Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 79:315 (Jul 1922)
Article: The Doctrine Of Sin
Author: Joseph Kyle

BSac 79:315 (July 1922) p. 238

The Doctrine Of Sin

Joseph Kyle

I am to deal with the most appalling fact to be discovered in all the vast range of the universe of God; a fact that holds within its awful compass the sum of all the woes. Out of it, as from a seething Stygian pool, all evils flow; and back to it, as to a bottomless pit, they all return; for in that strangest phrase that ever was spoken by our Lord, there is the revelation of the very essence of Hell’s despair, “guilty of an eternal sin.” That argues an eternal Hell. Certain deluded brethren are once more advancing the baseless theory of “Conditional Immortality” and its corollary the “Annihilation of the wicked.” Here is a phrase that discovers the absolute unscripturalness of the conception. In the very nature of things an Eternal Sin predicates eternal immortality, eternal consciousness, eternal responsibility, and cannot mean eternal nothingness.

For various reasons, some of which are good, some are bad, but none of which should be held indifferent, this subject is one from which most of us are disposed to turn away. If the heart is what it ought to be, or even in some fair measure is right with God, then sin in its every phase and relation is hateful, abominable; and hence even to think of it is not a pleasant exercise. And, on the other hand, if that triad of evils, the world, and the flesh, and the devil, sway the mind, one is loathe to enter into judgment upon sin; for he knows that he must find much in himself which he is unwilling to discover. In such case, if sentence is passed at all, it will be of the nature of compromise, which is but additional sin. There are yet in the world, it must be confessed, those, whom we all too much resemble, who

“Compound for sins they are inclined to do
By damning those they have no mind to.”

BSac 79:315 (July 1922) p. 239

Nothing of all the various phases and aspects of sin more signally illustrates its many-sidedness in character and its manifoldness in power than does the fact that we most dislike to know the real demerit of the sins which we are the least averse to practice. And nothing more clearly reveals the cunning craftiness of him by whom sin came into our world than does his success in making men dishonest with themselves, and willing to have the truth hidden from their eyes, or their eyes blinded to the truth. The attitude of mind and spirit that alone is fitting in our study is that to which one is brought, when, the Spirit of God helping his infirmity, he prays: “Open Thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law.” “Search me, 0 God, and know my heart; try me and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”