WHERE SIN IS SEEN AND JUDGED

^[p. 166] WHERE SIN IS SEEN AND JUDGED

You desire ‘to see what sin is in its depths without committing it’, but even if you did commit it you would not see it in its depths except as you stood in the light; nothing can give you a true estimate of what sin is except seeing that the death of the Son of God could alone remove it out of the way of the course of God’s love. His love remained checked and could find no outlet towards man until Christ died. The sin and the man who did the sin was to be terminated in the death of Christ — the righteous One — He bearing the judgment on the first Adam, not to reinstate the first Adam, but that God might be at liberty in His love and grace to begin anew in the beings who had been under His judgment, and who were judicially terminated by the righteous One in death. A sin may be measured either by the injury it inflicts on man, myself included, or by the estrangement of heart and wilfulness of intention with regard to God. But I believe everything of mere nature when seen in the light of the cross, how it works, how it asserts and assumes and cloaks itself, even in the commonest evil, gives me a deeper, or as deep a sense of the evil of sin as would come of the more heinous crimes. If you revive what is of the old man you revive what has been judged in the cross. The mind gets coloured by whatever you occupy it with, therefore it is said, “Have your mind on the things that are above” (Colossians 3: 2).