How God Condemned Sin

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Romans 8:3-4

For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh…

1. Ever since man has fallen, two things have been desirable. The one, that he should be forgiven; the other, that he should be led to hate the sin into which he has fallen, and love the holiness from which he has become alienated. It were impossible to make a man happy unless both be equally realised. If his sins were forgiven, and yet he loved sin, his prospects were dark, If he ceased to love sin, and yet were lying under the guilt of it, his conscience would be tortured with remorse. By what process can man be both justified and sanctified?

2. Human reason suggests that a law should be given to man which he should keep. This has been tried, and the law which was given was the best law that could be framed. If, therefore, that law should fail to make men what they should be, the fault will not be in the law, but in the man. As the text says, it was "weak through the flesh." It could not do what God never intended it should do. The law cannot forgive sin, nor create a love of righteousness. It can execute the sentence, but it can do no more. Now, in the text we are told how God interposed to do by His grace what His law could not do.

I. WHAT GOD DID. He sent His Son.

II. WHAT WAS THE IMMEDIATE RESULT OF THIS? God "condemned sin."

1. The very fact that God was under necessity, if He would save men and yet not violate His justice, to send His Son, condemned sin.

2. The life of our Lord Jesus Christ on earth condemned sin. You can often condemn an evil best by putting side by side with it the palpable contrast. There was a condemnation of sin in Christ's very look. The Pharisees and all sorts of men felt it. They could not fail to see through His life what crooked lives their own were.

3. God condemned sin by allowing it to condemn itself. Most men deny that their particular transgressions are at all heinous. But God seemed to say, "I will let sin do what it can; and men shall see henceforth what sin is from that sample." And what did sin do? Sin murdered the perfect man, and thus convicted itself.

4. God condemned sin by suffering Christ to be put to death on account of sin. Its heinousness demanded no lesser expiation. "But why did not God exercise the sovereign prerogative of mercy, and at once forgive sin?" How, then, could God have condemned sin? "But if the righteous law be really so spiritual, and carnal man so weak, why not alter the law and adapt it to the exigency?" I reply again, because such a procedure would not condemn the sin. On the contrary, it would condemn the law.

III. HOW THIS DOES WHAT THE LAW COULD NOT DO. There were two desirable things, you will remember, that I started with.

1. That the offender should be pardoned. You can clearly see how that is done. If Jesus did suffer in my stead, henceforth it becomes not only mercy that absolves me, but justice that seals my acquittal.

2. But how does this tend to make men pure and haters of sin? When the Holy Spirit comes with power into a man's heart, and renews his nature, forthwith the impure are made chaste, the dishonest are made honest, and the ungodly are made to love God. And by the same means there comes into the heart an enmity against the sin which caused the suffering of Christ.

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