James 1:13-15 Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempts he any man:… The working of sin does not end with the angry speech, the lie, the act of dishonesty or sensual indulgence: it hardens, darkens, debases the nature, renders the heart opener than before to all evil influences, and less open to all good; and unless the Divine mercy intervene, will certainly at last yield as its result death, in the most comprehensive and awful sense of that word. From the nature of things, death, in the great Bible use of the term — blight and desolation over the whole man, spirit, soul and body — is the consequence of sin. Sin renders intercourse with God, who is the Fountain of life, impossible. It consists in the exercise of feelings that in their own nature are utterly inconsistent with true happiness; and it increases constantly in strength, in malignity, in power to destroy the peace of the soul. Death follows sin as naturally, and by as constant a law, as the deadly nightshade bears poison berries. Besides, looked at apart from these essential tendencies of sin, the relation which it bears to conscience and to the justice of God renders the connection between it and death — between iniquity and misery — indissoluble. Death is "the wages of sin," due to it in justice. Under the righteous administration of the affairs of the universe by God, there is the same obligation in justice that sin should be followed by death, as that a labourer should receive the recompense he has been promised and has worked for. Sin is spiritual death, and every act of sin intensifies the spiritual deadness; to sin, and sin alone, is due that awful and mysterious change which severs soul from body, and which we commonly call death; and when sin is "finished" — when it is allowed to go on to its legitimate issues — "it bringeth forth" that intensity of misery, transcending our present powers of conception, which John calls "the second death," and which the Lord Himself, the Faithful Witness, describes as "outer darkness, where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." (R. Johnstone, LL. B.) Parallel Verses KJV: Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: |
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