The Great Commission. Miscellaneous Writings of C. H. Mackintosh, vol. IVMackintosh, Charles Henry
Religion
The Great Commission. Miscellaneous Writings of C. H. Mackintosh, vol. IV
Mackintosh, Charles Henry
Theology
word, when speaking of the former, from that which He applies to the
latter. This, we conceive, is beyond all question.
But there is another objection urged against the doctrine of eternal
punishment. It is frequently said, "How can we suppose that God would
inflict eternal punishment as a penalty for a few short years of sin?"
We reply, It is beginning at the wrong end to argue in this way. It
is not a question of time as viewed from man's standpoint, but of the
gravity of sin itself as looked at from God's standpoint. And how is
this question to be solved? Only by looking at the Cross. If you want
to know what sin is in God's sight, you must look at what it cost Him
to put it away. It is by the standard of Christ's infinite sacrifice,
and by that alone, that you can rightly measure sin. Men may compare
their few years with God's eternity; they may compare their short span
of life with that boundless eternity that stretches beyond; they may
seek to put a few years of sin into one scale, and an eternity of woe
and torment into the other, and thus attempt to reach a just
conclusion: but it will never do to argue thus. The question is, Did
it require an infinite atonement to put away sin? If so, the
punishment of sin must be eternal. If nothing short of an infinite
sacrifice could deliver from the consequences of sin, those
consequences must be eternal.
In a word, then, we must look at sin from God's point of view, and
measure it by His standard, else we shall never have a just sense of
what it is or what it deserves. It is the height of folly for men to
attempt to lay down a rule as to the amount or duration of the
punishment due to sin. God alone can settle this. And, after all, what
was it that produced all the misery and wretchedness, the sickness and
sorrow, the death and desolation, of well-nigh six thousand years?
Just _one_ act of disobedience--the eating of a forbidden fruit. Can
man explain this? Can human reason explain how one act produced such
an overwhelming amount of misery? It cannot. Well, then, if it cannot
do this, how can it be trusted when it attempts to decide the question
as to what is due to sin? Woe be to all those who commit themselves to
its guidance on this most momentous point!
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