John 9:39-41

RESPONSIBILITY AND SIN

‘For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might he made blind. And some of the Pharisees which were with Him heard these words, and said unto Him, Are we blind also? Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.

John 9:39

A two-fold subject is before us: responsibility and sin. And the text ties the two parts together.

Out of much that is either stated or implied in these momentous words, two luminous points shine. The Incarnation has accentuated human responsibility, and taught us the true nature of sin.

I. What is responsibility?—Responsibility is the condition of being amenable to some tribunal. I am answerable for my actions to some one. If there be no God, then the highest court disappears. Some lower one becomes my highest. What lower one? My fellow-men, or my own conscience? But much of morality has only a very indirect reference to my fellow-men; and, as for conscience, its very name implies community of knowledge between two persons; and, if God be dismissed, it becomes a purely subjective function, and to say that I am answerable to such a tribunal becomes a figure of speech, and has no meaning for an inquirer who insists upon reducing figures to facts. Take we hold, then, of these four unassailable propositions, when invited by the modern materialist, to extend to the moral sphere the same principles of evolution which we were willing to accept to account for the physical:—

(a) A moral sense is ineradicable, universal, and defies analysis.

(b) Morality apart from responsibility is unthinkable.

(c) Responsibility without an external tribunal is equally unthinkable.

(d) A tribunal without a judge is equally unthinkable.

It is not surprising to find that those who deny a moral governor of the universe, decry the Christian’s conception of sin as one of the unhealthy elements of his creed.

II. What is sin?—The Greek word exactly fits its root-meaning. It is a ‘missing of the mark.’ The English words ‘error’ and ‘obliquity’ carry similar significance; a wandering from the path; a falling aside from the erect. Sin is no speculative subject. It lies not apart amid the cobwebs of the brain. Its repulsive features look out at us from the crowd of the hard factors of life; and no reasoning is less rational than that which either ignores it, or tries to fit it into any theory of the orderly evolution of the race. Sin has abounded; and abounds. With head bowed in shame, admit the knowledge. And then lift up the head and the hands that hang down, and admit ‘the light that shone when Hope was born,’ for ‘where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.’

—Bishop Alfred Pearson.

Illustration

‘Long years ago Daniel Webster was seated one evening at a crowded dinner-table. A friend asked him what had been the greatest thought that had ever entered his mind? A moment’s silence, and then the great answer came: “The greatest thought that ever entered my mind was that of my personal responsibility to a personal God.’ ”