《The Biblical Illustrator – Romans (Ch. 6b~8a)》

5. They are not abiding. What joy they have, and it is far beneath what they might have, is fleeting and transitory. Every object on which their joy depends is perishing--is a dying and a transitory object. They were not created to be the permanent food of an immortal mind. To expect permanent bliss, and base the hope of it on that which worms can devour, and thieves break through and steal, is to expect grapes of thorns and figs of thistles; is to sow to the wind and reap the whirlwind; is to pierce ourselves through with many sorrows.

6. They are dangerous, being guilty and forbidden. That a nature capable of loving his Maker should fix his supreme attachment elsewhere is offering God a perpetual insult, and exposing the offender to the indignation and wrath of the holy and jealous Jehovah. Having noticed how entirely without any fruit or enjoyment was the good man in his unconverted state in those things which he once tried to enjoy we shall--

II. View him under the operation of that shame and regret to which his past conduct has subjected him. He is brought to see that God is worthy of his whole heart, and that he has withheld it, and has worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is over all, God blessed forever. He becomes conscious of a quarrel with his Maker, but for no reason that he dare now assign. Every attribute of His nature is glorious, and every act of His government holy, and just, and good. And still the sinner has placed the supreme love on some idol, and refused to love and worship his Maker and his Redeemer. “Then shalt thou be ashamed,” says the prophet in the name of the Lord, “and never open thy mouth any more, because of thy shame, when I am pacified toward thee for all that thou hast done.” And the Psalmist says, “Thou makest me to bear the iniquities of my youth.” His shame is greatly enhanced by the consideration that he must now be indebted, as he always has been, for all his benefits to one whom he has always expelled from his affections. He sees, too, that the ground of his preference for idols was a depraved heart, that would prefer anything to God would love a stock or a stone more than the infinitely adorable and kind Creator; and in the meantime would not be convinced that the course he took ruined him, that his misplaced affections polluted and belittled his mind, and that he was ensnared, and impoverished, and destroyed by the works of his own hands. Now it is that the man becomes filled with shame and confusion of face.

III. The end of these things would naturally have been, to the now regenerate man, and must be to all men who do not repent, death.

1. A course of sin leads to bad society. If men will be transgressors, they must of necessity associate with men of similar pursuit. Make the attempt to collect a company of sober, serious, thoughtful, ungodly men, and if you do not soon discover that no such society can be formed, then have we very much mistaken the true state of the world.

2. A course of sin absorbs precious time. Unregenerate men throw away very many years of their probation. All that time that the Christian must spend in his closet, in the study of the Bible, and in the duties of domestic worship, the ungodly have to spare. This shortens life, and begets the habit of not thinking--the habit of placing the mind in an attitude of listlessness and inattention, than which no habit can be more ruinous to one whose happiness in this life and in the life to come depends so much on prompt and vigorous action. If we are to reach heaven, and would be prepared for it, we must form soon the very opposite habit, and must learn to husband well every hour that lies between us and the grave.

3. A course of sin is death, as it leads to the adoption of bad sentiments, and engenders an erroneous creed. There is an whole system of infidelity taught and believed in the promiscuous associations of the ungodly. It may not be styled infidelity, and lectures may not be given in the formal didactic mode, but the result may be the same.

4. A course of sin benumbs the right affections. It tends to destroy filial confidence, and fraternal, and parental, and conjugal affection. Devotion to some idol easily becomes stronger than any of the natural relationships, and thus neutralises many a restraint, that the God of nature, as the infidel would name Jehovah, has imposed. But when we pass these and speak of the religious affections, it hardly need be said that all these are suppressed and quenched by a course of sin.

5. A course of sin ends in death as it nourishes the unhallowed passions. Men grow worse day by day while they remain in the gall of bitterness and under the bonds of iniquity. Their position is never stationary, but their course downward, downward, downward toward the blackness of darkness forever.

