Law of sin and death

“ But just as the tracks in Paul's mind were well worn, by which the thought of death brought in that of sin, and that of sin drew after it that of law, so with equal closeness of established association, that of law condemnatory and slaying, brought up that of Christ the all-sufficient refuge from that gloomy triad—Death Sin, Law. Through union with Him each of us may possess His immortal risen life, in which Death, the engulfer, is himself engulfed; Death, the conqueror, is conquered utterly and for ever; Death, the serpent, has his sting drawn, and is harmless. ”

“ THE WORKS OF THE DEVIL. (1 John 3:8)
It is clear to my mind that sin is the thing referred to by the apostle in the word devil. The sting of the Serpent is its power of destruction. The "sting of death" is the power of death; and that, the apostle says, in one place, "is sin"; and in another, "is the devil". There are not two powers of death; but one only. Hence, the devil and sin, though different words, represent the same thing. "Sin had the power of death", and would have retained it, if the man, who was obedient unto death, had not gained the victory over it. ”

“ Penalty stands for violated law. Violated law is transgression. Transgression is sin. Sin, in final analysis, is lawlessness, and lawlessness is treason against Jehovah. Death is, therefore, an imposition of God, and is his penalty against the treason of sin.
This, then, is the explanation of death—it is the penalty of sin.
This is the definition which Christianity gives—as it is written: “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men.” ”

“ Sin, sin is what is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Sin, disobedience to God, transgression of God's law, has placed the seal of death upon every living human body in the world; and sin has stamped the seal of death upon every unsaved soul in hell. ”

“ He—she—they do.”
“That puts it at once on a different plane from just hastening a person’s death out of pity. Sin is in the intention, not the deed. That is the difference between divine law and human law. ”

“ This evil required a sacrifice to expiate it, or atone for it; and the reason why mankind are careless of the atonement, think light of it, or attempt to atone for their own crimes, by duties, tears, prayers, or works, is because they never saw sin in the light God sees it, and has consequently testified his hatred of it in many awful judgments, in a broken Law, in the flames of hell—but, above all, in the tremendous sufferings and death of Christ. ”

“ Every sin, both original and actual, being a transgression of the righteous law of God, and contrary thereunto, doth in its own nature bring guilt upon the sinner, whereby he is bound over to the wrath of God and curse of the law, and so made subject to death, with all miseries, spiritual, temporal and eternal. ”

“ For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members, to bring forth fruit unto death.
7:6. But now we are loosed from the law of death wherein we were detained; so that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.
7:7. What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? God forbid! But I do not know sin, but by the law. For I had not known concupiscence, if the law did not say: Thou shalt not covet.
7:8. But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead. ”

“ But the supersession of the law, which was bound up with the régime of sin and death, does not mean the relaxation of the moral bond. On the contrary (vi. 1 f.) , the reception of God's grace and spirit implies the death of the believing man to sin. ”

“ They were quite ready to accept the attitude of the heathen world and believe that God needed to be propitiated and appeased, ready to believe that sin must somehow be expiated, that since "the wages of sin is death," death must be the penalty of all who disobey the Divine law, and proper expiation must be made in order to escape the penalty of evildoing. The only way they thought of to appease God was by an atonement, or expiation, of their sin,—an atonement, or expiation, which would show their great sorrow for their evil. ”

“ But why did He show them the wounds in His hands and side? To make it plain that He bore all the penalty of sin. Some speak about sin as if it were only a mistake, but God says sin is guilt, and that all are guilty, for all have sinned. We have offended against God's holy law, and if any one breaks the law he brings upon himself the penalty. God says, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die;" [Footnote: Ezek. xviii. 20.] so the penalty we deserve is death, everlasting punishment. The penalty must be paid by some one. God's justice demands it. ”

“ And this fact invests every man's death with profound significance in the Christian's view. That the condemned criminal may have time to prepare, our courts of law invariably interpose an interval between the sentence and the punishment. Would only that men were more consistent here! If we shudder at the thought of a dying sinner appearing in all the blackness of his guilt before God, let us think more how we may turn sinners from their wickedness while they live. Let us see the atrocious guilt of encouraging them in ways of sin that cannot but bring on them the retribution of a righteous God. ”

“ Nevertheless, the law of sin, through the weakness of the flesh, fails not to remind him of imperfection. Being delivered from the fear of death, he looks forward to it as to the period of his change, knowing that, when he falls asleep in the dust, he will afterwards be delivered from the principle of evil by a resurrection to incorruptibility and unalloyed existence in the Paradise of God. ”

“ Had it been possible for the law to be changed or set aside, then Christ need not have died to save man from the penalty of sin. The death of Christ, so far from abolishing the law, proves that it is immutable. ”

“ And that is just what sin is, even if done carelessly or thoughtlessly; for men have no right to be careless and thoughtless about [246] some things. "The wages of sin is death;" physical death for breaking physical law, and spiritual death for breaking spiritual law. ”

“ Unregenerate souls are dead in trespasses and sins. All those who are in their sins, are dead in sins; yea, in trespasses and sins, which may signify all sorts of sins, habitual and actual, sins of heart and of life. Sin is the death of the soul. Wherever that prevails there is a privation of all spiritual life. Sinners are dead in state, being destitute of the principles, and powers of spiritual life; and cut off from God, the fountain of life: and they are dead in law, as a condemned malefactor is said to be a dead man. 2. A state of sin is a state of conformity to this world, v. ”

