Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. LukeMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. Luke
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Luke -- Commentaries
And then, remember, that when you begin to talk about the guilt of
actions in God's sight, you have to go far below the mere surface.
If we could see the infinite complexity of motives--aggravations on
the one side and palliations on the other--which go to the doing of
a single deed, we should not be so quick to pronounce that the
publican and the harlot are worse than the Pharisee. It is quite
possible that an action which passes muster in regard to the
morality of the world may, if regard be had (which God only can
exercise) to the motive for which it is done, be as bad as, if not
worse than, the lust and the animalism, drunkenness and debauchery,
crime and murder, which the vulgar scales of the world consider to
be the heavier. If you once begin to try to measure guilt, you will
have to pass under the surface appearance, and will find that many a
white and dazzling act has a very rotten inside, and that many a
very corrupt and foul one does not come from so corrupt a source as
at first sight might seem to be its origin. Let us be very modest in
our estimate of the varying guilt of actions, and remember that,
deep down below all diversities, there lies a fundamental identity,
in which there is no difference, that all of us respectable people
that never broke a law of the nation, and scarcely ever a law of
propriety, in our lives, and the outcasts, if there are any here
now, the drunkards, the sensualists, all of us stand in this respect
in the same class. We are all debtors, for we have 'all sinned and
come short of the glory of God,' A viper an inch long and the
thickness of whipcord has a sting and poison in it, and is a viper.
And if the question is whether a man has got small-pox or not, one
pustule is as good evidence as if he was spotted all over. So,
remember, he who owes five hundred and he who owes the tenth part of
it, which is fifty, are both debtors.
II. Now notice the common insolvency.
'They had nothing to pay.' Well, if there is no money, 'no effects'
in the bank, no cash in the till, nothing to distrain upon, it does
not matter very much what the amount of the debt is, seeing that
there is nothing to meet it, and whether it is fifty or five hundred
the man is equally unable to pay. And that is precisely our
position.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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