30. The Sinner's Intolerance of Law

The Sinner’s Intolerance of Law

Dr. Henry Van Dyke, in his book, The Gospel for a World of Sin, quotes from the diary of Frederic Amiel, a conclusion at which every serious and honest person must arrive concerning himself. He wrote: “There is in man an instinct of revolt, an enemy of all law, a rebel which will stoop to no yoke, not even that of reason, duty and wisdom. This element in us is the root of all sin.” And John says the same thing in the words: “Sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4). But this spirit does not stop with intolerance toward God merely. It is inevitable that any will that is intolerant of God’s will, sooner or later will become intolerant of all who do His will. For reaction against God’s will must cause a similar reaction toward all who are in harmony with that will.

Christ’s life of absolute obedience to God before the Scribes and Pharisees, came to the point where it was forcing them to hate themselves. But they were so determined to prefer themselves and their manner of life to what they saw in Christ, that they had nothing else they could do but to hate Him.

Just so the sinner, in the grip of hatred of God’s will, must inevitably come to hate those who do that will. Therein lies the philosophy of persecution. And the time is certain to come, if he is not rescued from that spirit, when he will desire to annihilate all who do God’s will. So heaven can certainly never tolerate the presence of any with that spirit. But men in sin think too well of themselves to believe this, and so it has been demonstrated right here on earth, through the presence of His Son among sinners, who was not only God manifest in the flesh, but also Man obedient to the will of God. The constant emphasis Christ placed on His mission to this world was that He might do the will of God. Before He came, it had been prophesied of Him that this would be His mission, in the words: “I come to do thy will, O God” (Hebrews 10:7), and He continued to fulfill that prophecy in the sight of all men until He was received up into glory. His first recorded words were: “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” (Luke 2:49), which meant, doing His Father’s will. And when He began His public ministry and called disciples around Him, He taught them to pray to God, “Thy will be done on earth as in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). And all through His ministry that word constantly sounded forth.

He says that the words He speaks are not His but the Father’s; the works that He does are given to Him from the Father, and that He always does the things that please Him. He never did an original thing on earth, in the sense that it did not originate in His Father’s will.

Here He was, therefore, doing the will that men in sin hate, and thus bringing to light the issue that God had with men. And as He continued in this ministry, the issue became more and more sharp between Him and the Jewish leaders who, by their traditions, had made void the will of God. They first tried to discredit Him, then they went about trying to find how to get rid of Him, until at last, in their intolerance of the One who was doing God’s will on earth, they hung Him to a Roman gibbet, and banished Him as far from His own universe as they could get Him. And the spirit in which they did this showed that if they could have carried out their feelings toward Him, they would have annihilated Him. Not because He had showed them ought but love, but solely because they could not tolerate Him who was doing God’s will.

Thus there was full and final demonstration before the universe that sin is forever intolerant both of the will of God and of those who do it. And the final outcome, if sin were not hindered, would be, if such a thing were possible, the banishment of God from His universe and the annihilation of those in it who do His will. Such a spirit would destroy heaven, if it ever had access to that blessed place. A striking illustration of the spirit of intolerance toward God’s will which sin compels the sinner to take, came into the early experience of Dr. M.M. Parkhurst, whose last ministry for his Lord was in and around Chicago. As a young man, the influence of a revival meeting he was attending was such that, when his conviction of sin became almost too much to bear, he finally rose to such outrageous rebellion against God that he suddenly cried: “I’ll rot in chains in hell for a thousand years before I will so surrender my personality as to submit my will to God.” That is the spirit in every unsaved person, the degree and intensity of expression depending on circumstances. No unrepentant sinner can tolerate God’s will over him, and so it is only to be expected that God should not tolerate such a spirit in His universe.

All these things that have been said about sin are far from a complete unfolding of its nature, for in its full meaning, it is beyond telling. The utmost limit to which man can go in describing sin falls far short of the reality. Our experiences in the grip of sin help us only faintly to sense its terrible meaning and power, for we see only the earthly phases of its operation, which can only hint what its eternal meaning must be.

We have seen enough of its meaning, however, so that we can now understand with perfect clearness what God must do with sin, and why.