6. A course of sin tends to death as it offers constant provocation of the Spirit of God. On the operations of His Spirit we are dependent for life and salvation. There is no amount of means, or force of human eloquence, or impetus of natural resolution that can arrest the course of sin. Men will not try to stop themselves, nor allow themselves to be stayed in their course by any human power. Hence our only hope is that God will make them willing in the day of His power. But every act of sin is resistance made to the efforts of His mercy and the influence of His Spirit. (D. A. Clark.)

Apples of Sodom: or the fruits of sin

The son of Sirach prudently advised, “Judge none blessed before his death; for a man shall be known in his children.” This holds good concerning the family of sin: for it keeps a good house which is full of company and servants; it is served by the possessions of the world, courted by the unhappy, flattered by fools, and feasted all the way of its progress. But if we look to what are the children of this splendid family, and see what issue sin produces, it may help to untie the charm. Sin and concupiscence marry together and feast highly; but the children of their filthy union are ugly, foolish, and ill-matured--shame and death. These are the fruits of sin--apples of Sodom, fair on the outside, but within full of ashes and rottenness. And the tree with its fruits go together; if you will have the mother, you must take the daughters. In answer to the question of the text we are to consider--

I. What is the sum total of the pleasures of sin. Most of them will be found very punishments.

1. To pass over the miseries ensuing from envy, murder, and a whole catalogue of sins, every one of which is a disease, we may observe that nothing pretends to pleasure but the lusts of the flesh, ambition, and revenge. These alone cozen us with a fair outside; and yet on a survey of their fruits we shall see how miserably they deceive us.

2. For a man cannot take pleasure in the lusts of the flesh unless he be helped forward by inconsideration and folly. Grave and wise persons are extremely less affected by them than the hare-brained boy. It is a strange beauty that none but the blind or blear-eyed can see.

3. The pleasures of intemperance are nothing but the relics and images of pleasure, after nature has been feasted; for so long as she needs, and temperance waits, pleasure stands by: but as temperance begins to go away, having done the ministries of nature, every morsel and drop is less delicious and endurable, but as men force nature to stay longer than she would.

4. With these pretenders to pleasure there is so much trouble to bring them to act an enjoyment, that the appetite is above half tired before it comes. An ambitious man must be wonderfully patient; and no one buys death and damnation at so dear a rate as he who fights for it, enduring heat and cold and hunger; and who practises all the austerities of the hermit, with this difference that the one does it for heaven and the other for hell. And as for revenge, its pleasure is like that of eating chalk and coals, or like the feeding of a cancer or a wolf; the man is restless till it be done, and when it is everyone sees how infinitely removed he is from satisfaction.

5. These sins, when they are entertained with the greatest fondness from without, must have little pleasure, because there is a strong faction against them. Something within strives against the entertainment, and they sit uneasy on the spirit, when the man is vexed that they are not lawful. They are against a man’s conscience, i.e., against his reason and his rest.

6. The pleasure in those few sins that pretend to it is a little limited nothing, confined to a single faculty, to one sense; and that which is the instrument of sense is its torment. By the faculty through which it tastes it is afflicted, for so long as it can taste it is tormented with desire, and when it can desire no longer it cannot feel pleasure.

7. Sin hath little or no pleasure in its enjoyment because its very manner of entry and production is by a curse and a contradiction. Men love sin because it is forbidden, some out of the spirit of disobedience, some by wildness, some because they are reproved, many by importunity; and sins grow up with spite, peevishness, and wrath.

8. The pleasures in the enjoyment of sin are trifling because so transient; if they be in themselves little this makes them still less; but if they were great this would change the delight into torment. Add to this that it so passes away that nothing pleasant remains behind: it is like the path of an arrow; no man can tell what is become of the pleasures of last night’s sin.

