In one of Scripture’s most graphic portrayals of the nature of sin, the prophet Jeremiah warns us that ‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?’ (Jer.17:9) In one sense, sin is a straightforward: ‘Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practises lawlessness; sin is lawlessness’ (1 John 3:4). God tells us what to do and what not to do. We fail, and that is sin. Yet the more we struggle against sin, the more we find that there are layers upon layers to it. The apostolic call is to ‘Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves’ (2 Cor.13:5). Yet this proves to be no light and easy matter.
The jazz singer, Billie Holiday, spoke for many when she claimed: ‘I never hurt nobody but myself and that’s nobody’s business but my own.’ That sounds complacent – and undoubtedly is – but it is more a drive for self-protection. There were a great many things in Billie’s life – her drug-taking, alcohol abuse, and her list of broken relationships – that she wanted to hide from the world, and even from herself. She did hurt many people besides herself. It is in the very nature of sin to harm, whether ourselves or those around us. Sin manages to ricochet around our world; there is no such thing as a victimless sin.
To adopt the Billie Holiday line regarding sin is to deceive ourselves. Taken to extremes, we may even find our consciences seared (see 1 Tim.4:2). In the words of the Puritan preacher, John Gibbon: ‘Some men’s consciences are like the stomach of the ostrich that can digest iron: they can swallow the most notorious sins without regret.’ To treat sin complacently invariably leads to a slide into greater and growing evil, and a refusal to face reality.
To escape such a fate, we may become very meticulous in dealing with sin. We may read Thomas Manton’s comment: ‘Omit secret prayer, and some great sin will follow.’ It is the little foxes that spoil the vineyards (Song of Songs 2:15). That may cause a level of conviction in our souls. We may become more alive to the pleas of the Psalmist: ‘Declare me innocent from hidden faults’ (Ps.19:12). We realise something of the horror of what it means to live before an all-knowing, all-seeing holy God: ‘You have set our iniquities before You, our secret sins in the light of Your presence’ (Ps.90:8).
It is possible by this reaction to believe that we have become sensitive to sin, and viewing it, to cite John Newton’s quaint illustration, like a toad or a serpent was put in our food or our bed. Yet there is a countervailing temptation of becoming a Pharisaic nit-picker, such as Jesus denounces in Matthew 23. Our view can become skewed and disproportionate: ‘Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!’ (Matt.23:23-24)
One of the most incisive observations that John Newton ever made can be found in a letter he wrote to Mrs Wilberforce, William’s ‘methodist’ aunty. Newton warned her: ‘I believe Satan is never nearer us than at some times when we think ourselves nearest the Lord.’ Later he was to write in words that are meant to alarm those who profess to be biblical believers in the doctrine of total depravity: ‘The deceitfulness of the heart which we allow in words, enables it to disguise, conceal, and cover its own emotions, so that the supposed sense we have of its deceitfulness is often the very thing that deceives us.’
There seems to be no way out of this morass; there are delusions on the right hand and on the left. We all know better than we practise; and we find it easy to convince ourselves that we are growing in love or faithfulness when actually we are tolerating what is wrong or just being difficult to get on with. To cite John Newton again: ‘I find it much easier to speak to the hearts of others than to my own’. He then added rather ruefully that ‘my confessions rather express what I know I ought to think of myself, than what I actually do.’ Small wonder that our only refuge is that of the heartfelt prayer of the Psalmist: ‘Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting’ (Ps.139:23-24).
– Peter Barnes