You Repent, p. 79.) This might seem like risky preaching. But it’s the preaching of truth. Sinners want to live long; but this means a worse experience in hell unless they repent in time. In this present age of weak minds and faint hearts it should be said that suicide would not be a good solution because this would make one’s hell begin sooner than necessary. Each day out of hell is worth a world of kingdoms; each day out of hell is an opportunity to learn how to avoid going there; each day out of hell is a blessing forever lost to any who are in hell already. Suicide, furthermore, is murder; and murder, even of oneself, is just another way of turning hell’s temperature up. Living long, in any case, without repenting, occasions and ensures the accumulation of wrath to oneself.
An Englishman by the name of Tom Parr is reputed to have lived to the age of 152. His years are 1483-1635. Such longevity in a man is outstanding in the comparatively recent past. There was another Englishman by the name of Henry Jenkins who eclipsed even Tom Parr. His years are 1500-1670. “There were also four or five in the same parish that were reputed all of them to be 100 years old or within 2 or 3 years of it, and they all said he was an elderly man ever since they knew him” (Anthony Cumby, Evidences of the Great Age of Henry Jenkins, p.6.) Henry Jenkins’ great age was so believed to have been authenticated that a mural of black marble was fashioned in his honor to preserve the knowledge that he had lived so long on the earth. The inscription reads: “Blush not marble/to rescue from oblivion/the memory of/HENRY JENKINS/a Person obscure in birth/But of a Life truly memorable/for/He was enriched/with the goods of nature/if not of fortune/and happy/in the duration/if not variety/ of his Enjoyments/and/tho the partial world/despised or disregarded/his low and humble state/The Equal Eye of Providence/beheld and blessed it/with a Patriarch’s Health and Length of days/to teach mistaken man/these blessings were Entailed on Temperance/Or a life of Labour and a mind at Ease/He lived to the amazing age of/169/was interred here Dec. 6/1670/and had this justice done to his memory/1743” (Ibid., pp. 10, 11.) Well, congratulations to Henry Jenkins. But at last, even for him: Gutta cavat lapidem. (The drop wears away the stone.)
We tend to admire men who live to a hundred years of age or more; and it is our duty to live as long as we can because life on earth is a gift of God. But unless aged patriarchs and elderly matriarchs are reconciled to God before they die, they have done nothing more than store up more punishment to receive at the day of God’s wrath. Man stores up punishment by living long or sinning big. To bring so many men to greater punishment, God withdraws his restraining grace; and, sinking deeper into sin, these men go on to commit dishonorable deeds of the grossest kind, like sodomy (Romans 1.27), a sin so wicked that it is rarely forgiven because seldom repented of. To meet a Christian who was once a homosexual is a rare thing; it is so rare that it might be called a phenomenon. The acceptance and normalization of homosexuality is the measure of how filthy a nation’s character is, and of how far from God that people have distanced themselves. A people so flagrant, and that so readily dismiss God’s natural order, are eventually given over to a swarm of hostile behaviors, which are delineated in Romans 1.28-32. Are the USA and Canada not nations full of people who are ‘filled with all unrighteousness’? Most of us do not commit homosexual acts; but multitudes of us celebrate that lifestyle; and almost everyone else defends its ‘right’ to flaunt and strut. What mayor disallows a pride parade? Does irreverence and unrighteousness not characterize North America and Europe? We should never mind how evil the rest of the world is until we have studied history to learn how far toward hell the Western world has fallen. Then we might wake up before we are taken over by violent migrants from third world countries.
Have we not been delighting in wickedness progressively since at least the year 1900? Sin is part of us. We think about it; we talk about it; we act out our offensive conversations and thoughts; we even celebrate sinners who commit the vilest abominations. We ‘have pleasure in them that do them’ (Romans 1.32.) The end of all this countenancing of sin is the future death, not only of body, but of body and soul in ‘the second death.’ This must be the destiny of all sinners who refuse to repent. The consequence of continuing in our despicable condition is the second death, the death with no end to it in a fire that will never be extinguished. Therefore the wretchedness of an impenitent, unredeemed sinner cannot be overstated.