9. Sin has in its best advantages but a trifling pleasure, because not only God, reason, conscience, honour, interest, and laws sour it, but the devil himself makes it troublesome; so that one sin contradicts another and vexes the man with a variety of evils. Does not envy punish flattery, and self-love torment the drunkard? Which is the greater, the pleasure of prodigalities or the pain of the consequent poverty?

10. Sin has so little relish that it is always greater in expectation than possession. If men could see this beforehand they would not pursue it so eagerly.

11. The fruits of its present possession, the pleasures of taste, are less pleasant, because no sober or intelligent man likes it long. He approves it in the height of passion and under the disguise of temptation, but at all other times he finds it ugly and unreasonable, and the remembrance abates its pleasures.

II. What fruits and relishes sin if leaves behind it by its natural efficiency.

1. Paul comprises them under the scornful appellation of “shame.” The natural fruits of sin are--

(a) Man was first tempted by the promise of knowledge; he fell into darkness by believing that the devil held forth to him a new light. It was not likely that good should come from so foul a beginning: the man and the woman knew good, and all that was offered them was the experience of evil. Now this was the introduction of ignorance. When the understanding suffered itself to be so baffled as to study evil, the will was so foolish as to fall in love with it, and they conspired to undo each other. For when the will began to love it, then the understanding was set on work to advance, approve, believe it, and to be factious on behalf of the new purchase. Not, however, that the understanding received any natural diminution, but received impediment by new propositions. It lost and willingly forgot what God taught, went from the fountain of truth, and gave trust to the father of lies.

(b) It is certain that if a man would be pleased with sin, or persuade others to be so, he must do it by false propositions. Who is a greater fool than an atheist who sees rare effects and denies their cause, an excellent government without a prince? But in persuading men to this the devil never prevailed very far, although he has prevailed in a thing almost as senseless, viz., idolatry, which not only makes God after man’s image, but in the likeness of a cat, etc. But he has succeeded yet farther in prevailing upon men to believe that evil is good and good evil, that fornication can make them happy and drunkenness wise, and that sin has pleasure and good enough in it to make amends for the pains of damnation. Sin has no better argument than a fly has to enter a candle. Such is the sinner’s philosophy, and no wiser are his hopes, viz., that he can in an instant make amends for the evils of years, or else that he shall be saved whether he will or no: or that heaven shall be had for a sigh; i.e., he hopes without a promise and believes that he shall have mercy for which he never had a revelation. If this be knowledge or wisdom then there is no such thing as folly or madness.

(c) There are some sins whose very formality is a lie. Superstition could not exist if men believed that God was good, wise, free, and merciful, and no man would do in private what he fears to do in public if he knew that God sees him there and will bring that work of darkness into the light. He who excuses a fault by telling a lie, believes it better to be guilty of two faults than one. The first natural fruit of sin then is to make a man a fool, and this is shame enough.

(a) He sins against his own interest. He knows that he will be ruined by it, but the evil custom remains.

(b) Custom prevails against experience. Though the man has been disgraced and undone it will not cure him.

2. Although these are the shameful effects of sin, yet there are some sins which are directly shameful in their nature, and every one of which has a venomous quality of its own. Thus the devil’s sin was the worst because it came from the greatest malice; Adam’s because it was most universal; Judas’ because against the most excellent Person. This is a strange poison in sin that of so many sorts every one of them should be the worst. Every sin has an evil spirit of its own to manage and embitter it, but to some sins shame is more appropriate, such as lying, lust, vow making, and inconstancy. And such is the fate of sin that the shame grows more and more; we lie to men and excuse it to God. And the shame will follow the sin beyond the grave.

III. What are its consequences by its demerit and the wrath of God which it has deserved.

1. The impossibility of concealment. No wicked man ever went off the scene of his unworthiness without a vile character. The intolerable apprehensions of sinners themselves, and the slightest circumstances often bring to light what was transacted behind the curtains of light.

2. Sin itself; and when God punishes in this way He is extremely angry, for then it is not medicinal but exterminating. One evil invites another, and when the Holy Spirit is quenched the man is left to the mercy of his merciless enemy.

