xxxiv. 37 Hos. viii. 1. transgression, as in the words of Job: for he addeth rebellion unto Job his sin. It is revolt against rightful authority: they have... trespassed against My law. In ory, which is one of the earliest terms, we have the ideas both of perverseness and of universal evil and God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth. Gen. vi 5. There are some other words which include the thought of a violent revolt against Divine authority. By this is connected with wandering from God; probably it occurs in one of the earliest and most solemn accounts of the effect of sin in their wandering Gen. vi. 3 they are flesh. It may be said that the great mass of the definitions in both the Old and the New Testaments stamp it as the active uprising of the human will against the ordinances of Divine law written either on the heart or in positive statutes. : (2.) It may be doubted, however, whether in the Old or in the Disorder. New Testament there is any one term for sin which expresses its activity as a principle, without a side reference to its privative character and the ruin which it involves. Such terms as movμía, lust in concupiscence, exopa eis eóv, enmity against God, and Tà Éavтoû (ηTEîv, seeking one's own, seem only positive and active; but they regard sin under special aspects, and certainly include its internal perversion. Though its energy as the root of human evil is all but unbounded, it is an energy in evil which is also the misuse of faculties created for good alone. Hence, sin is in Scripture inward confusion, discord, disease, wretchedness, vanity especially, as will hereafter be seen, in the habitual use of σápέ or flesh to express both the vanity and the sinfulness of human nature. The term rovnpía, evil, itself testifies to the labour and wearisomeness and vanity of sin, as it is related to óvos, labour. In the Old Testament a considerable number of words express the same characteristic of conscious turbulence, disorder, and unrest. Such are by: they conceive MISCHIEF (or vexation) Job xv. and bring forth vanity; y, evil or depravity, as the result of by, wrongdoing; y, wickedness, pointing to its restless activity whether as internal or as affecting others: the wicked are like Isa. lvii. the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt; there is no peace, saith my God, to the WICKED; indicating the nothingness or vanity of sin: he that soweth iniquity shall reap Prov.xxii 35. 20, 21. Job iv. 8. VANITY; and they that plow iniquity and sow wùkedness reap the same. These words do not exhaust the catalogue of terms which define the quality of sin as substituting for the obedience of the Divine law a state of internal anarchy, as throwing the whole soul into confusion, as creating disturbance around, and ending in vanity and wretchedness both physical and spiritual. Guilt. Unity of CONSCIOUSNESS OF GUILT. Viewed more particularly with regard to its effect upon man's relation to God's law sin is guilt, or the human consciousness of a Divine imputation: first, the consciousness of PERSONAL responsibility for the sin as committed by self; and, secondly, the consciousness of personal RESPONSIBILITY for the sin, as an obligation to punishment on account of it. These two inseparable attendants on the act of transgression are in reality one; but may be conveniently distinguished. I. How truly the idea of Guilt is distinct and unique may be seen in the language by which it is expressed in Scripture, first, with reference to the Divine imputation of sin, and, secondly, in the human echo of that imputation in conscience. Guilt in 1. The universal testimony of the Bible, from the first revelaScripture. tion of sin down to the last revelation of redemption from it, Gen. ii. 9, 14. declares that the Holy Lawgiver imputes man's evil to man as its author; and will reckon to him the violation of the law and the dishonour done to the majesty of His own holiness. The evil that is in the natural world-that is, what evil has been brought into it by the Fall-He reckons only indirectly to the human transgressor, but his sin He reckons directly to him. There is no THOU more direct than that which guilt hears and which imprints the sentiment of guilt: Adam, where art thou? Because THOU hast done this, thou art cursed! Because thou hast done it: here is guilt in the sense of CULPA or fault. Thou art cursed: here is guilt in the sense of REATUS or penalty. That sin is guilt in both these senses, and that guilt in both these senses is sin, the Old Offence 21. Testament teaches in its entire doctrine of expiation. against God passes not away with the act, it clings still to the transgressor, and can never be put away from him save by his rendering satisfaction. That satisfaction he can render only by the endurance of the penalty: either in his own person or through the intermediation of other satisfaction counted as his own. He must carry the burden of his sin with him, or bear his Lev. v. 1. iniquity. There is one word, D which, as connected with л, expresses constantly the idea of guilt attaching to every sin. Although in many passages it has a limited sense, designating the trespass-offering appointed to be brought for offences committed through error, negligence or ignorance, yet that very limitation serves to impress all the more significantly the deep meaning of guilt as such. The trespass-offering, or, as it should be rendered, the guilt-offering, was itself guilt as the representative of guilt: it was ASHAM; and so in the supreme Offering our Lord was made sin for us. It is enough to refer to one text, which may stand 2 Cor. v. for a large number. If a soul sin, and commit any of these things which are forbidden to be done by the commandments