Devoted to the Propagation and Defense of New Testament Christianity
VOLUME 14
February 14, 1963
NUMBER 40, PAGE 4,13b

Guilty

Editorial

Philosophers and students of humanity have found in every age that the persistence and the universal certainty of a sense of sin is the most tragic element in human experience. For other problems, man finds a cure. A broken bone, given time, will heal itself; an ignorant and unlearned man can be educated; a broken heart can be repaired, even if never fully restored. For disease and poverty and ignorance, man has sought and found solutions.

But for the terrible sense of guilt, no man has ever found a remedy. The race against conscience is a hopeless fight. The purest and most saintly of the race have been most red with shame over their sin against God. The great prophet Isaiah, in the year that King Uzziah died, saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up. In the presence of such holiness and such purity he was overwhelmed with the sense of his own awful guilt. He cried out, "Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, Jehovah of Hosts." Guilt, red and scarlet; guilt, corroding and cancerous; guilt, repulsive and fearful was searing his soul. Peter, in the presence of Jesus realizing the contrast between that immaculate Son of God and his own blackened and twisted soul, fell down at Jesus' feet saying, "Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, 0 Lord." High-minded Paul, zealous for the law beyond all reason, still felt the terrible clutch of guilt closing its fingers around his heart, "For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing; for to will is present with me, but to do that which is good is not. For the good which I would, I do not; and the evil which I would not, that I practice....0, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"

Our Own Experience

We need not go, however, to the Bible nor even to the philosophers, to find confirmation of the universality and the inevitability of a sense of sin. Every one of us can testify that it is present in our hearts. In our youth, perhaps, we are not so conscious of it. Religion then must attract us more by the ideals and the aspirations which it inspires in us; but as the mellowing years hurry by, we turn more and more to religion for the remedy and the relief which it offers for our weaknesses and sins. The need of forgiveness becomes increasingly urgent and persistent. We have missed our opportunities; we have neglected our duties; we have wasted precious years of our lives. We have not been fully loyal to the best we knew; we have been blind and stupid in our hot pursuit of earthly treasures; we have sinned against the love and light of God!

The years do not lessen nor wear thin this sense of guilt. On the contrary, they increase it. Guilt, a bad conscience, terrible remorse — how bitter and how horrible life can be when these are our constant companions. The nimble feet of youth may outrun them for a while; but time will take care of that. One day GUILT will stand in your path and block your way. There will be no turning to the right nor to the left. There will be no escape from his clutch. It will then be that you will know the full poignancy of that cry on Pentecost, the urgency under which these heart-broken people cried out, "What shall we do?" It will be then that you will recognize the chilling truth and the dreadful accuracy of Luke's statement that they were "cut to the heart."

Escape Attempts

In ages past, men have tried to gain relief from their sense of sin by offering sacrifices to their heathen gods. They even went so far as to offer up human sacrifices. And the prophets of the Old Testament thundered in fiery indignation against the Israelites, because some of them were following the pagan example, and making their on children pass through the fire unto Moloch. Such sacrifices were able only to delude and deceive; they could never remove guilt; they could not bring about forgiveness of sins.

Indeed, even the holy law which God gave to Israel could not accomplish that. "For the Law, having a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image of the things, can never with the same sacrifices year by year, which they offer continually, make perfect them that draw nigh. Else why would they not have ceased to be offered? because the worshippers, having been once cleansed, would have had no more consciousness of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance made of sins year by year. For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins."

In modern times, men do not follow so much the practice of offering sacrifices to heathen gods; nor do they attempt to follow the sacrifices of the Mosaical law. But we do have in these days a vast and awesome spectacle of multiplied millions of people going through rituals, ceremonials, traditional forms of worship, and following doctrines and dogmas designed by men in the vain and mistaken hope that these things will remove their guilt. Catholic people make confession to their priests, and do penance. Protestant people go to their various churches, founded by men, teaching the doctrines of men, and go through the rituals and ceremonials they have laid down.

All such hopes are vain and all such efforts are wasted. Men's efforts can never release them from guilt. One may go through every religious device and ceremony that the race has ever devised, and not be one whit cleaner or less guilty. Philosopher, priest, and psychiatrist are alike impotent to remove the guilt of sin. Such is beyond human power. Only God can do that.

God's Way

Christ commanded his disciples to go into all the world and preach the gospel, the good news that He, the risen Christ, is ready and willing to save all men from their sins. Although the salvation which Christ gives is offered to all men, only those who believe and obey the gospel will receive it. Man must not only believe the gospel, he must also they the commands given therein. Obedience is essential. Christ is the author of salvation unto "all them that obey him." (Heb. 5:8, 9) The work of preaching the gospel was to begin in Jerusalem (Luke 24:46, 47) and It is there that we may learn from him who had the keys of the kingdom (Matthew 16:19) just what the Lord expected of men. (Acts 2:1- 41) These people heard Jesus proclaimed as both Lord and Christ and it produced faith in them that he was the Son of God. Because of this they said, "What shall we do?" They were not saved by "faith only" for they realized that there was something they "must do." Peter answered them as follows: "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." (Acts 2:38) That is a plain answer and not hard to be understood. From all of this we learn that men must believe in Christ, repent of their sins, and be baptized in order to have their sins remitted. Remission of sins follows baptism in God's plan. The record says, "They that gladly received the word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls." (Acts 2:41) Here is the New Testament plan of salvation for people today. Since God is no respecter of persons, if one today believes and obeys the same as they did, he can have today what they had then. That is God's way — and there is no other. For this alone we preach. Have YOU obeyed God or men?

— F. Y. T.