3. Fearful plagues, and even when God forgives the sinner retribution is not wholly withheld. It is promised through Christ that we shall not die, but not that we shall not be smitten.

The fruits of sin

I. It is unprofitable. “What fruit had ye?”

1. Some sins are plainly mischievous to the temporal interest of men, as tending either to the disturbance of their minds, or the endangering of their health and lives, or to the prejudice of their estates, or the blasting of their good name.

2. There are other sins which, though they are not so visibly attended with mischievous consequences, bring no real advantage either in respect of gain or pleasure; such are the sins of profaneness and swearing.

3. Even those sins which make the fairest pretence to be of advantage to us, when all accounts are cast up will be found in no degree able to perform and make good what they so largely promise.

II. It is shameful. Most men when they commit a known fault are apt to be ashamed whenever they are put in mind of it. Some, indeed, have gone so far in sin as to be past all shame (Jeremiah 6:15). But yet even these, when they become sensible of their guilt so as to be brought to repentance, cannot then but be ashamed of what they have done. Sin contains in it whatsoever is justly accounted infamous, together with all the aggravations of shame and reproach that can be imagined. And this will appear by considering sin--

1. In relation to ourselves.

(a) Therefore the Scripture likens it to the meanest condition among men--slavery. So that to be a sinner is to be a slave to some vile passion or irregular desire; it is to part with one of the most valuable things in the world, our liberty, upon low and unworthy terms.

(b) There is no greater argument of a degenerate spirit than to do such things as a man would blush to be surprised in, and would be troubled to hear of afterwards, and which is more, after he hath been convinced of this, to have so little self-command as not to be able to free himself from this bondage.

(c) And that sin is of this shameful nature is evident, in that the greatest part of sinners take so much care to hide their vices (1 Thessalonians 5:7).

2. In respect of God.

III. It is fatal. No fruit then when ye did these things; shame now that you come to reflect upon them; and death at the last. The principal ingredients of this miserable state.

1. The anguish of a guilty conscience, “the worm that dies not.” Though God should inflict no positive punishment, yet this is a revenge which every man’s mind would take upon him.

2. Another ingredient. The lively apprehension of the invaluable happiness which they have lost by their own obstinacy and foolish choice.

3. A quick sense of intolerable pain aggravated by--

The fruits of sin

I know a man at the present moment--a man I said, but, alas I poor wretched mortal, he looks hardly like a man. I saw him in rags, shivering in the drenching rain but yesterday. He came of reputable parents; I knew his relatives well. He had some four hundred pounds or more left him a few years ago. As soon as ever he could get hold of it he came to London, and in about a month he spent it all in a hideous whirlwind of evil. He went back a beggar and in rags, full of horrible sickness, loathsome, and an outcast. Since that time he has been so often aided by his friends that they have entirely given him up, and now this poor wretch, with scarce enough rags to hide his nakedness, has no eye left to pity him, and no hand to help him. He has been helped again and again and again; but to help him appears to be useless, for at the very first opportunity he returns to his old sins. The workhouse, the hospital, the grave are his portion, for he seems unable to rise to the dignity of labour, and no one will harbour him. I could fairly cry at the sight of him, but what can be done for him if he will destroy himself by his sins? If you say to him, “Why do your friends not notice you?” he will tell you, “They cannot notice me.” He has brought his mother to the grave; he has wearied out everybody who has pitied him, for his life has been so thoroughly bad that it excites no pity, but disgusts his own relatives. For the love of the Lord Jesus I will try this unhappy man again, and intend tomorrow to see him washed, and clothed, and fed, and put in a way of livelihood, but I have very slender hope of being of any lasting service to him, for he has been tried so often. Yet I never saw a wretch in such misery. He is emaciated, ragged, and has known hunger, and cold, and nakedness month after month, and unless he mends his ways this will be his lot till he dies. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The fruits of sin

