Many are the fundamental defects of the popular religion of the present day. Some of these are to be seen in the outward practice of its professors; others, in the inner frame of mind which characterises them and which does not fail to show itself. One of the latter defects, which is patent to the eye of the spiritual observer, is the absence of the sense of sin. There are no "sinners" nowadays, in the felt sense of the word, among the general class of supposed Christians. The explanation is that a generation of people have arisen who are "pure in their own eyes and yet are not washed from their filthiness."

1. Committing vs. Sensing Sin⤒🔗

Let us observe, in the first place, that there is the greatest possible difference between the committal of sin and the sense of sin. Sin itself is of the creature, but the sense of it is of God. It is necessary to make plain this distinction. Many ignorant people are found who cannot discriminate in this matter. When some such happen to hear a sincere child of God confessing his sins in prayer, they are ready to conclude that he must surely be a greater transgressor than others, or that he has committed some specially heinous iniquities. They do not understand that the enlightened conscience has a keener sense of sin and guilt than others, and sees sin and guilt where others see none.

Another fact that is overlooked is that indulgence in sin, instead of awakening the sense of it, has entirely the opposite effect. Criminal indulgence has the direct tendency to stupefy and deaden the conscience. The conscience is rendered inactive and insensate. Thus it frequently happens that hardened sinners are in their own opinion the most innocent people in the world. All the miseries they bring upon themselves they attribute to the ill intentions of other people.

On the other hand, where the true sense of sin is, there is a sense of its constant presence in thought and action, its evil and its guilt, and there is the disposition to hate it and for­sake it. Let it be clearly marked then, that sin is of man and the devil, but the sense of it is the work of God in the soul.

2. Sensing Sin an Ongoing Gift←⤒🔗

It is to be noted more fully that the sense of sin is produced by the Holy Spirit in conversion, and is sustained by the same Spirit in sanctification. This is clearly the teaching of the Holy Scriptures on the subject.

In Conversion←↰⤒🔗

As to the sense of sin in conversion, Christ Himself speaks in the sixteenth chapter of John, when He intimates that after He departs He will send forth the Spirit of truth who "will reprove the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment: of sin, because they believe not on me." And this is illustrated by frequent examples in the Acts of the Apostles. Witness the thousands on the day of Pentecost, Saul of Tarsus, and the Philippian jailer. Similar has been the experience of Christians in subsequent times. Take the eminent examples of Augustine, Luther, Bunyan, Owen, Halyburton and others.

True, cases can be found where the first stroke of the Spirit's power was the manifes­tation of love — the love of God — but the stroke left a sense of sin behind it. It is a sense of sin and unworthiness that makes the love of God in Christ so inexpressibly wonder­ful and precious in the eyes of the soul. The one is the complement of the other in saving experience, though in cases where the sense of love far exceeded the sense of sin, the lat­ter was swallowed up in the former, and, to the soul's consciousness, hardly seemed there at all. It is usually, however, the cry of the publican — "God be merciful to me, a sinner" — that is the first experience of God's people under the Spirit's work in conversion.

In Sanctification←↰⤒🔗

As to the sense of sin in sanctification, the Psalmist in the Old Testament and the Apostle Paul in the New, are outstanding inspired witnesses. The psalms bear striking testimony to the sense of sin in the process of sanctification. David and the other heaven-taught writers are constantly sensible of being still sinners in heart and life. They confess their shortcomings and provocations with plaintive sorrow, and they seek with persevering earnestness that will not take denial, the forgiveness of their iniquities and the light of God's favourable countenance.

The Apostle Paul in the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Romans describes his own experience at and after conversion, and his testimony clearly is that the living soul finds evil present with him. "I delight in the law of God after the inward man (a thing no unconverted or merely awakened sinner can say); but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bring­ing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members." Under an overwhelming sense of indwelling corruption he cries: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" And yet in the same breath he adds: "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Some modern interpreters who stand high in Presbyterian Churches, hold that the Apostle is here describing his first convictions of sin only prior to conversion — a great mistake and delusion. It is the man of faith and hope who says, "thank God through Jesus Christ," that bemoans at the same time the weight of "the body of this death."

Again, the Apostle describes the case of his brethren in Christ in Galatians 5:17, "For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other; so that ye cannot do the things that ye would." Here an inward con­flict is described which undoubtedly involves a sense of indwelling sin.

This Sense Must Persist←↰⤒🔗

Further, we remark that it stands to Chris­tian common-sense, in meditating upon these things of God and the soul, that the case should be as it really is. Regeneration is not perfect sanctification. Regeneration is the creation of a new man — "a new heart and a right spirit" — but it is not the complete cast­ing out of "the old man." "The old man" is cast down but not cast out. He is still alive and active, and though dethroned, seeks to regain the ascendancy that he has lost. All this underlines the manifold exhortations and warnings that the Apostle Paul and the other Apostles address to "the faithful in Christ Jesus," in relation to dangers from sin — and sin clearly and unmistakably in their own breasts — lasciviousness, malice, wrath, unbelief, and such like. Where the new creation reigns, there must, of necessity, be a sense of the sin that remains, a consciousness of its depravity and guilt, a conflict with its workings, and intense longings for deliverance from it, root and branch. How conspicuous by its absence is such a sense of sin in the popular religion of the times in which we live! Weighed in the balance of the sanctuary, that religion is found entirely wanting.

The Absence of the Spirit←↰⤒🔗

It is manifest, therefore, that the absence of this sense implies the absence of the Spirit, which is necessary to salvation. Many, indeed, are the evil results of the absence of the Spirit's work in His convincing and enlightening operations. The sinner who has religious convictions of a kind, and is not humbled before God by a sense of his sins, is beset with grave spiritual dangers. In fact, it has been remarked by thoughtful students of the things of the kingdom of God that no great error in doctrine or departure from the Scriptures has ever taken place, but an insufficient sense of the sinfulness of sin lay at the bottom of it. A deep conviction of our own sinfulness and liability to err, will keep us submissive to the wisdom of God as expressed in His word, and dependent on the teaching of the Spirit of truth, who cannot lie.