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2 Wednesday flight 'Bible Lecture by 'ReV. Len G. Broughton, D. D., of Christ Church, London Reported for The Golden Age by M. P. H. —Copyright Applied For. ■L. i ■J * w Wkl WWwMBKHB .gJJBWi * CHRIST CHURCH. LONDON. Romans 1:18: "For the wrath of God is re vealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men that hinder (hold back) the truth in unrighteousness.” z | * HIS morning we begin the consideration , °f the Doctrinal Section of the Epistle to the Romans, and it is perfectly nat ural that the Apostle begins this sec tion with the consideration of the subject of sin. I say perfectly natural, because the Apos tle in this book is giving to the world a trea tise on Christian theology. The purpose of the book is to set forth salvation by grace, as op posed to salvation by law; and the whole of the epistle is keyed to the setting forth of that great truth. Naturally, therefore, the first ques tion to be considered is God’s attitude to the great fact of sin, hence we have th ewords of our text, “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unright eous of men that hinder”—or as you will read in the margin, “hold back, the truth in un righteousness.” Before we proceed now to the consideration of the text, I want us to stop and consider briefly the definition of sin What is sin? We hear a great deal about sin. Not as much about it as we used, nor as we should, to be sure, but still we hear a great deal about sin. The Bible gives two definitions of .sin, and both these definiitons are comprehended in our text. The first definiiton we have is in I. John 3:4, “Sin is the transgression of the law,” or as the American revised renders it, “Sin is law lessness,” that is, anarchy, and anarchy is dis regard of law. In that sense it is disregard of divine law; it is doing that which divine law forbids. Then in I. John 5:7 is this definition, “All unrighteousness is sin.” There are a great many people who think that so long as they do nothing that is contrary to the express law of God, they are free from sin. They are thinking, to be sure, of overt sin—the resuk of the known violation of law. But there is another phase of sin which is far more subtle, and one with which we need to concern our selves far more, than the open, overt viola tion of the law of God, and that is the phase which is suggested by the second definition: “All unrighteousness is sin.” Sin is failing to do what God has commanded us to do. It THE GOLDEN AGE FOR AUGUST 7, 1913 GOD’S ATTITUDUE TO SIN is more. It is failing to come up in our lives to the plain of God’s righteousness. Sin is under righteousness. It is a righteous life, if you will, the righteous life that is beneath the standard of God. Very few men can be per suaded that if they are living what the world calls a righteous life, they are nevertheless perhaps living in sin. Righteousness, so long as it is below the holy, perfect standard of God, is sin, though it be righteousness. For righteousness to be without sin. it must meas ure up and compare with the righteousness of God. “Well then,” someone says, “if that be true about sin, there is no man on earth free from sin.” Most certainly that is true; and a man who says “I am living without either says what he does not believe, or He he speaks ignorantly of the great, fun (Bnental fact of sin. Let me say again, sin is failing to measure up in our lives to the holiness, to the right eousness, perfection, of God. Many of you, perhaps, have seen two chil dren —I have many a time—l have been one of the two —playing see-saw with a board that has been balanced perfectly over some piece of timber so that there is perfect equilibrium of both ends of the board, and then you see two children, of exactly the same weight, get on that board, one on one end and one on the other; and then you have seen someone give them a start, and you have seen them see-saw up and down, almost with perpetual motion. It is remarkable to see how long that balance will continue in spite of no one giving any assistance to it whatever; each of its ends must perfectly balance without friction, to con stitute a see-saw. Now, my brethren, in the beginning God and man were perfectly balanced; when God created man, and put him in the Garden of Eden, he created him as we are told, in his own image. Certainly he was not referring to his physical creation, he was referring to his inner spiritual creation; he was the image of God, created for fellowship with God; and there can be no perfect fellowship with God unless there is perpetual harmony. Perfect balancing with God means walking with him. As we find man in the Garden of Eden, he is in perfect harmony with God, perfect fellow ship with him, walking together and living to gether; there was a perfect see-saw (I speak reverently) between God and man; there was no friction in the world; it was all harmony and peace because it w r as all perfectly and harmoniously balanced; there was no sin, no Satan. It was all God, and man, with whom he was in perfect agreement. Now in the process of time the devil entered the heart of men and women, and the moment he entered, the image of God was blurred, and man was put out of harmony with him. God was not put out o f harmony with man, save as man put him out of harmony by reason of his own lack of harmony, and this disharmony was the result of sin—that is what it did. From that day when the balance was destroyed be tween God and man, until the present day, the unregenerate world is still out of balance with God. And if you ask me today to tell in a sentence the trouble with this world, I think I would say it is lack of harmony with God; the whole world is out of harmony. There is no balance between God and the rest of man as a race;; the whole world is out of balance; God is displeased, and man is suffering his per petual displeasure all because of sin. Now t it is very interesting if we proceed at once from this point to consider God s atti tude, in the broadest possible sense, to this great fact of sin, this disharmony that has been created in the life and heart of man and the race as a whole. What is his attitude to it? The text answers the question. It is not that the wrath of God is revealed against men. God is not mad with men, as we interpret wrath to mean, God is not full of wrath toward men, he has no wrath to him. God only has love for man to the extent that he gave his only be gotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life. God loves man. God’s heart at this moment figuratively speaking —is breaking in love in expressible for man. God’s heart is melting and pouring itself out at this moment in in expressive love for this world. But my breth ren, God is filled with wrath for something; not for man, but because of sin; sin has enter ed the race of man, destroyed God’s pet in the great world of creation, the thing over which he exercised most care, the highest pro duction of the creative genius of Almightiness has been destroyed, anathematized, degraded to a degree below the brute on account of sin, and God’s heart breaks because of it as he looks down upon it today. It is sin, and not the sinner that God is filled with wrath for. There is nothing that can arouse the ha red of God but sin He cannot look upon sin with any sort of allowance in the least; all sin, overt sins, sins of negnect, the sin of violat ing the law, and the s ill greater sin— the universal sin of failing to measure up to his holiness —to balance him so that there can be perfect harmony and fellowship between man and himself. Then again, I want us to observe that God is not only wrathful against the particular kind of sin in this text, but it is said “The w T rath of God is revealed from heaven against all un godliness and unrighteousness of men that hin der the truth in unrighteousness.” That form of sin that causes men to hold back the truth, in unrighteousness. There is no common de gree of responsibility for failing to apprehend the truth, nor is there any common degree of responsibility for sin. No two men are alike responsible for truth. May I illustrate that? A child of 6 years is not responsible for be ing unable to count a million; but it is re sponsible under normal conditions for not be ing able to count a hundred. Again, a boy should never be punished for not taking something down from a shelf which is higher than he can reach; but he is responsi ble for reaching as high as he can. Again, a blind man should not be blamed because he does not see; but he is responsible for not making the best use of his other senses that he possibly can. So God holds us responsible only for living up to the light that we have, provided, how ever, we live up to that light. To say that (Continued on page 14.)