of the Lord; though he wist it not, yet is he GUILTY (PECCATI REUS), and shall bear his iniquity; and he shall bring a ram without blemish out of the flock, with thy estimation, for a trespass-offering, unto the priest: and the priest shall make an atonement for him concerning his ignorance wherein he erred and wist it not, and it shall be forgiven him. It is a trespass-offering: he hath certainly trespassed against the Lord. Here we discern distinction in guilt-as the Vulgate translates, juxta mensuram æstimationemque peccati,-in relation to the theocratic law of the old covenant. But the underlying trespass, the heart and root of all offences, is the same. Hence when we pass into the New Testament, which makes sin exceeding sinful in the Rom. vii. light of the finished Atonement, the distinction is done The away. sin-offering and the trespass-offering are united in the One Sacrifice Heb. x.12. for sins. The highest conception of guilt is that of man's vódikov Rom. iii. yevéσbai τw Mew-that all the world may become guilty before God. 19. Though there is a sense in which the Gospel still marks the sin Lev. v. 17-19, 13. Luke xii. of him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, and makes a differ- Jas. iv. 17. ence between that servant which knew his Lord's will and him that knew not, between the debtor who owed five hundred pence and the Luke vii. 47,48 Matt. v. 26. Rom. i. 18. 29. debtor who owed fifty, yet all sin is debt, for which satisfaction must be made. The new covenant has introduced this new term, and teaches the exaction of the uttermost farthing: teaching it all the more rigorously because the secret of a full satisfaction and a frank forgiveness is at hand. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven; and the guilty are children of wrath. The law accompanies the Gospel, and makes the offender in one point guilty of all, Távτwv čvoɣos, or, in our Lord's language, guilty or in danger of eternal sin. Hence this phrase, which expresses the NewTestament idea of guilt most emphatically, includes the two meanings with which we set out: personal guilt as breaking the law, and personal obligation to endure its punishment: Távтv ἔνοχος and ἔνοχος θανάτου. These last words suggest the most affecting illustration of the distinction. We are guilty in both senses our Holy Saviour was only guilty of death. And all is xxvi. 66. expressed in our word SIN; according to its most probable derivation from the Latin SONS, nocens, that which is the guilty cause of death to the soul. Matt. Con 2. The Conscience in man bears its own clear testimony. science. This faculty of our nature, or representative of the Judge in our personality, is simply in relation to sin the registrar of its guilt. It is the moral consciousness, rather of instinct than of reflection, though also of both, faithfully assuming the personal responsibility of the sin and anticipating its consequences. Such is the Scriptural meaning of the word. It is not the standard of right and wrong set up in the moral nature. St. Paul speaks of that as written in the heart of universal man: the Gentiles show the work Rom. ii. 15. of the law written in their hearts. He goes on to speak of their conscience also bearing witness, by its accusing or else excusing, undoubtedly looking upward to a Judge and forward to a judgment. What St. Paul calls σvveidnois, St. John calls κapdía, meaning however, not the heart, in which St. Paul seats the law, but the consciousness of the inner man. The conscience is the self of the personality, in universal humanity never excusing, but always Heb. x. 2. accusing, and is the conscience of sins. But of this we need not speak further now. It is enough to establish the distinction between the standard of right and wrong which may be defective and is not conscience proper, and that moral consciousness which infallibly unites the fault and its consequences in the consciousness of the sinner. GUILT AS FAULT AND PUNISHMENT. We may now look more particularly at the idea of guilt under its two aspects: observing, however, preliminarily that what is here said has reference only to sin generally, without including those modifications of its phenomena and degrees of its guiltiness which are concerned rather with the doctrine of Original Sin. THE PERSONAL FAULT. Guilt is the personal consciousness of being responsible for the wrong the transgressor violating the commands of the law acknowledges the law and its rights against himself. Guilt Double Guilt. Reatus culpæ. 1. This is the sense of the forensic term airía: the sinner is and knows himself to be the agent and the cause of his own sin. Hence it is defined as reatus culpæ; or guilt in respect to its fault. The eternal alliance of sin and guilt in human consciousness cannot be too deeply pondered. This consciousness refutes all those theories of the origination of sin to which reference has been made: it exonerates God; it honours the law; while it does not excuse the Tempter, it lays not upon him as the instrument the guilt of which it assumes the responsibility. In this conscience of sin the devils tremble. This is the deepest secret in the heart of every human transgressor: the mouth may deny it, not knowing what it says; but the inner man is true to its moral instinct. The first evasion of guilt was only an evasion; and it was Adam's guilt that said, The woman whom Thou gavest to Gen. iii. be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. This was the knowledge of evil which had been threatened, and the very attempt to transfer the guilt of self to secondary agents was proof that evil was known. Job represents all men when he speaks of the self-deception of covering sin with a covering not of 12. |