'The crooked wandering ways in which we live.'
There is a path which is 'right' and one which is 'wrong,' whether we believe so or not.
There are hedges and limitations for us all. This law extends to the ordering of all things, whether great or small. If a line be absolutely straight, and we are running another parallel to it, the smallest possible wavering is fatal to our copy. And the smallest deflection, if produced, will run out into an ever-widening distance from the straight line.
There is nothing which it is more difficult to get into men's belief than the sinfulness of little sins; nothing more difficult to cure ourselves of than the habit of considering quantity rather than quality in moral questions. What a solemn thought it is, that of a great absolute law of right rising serene above us, embracing everything! And this is the first idea that is here in our text--a grave and deep one.
But the second of these expressions for sin literally means 'apostasy,' 'rebellion,' not 'transgression,' and this word brings in a more solemn thought yet, viz.:--
(2) Every sin is apostasy from or rebellion against God.
The former word dealt only with abstract thought of a 'law,' this with a 'Lawgiver.'
Our obligations are not merely to a law, but to Him who enacted it. So it becomes plain that the very centre of all sin is the shaking off of obedience to God. Living to 'self' is the inmost essence of every act of evil, and may be as virulently active in the smallest trifle as in the most awful crime.
How infinitely deeper and darker this makes sin to be!
When one thinks of our obligations and of our dependence, of God's love and care, what an 'evil and a bitter thing' every sin becomes!
Urge this terrible contrast of a loving Father and a disobedient child.
This idea brings out the ingratitude of all sin.
But the third word here used literally means 'missing an aim,' and so we come to
(3) Every sin misses the goal at which we should aim. There may be a double idea here--that of failing in the great purpose of our being, which is already partially included in the first of these three expressions, or that of missing the aim which we proposed to ourselves in the act. All sin is a failure.
By it we fall short of the loftiest purpose. Whatever we gain we lose more.
Every life which has sin in it is a 'failure.' You may be prosperous, brilliant, successful, but you are 'a failure.'
For consider what human life might be: full of God and full of joy. Consider what the 'fruits' of sin are. 'Apples of Sodom.' How sin leads to sorrow. This is an inevitable law. Sin fails to secure what it sought for. All 'wrong' is a mistake, a blunder. 'Thou fool!'
So this word suggests the futility of sin considered in its consequences. 'These be thy gods, O Israel!' 'The end of these things is death.'
II. The divine treatment of sins.
'Forgiving,' and yet not suffering them to go unpunished.
(1) God _forgives_, and yet He does not leave sin unpunished, for He will 'by no means _clear_ the guilty.'
The one word refers to His love, His heart; the other to the retributions which are inseparable from the very course of nature.
Forgiveness is the flow of God's love to all, and the welcoming back to His favour of all who come. Forgiveness likewise includes the escape from the extreme and uttermost consequences of sin in this life and in the next, the sense of God's displeasure here, and the final separation from Him, which is eternal death. Forgiveness is not inconsistent with retribution. There must needs be retribution, from--
_(a)_ The very constitution of our nature.
Conscience, our spiritual nature, our habits all demand it.