I remember once seeing a mob of revellers streaming out from a masked ball in a London theatre in the early morning sunlight, draggled and heavy-eyed, the rouge showing on the cheeks, and the shabby tawdriness of the foolish costumes pitilessly revealed by the pure light. So will many a life look when the day dawns and the wild riot ends in its unwelcome beams. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

The fruits of sin

Evil premeditated is evil at its best--attractive, desirable, full of promises which the senses can understand and the passions love; but evil perpetrated is evil at its worst--hideous, hateful, stripped of its illusions and clothed in its native misery. In his anger at finding Jesus not to be the Christ he had hoped for and desired, Judas deserted and betrayed Him; in the terrible calm that succeeded indulgence he awoke to the realities within and about him, saw how blindly he had lived and hated, how far the Messianic ideal of Jesus transcended his own. (A. M. Fairbairn.)

The unfruitfulness of sin

It is recorded of himself by one who, in his unconverted state, was as remarkable for his gay and reckless disregard of religion as he afterwards, by the grace of God, became for his spirituality and devotedness, that when some of his dissolute companions were once congratulating him on his distinguished felicity, a dog happening at the time to come into the room, he could not forbear groaning inwardly and saying to himself, “Oh that I were that dog!”

The unfruitfulness and misery of sin

One of the surest means by which Satan keeps men under his power is by keeping them in ignorance of their state. Did they once see what sin really is, they would quickly leave it. Our text sets sin before us in its true colours, and shows us what it is when stripped of every covering.

I. Sin yields no present fruit, nothing which deserves the name of fruit. It may furnish some short gratification, but this is not fruit. Sin makes, indeed large promises, but it cannot fulfil them. Compare Eve in the Garden of Eden, Judas, the Prodigal Son.

II. Sin is followed by shame. Shame is that confusion of mind which arises from a consciousness of guilt. For a time men may sin without feeling shame, but a day is coming when every “hidden thing of darkness” will be brought to light. Look at Peter when he saw his guilt in having denied his Master.

III. Sin ends in death (James 1:15; Genesis 2:17). Death is the certain consequence of sin. Death, in this sense, means the separation of the soul from the favour, the presence, and the Spirit of God. Consider these things, forsake sin, and turn to God. (E. Cooper.)

The unprofitableness of sin

Walking in the country, I went into a barn where I found a thresher at his work. I addressed him in the words of Solomon: “In all labour there is profit.” Leaning upon his flail, with much energy he answered, “Sir, that is the truth, but there is one exception to it: I have long laboured in the service of sin, but I have got no profit by my labour.” “Then you know something of the apostle’s meaning when he asked, ‘What fruit’? etc.” “Thank God,” said he, “I do; and I also know that even ‘being made free from sin,’ etc.” How valuable this simple faith in the Word of God! and how true is the saying of a deceased writer that “piety found in a barn is better than the most splendid pleasure of a palace!” (W. Jay.)

The folly of sin

It is not only a crime that men commit when they do wrong, but it is a blunder. “The game is not worth the candle,” according to the French proverb. The thing that you buy is not worth the price you pay for it. Sin is like a great forest tree that we sometimes see standing up green in its leafy beauty and spreading a broad shadow over half a field; but when we get round on the other side there is a great dark hollow in the very heart of it, and corruption is at work there. It is like the poison tree in travellers’ stories, tempting weary men to rest beneath its thick foliage, and insinuating death into the limbs that relax in the fatal coolness of its shade. It is like the apples of Sodom, fair to look upon, but turning to acrid ashes on the unwary lips. It is like the magician’s rod that we read about in old books. There it lies; and if, tempted by its glitter or fascinated by the power that it proffers you, you take it in your hand, the thing starts into a serpent with erected crest and sparkling eye, and plunges its quick barb into the hand that holds it, and sends poison through all the veins. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)