“ They will not be condemned to the Second Death because they were born sinners; not to any other pains and penalties than those which are the common lot of humanity in the present life. They are simply under that provision of the constitution of sin which says, "Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return". ”

“ Mortal sin deserves an inconceivable and eternal punishment; for is of faith, that whoever, at his death, is found guilty of but one Mortal sin, shall be banished from the presence of God, excluded from the society of the Saints, and precipitated into hell, there to dwell for ever with the devils and reprobates in the most dreadful torments. ”

“ Now it is commanded the poor Sinner, whom the Anger has chosen to the Condemnation of eternal Death, that he enter into this same Death, and die in Christ's Death to Sin, and then Christ drowns it in his Blood, and chuses him again to be God's Child. ”

“ For, if no human sacrifice can be fit for God to receive, because human sacrifices, as parts of Pagan worship, were unjust and impious; then it would follow, that the mortality, to which all mankind are appointed by God, must have the same cruelty and injustice in it. Now that death is a punishment for sin, and that all mankind are by death offered as a sacrifice for sin, is not only a doctrine of revealed religion, but the plain dictate of reason. ”

“ But the man who lives in mortal sin abides in death. Every sin that he commits plunges his soul deeper into the abyss of death, till at last he receives the full wages of his crimes in the flames of hell. How shall we escape this terrible penalty? Our blessed Lord, by his death, received the wages due to us on account of sin. Through the infinite merits of his death our souls may be brought to life, if we will truly repent and sin no more. ”

“ Those who have died in original sin have, by dying, discharged the obligation of death which is the punishment of original sin. Hence, notwithstanding original sin, they can rise again from death: for the punishment of original sin is to die, rather than to be detained by death. ”

“ Here the Gloss of the Decretum says on these words: "In case one soul through this severity, by which that whole household was anathematized, should perish, passing out of the body without baptism, the death of innumerable bodies, if innocent men are violently removed from the church, is not to be compared with this injury." The Gloss, Argumentum, says: "Greater is the sin if one soul perish through the sin of unbelief than if they should put to death the bodies of innumerable martyrs for God's sake." ”

“ Thus her ordinary teaching is: “Those who are found, at the moment of death, with a will determined to sin, have with them an infinite degree of guilt, and the punishment is without end”; “the sweet goodness of God sheds the rays of His mercy even into Hell: since He might most justly have given to the souls there a far greater punishment than He has.” “At death God exercises His justice, yet not without mercy; since even in Hell the soul does not suffer as much as it deserves.” ”

“ It is the price of eternity. Yes, my brethren, man, condemned to death by the sin of his birth, ought to receive life only to lose it, even from the moment he has received it. The blood alone of Jesus Christ has effaced this sentence of death and punishment pronounced against all mankind in the person of the first sinner. We live, though the offspring of a father condemned to death, and inheritors ourselves of his punishment, because the Redeemer died for us. ”

“ For if we die because he died, but he died because be sinned, they say that the punishment passed without the guilt, and that innocent infants are punished with an unjust penalty by deriving death without the deserts of death. This, the catholic faith has known of the one and only mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who condescended to undergo death—that is, the penalty of sin—without sin, for us. ”

“ That being true, the sin against the Holy Ghost must be the most appalling act that can enter into human experience. Perhaps the most heinous crime known to human law is the crime of murder, wherein innocent blood is shed. But that sin which effectually kills spirit-life, which has for its victim not a human being but a divine being—that overtops in atrocity any possible physical murder. In this concluding chapter of our treatise let us contemplate this awful sin—this master crime. ”

“ The penalty of sin is death, eternal death and damnation. Christ, our Lord, has taken away our sins, He has earned forgiveness for us; therefore we have been redeemed from death. He has suffered death for us and therefore we are free from death. Eternal death has no power over us ”

“ If the penalty of the original sin be the eternal separation of body and spirit, how can justice have all its demands, and mercy be shown to the transgressor? There is a way, and how? It is by the introduction of His Only Begotten Son, the Son of His own bosom, the first-born of every creature, holding the birthright over every creation He has made, and holding the keys of salvation over millions of worlds like this; he has a right to come forth and suffer the penalty of death for the fallen sons and daughters of man. ”

“ For unless they had sinned, they would not have died; but the martyrs sin if they do not die. The one died because they sinned, the others do not sin because they die. By the guilt of the first, punishment was incurred; by the punishment of the second, guilt is prevented. Not that death, which was before an evil, has become something good, but only that God has granted to faith this grace, that death, which is the admitted opposite to life, should become the instrument by which life is reached. ”

“ How, then, do they interpret the language of Scripture? In this way: They hold that if man had been true to his spiritual nature, the supernatural life, the life in God, would have blunted the forces of corruption, and lifted him into a higher and immortal state.
Certainly, in some sense, death, as we know it, for man, is regarded, especially in the New Testament, as the penalty of sin. But then what do we mean by death? If sin is said to have introduced human death, Christ is constantly said to have abolished it. ”

“ It is a sin for which there is no forgiveness in this world, nor in the world to come. It depends altogether how much light a murderer has before he commits the deed, as to his chance of forgiveness; but you have to suffer the penalty that is attached, which is death.
I am now preaching the first principles of the Gospel, and some of the most prominent sins of this generation I have named over before this congregation. Look abroad among the nations of the earth, and see the spirit of murder and bloodshed that exists in the hearts of millions towards their fellow-men. ”