35. The Heart of the Problem of Sin

The Heart of the Problem of Sin This brings our thinking to the heart of the problem which sin thrust into God’s moral government. These facts concerning justice and mercy, and the axioms that have led up to them, can mean but one thing. Justice and mercy must each be maintained in full action at all times. For if either one is suspended or interfered with in the slightest degree by the demands of the other, God’s love is thus inoperative to that measure, either toward the sinless or the sinful, as the case might be, and that would be a limitation not to be tolerated by such a Being as God.

Mercy cannot permit any interference by justice at any time or under any circumstances, neither can justice tolerate any such thing from mercy. No abatement in action of either justice or mercy can be permitted, for as long as God is God, He can never be baffled or hindered by anything His creatures can do. Such a thing is unthinkable in any Being whom man can accept as God. For God is not a man that He should forget to care for the welfare of the sinless in any program He might carry out for the restoration of the sinful.

These self-evident necessities are being emphasized for the reason that they have escaped the attention of so many people. Blinded by the insufferable egotism sin has wrought upon the whole race, and yet conscious that we need God to be merciful to us because of our sins, we exalt mercy and forget justice. We argue that God is a Being of infinite love and mercy, not seeing that justice also is love, and so we mistakenly think we may expect Him to forgive our sins without reference to any one else in the universe but ourselves, simply because we selfishly want our own happiness secured to us with no thought of others. So if we think of justice at all, we oppose the exercise of it upon ourselves, although we are willing enough for those we think wicked to feel its full force, for sin has robbed us of all interest in having the happiness of those who have never sinned kept permanent.

It is amazing how much careless or shallow thinking on this subject is done, even by many of the leaders in the professing Church. They do not think back to those axiomatic first truths of which we have just been thinking, and so they confuse and blind both themselves and others in proposing a program that sinful and selfish hearts have conjured up for God to follow in forgiving sin, which both ignores justice, and makes mercy little else than a mere sentimental feeling of kindness and pity, exercised by an indulgent God, not toward sinners (that term is impolite), but simply toward the victims of misfortune, which they conceive sin to be.