Injustice In A Graveyard! # 1

Injustice In A Graveyard # 1

"The wages of sin is death!" (Romans 6:23).

The other day, as I was wandering over a village graveyard, and reading the inscriptions on the tombs and head-stones, I could not but think that there was something like injustice. In every direction DEATH was spoken against - and called cruel, insatiable, and against SIN. And yet death is but the offspring of sin. But for sin - there would have been no death, and no graveyards.

Death is a divine infliction, originally a punishment for man's sin! It is from God's hand - and therefore man is more ready to speak harshly of death, than he is of sin - which is man's own act and deed.

We blame death for robbing us of our parents, children, and friends; but we ought to blame sin - which gave death its power. And thus we should blame ourselves - by whom sin came into the world, and has perpetuated death here.

Sin is the parent of disease, pain, grief, sorrow, disappointment, vexation, anxiety, woe, death - yes, of every evil!

And man is the parent of sin! Sin sprung from us - and all misery springs from sin!

God, in death - only gives to man his due. How prone are we to fix the eye on effects (death) - and never think of the cause (sin)! Or if we admit that the cause is sin - we look upon it, and talk of it, as if sin was a calamity instead of a crime!

When I tread the grounds of the graveyard, and see the proofs that multitudes have been buried there - let me ask with Jehu, "Who slew all these?" And the only answer that can be justly given, will be, SIN!

Some may be ready to say, "Oh, it was small pox or tuberculosis, or cancer, or cholera, etc.!" True, true - but what introduced all these diseases into our world - for they were not here originally? Ah, that was sin - our sin!"

We therefore must trace suffering and death - to disease! We must trace disease - to sin! We must trace sin - to man! Man therefore, is the cause of all his own misery! Man has no one to blame but himself. Nor is it any use trying to throw the blame on anything else.

But as sin has introduced disease, misery, and death into our world - is there any possibility of getting rid of sin? Because, if we can get rid of sin - we may then get rid of all the consequences of sin. Well, blessed be God, sin may be gotten rid of! How this is to be done, the Bible, and the Bible alone, can inform us. "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord!" (Romans 6:23).

No one could devise a plan to get rid of sin - but the infinitely wise God. No one could furnish the means - but the Possessor of heaven and earth! It requires a most costly sacrifice - and the Son of God furnishes that. It requires a wondrous change in us, nothing less than a new creation (new birth) - and the Spirit of God produces that!

If we want to get rid of sin - we, being fully convinced that we are guilty, and deserve to be punished for it. We must fix the eye of the mind on the Son of God as our sacrifice. We must then confess our sins, and plead  with God to pardon them, on the ground of the sacrifice of Jesus, and so we shall obtain a pardon. We must also ask for the Holy Spirit, to renew and sanctify our nature, and so we shall be delivered from the power and pollution of sin. We must live, believing in the efficacy of the blood of Jesus to remove our guilt, and in the power and grace of the Spirit to make us new creatures, and then take the precepts of the gospel as our guide, and the example of Jesus as our model.

~James Smith~

(continued with # 2)