[AI translation] I would like to pick up where we left off a week ago today. The Lord spoke to us then about how much easier it is to walk in the way of salvation than in the way of damnation. It is much harder to be damned, it takes much more effort, work, and effort to be damned than it does to be saved. God has made it really hard for us to perish! It is simply because God does not want anyone to die, but on the contrary, He wants even the sinner, even the man who is worthy and worthy of damnation in every respect, to repent and live. God wants to save everyone! Jesus did not come to condemn this world - though there is much to condemn in it - but to "seek and save that which was lost." (Lk 19,10) God has mobilized the whole of heaven so that we might be saved. Yet if anyone is lost, he must also oppose God's will, he must also persevere in the face of God's plan, as the writer of Hebrews says: he will not "care for such great anxiety." (Heb 2:3b) Circumlocating the Greek word used here, we might say: he must negate, despise, belittle God's saving purpose, plan and work! We talked a week ago today about how anyone who wants to be damned must spend a lifetime fighting God's love and grace and consistently ignoring what God says about death and the afterlife. Let's keep it up! What are the problems of those who oppose God's saving will?1) Whoever wants to be damned must suffer a lifetime of sin, must live as a slave to sin! Slavery is not easy! Sin is terribly cruel to its slaves! Think about it! Every sin is a fall, and that hurts, doesn't it? Every sin is a wound, and wounds hurt! It may have been a very long time ago, but perhaps some of us are still hurting at the memory of our first lie, Or how it can still hurt decades later, a long-ago regret, or an apology that is forever overdue. It is always a bleeding wound, the moment when someone has lost their purity forever! So painful was Peter's denial of Christ, his sin there in the high priest's court, that the great, strong man, the apostle of the rock, wept like a child who had been very, very much hurt. Man is generally easily tempted to sin because he hopes for something good, expects happiness, seeks pleasure in it, though he has found a thousand times that all such hopes and searches are disappointing, yet he begins again the next time.
Sin gives no rest, it chases on, to the point of exhaustion. I read of a woman who longed for happiness, but she also knew that the happiness she longed for could only be achieved for her through sin. She was warned in earnest to beware, for true happiness can never come from a false path. In vain was the word of wisdom, and he went on down the wrong road until he got what he wanted. And then he had to learn bitterly that it was no longer happiness! Sin is like the money of Judas, the thirty pieces of silver: it glitters in the hand, it torments the heart! Oh, it is not easy, and it is not joyful, to serve sin! A man is horrified to see his heart growing harder year by year, his soul becoming desensitized to the things of God, his old bad habits and passions taking possession of him more and more, his whole form, body, and appearance becoming more and more miserable and wretched! Have you ever seen this slow destructive work of sin in any one? How terrible it is, is it not? Have you ever seen it in yourself? Others see it in us before we see it in ourselves! We do not regard sin as a terrible thing as God does, though surely He knows better. (1 Cor 15:56a) It is a needle through which Satan injects the serum of death into our lives. Sin is a terrible thing: it promises paradise and gives hell; it promises pleasure and wounds us to death. Then it is also part of its nature that sin rarely goes it alone. If it enters one's dwelling, it immediately takes dominion there, and opens the door at will to all other sins. Whoever gives a little finger to a sin will soon find that it wants the whole man!
According to an Arab proverb, sin also has five fingers: with two of them it covers the two eyes of its victim, so that he cannot see the abomination of his own deeds, nor the end of his journey. With the other two fingers, he plugs the sinner's ears, so that he will not hear the warning from above, or the bitter complaints and lamentations of his own. And the fifth finger he puts over the mouth of the guilty man, so that he cannot cry for help, but only obey in silence! Indeed, he who commits sin is not the master of sin, but its servant! Many times, perhaps, he would very much like to leave that sin, but sin will not leave him! Once upon a time, when a man was condemned to be a galley slave, this word was struck into the body of the condemned man with a fiery iron: Forced labour. From then on, that unfortunate man was a despised person, no longer free, but a slave. This is what sin does! Oh, it is not easy at all for him who would damn: he has not a moment's peace, never a moment's undisturbed happiness, but all the more his groans, his moans, his pains, his late sorrows! Is it so easy when one is forced to see oneself destroyed, how one is produced, how one is ripe for death, eternal death, damnation?
Do you feel how much more difficult, a thousand times more difficult, is the road to hell than the road to heaven? Terrible burdens must be borne there, and with every step these burdens become heavier! Why carry it when you don't have to?! It can be put down, it can be got rid of, it can be cleansed. Oh, how much easier to accept that "the blood of Jesus Christ... cleanses us from all sin" (1 John 1:7). God has made salvation so infinitely easy for us that we, who are used to the torturous, difficult path of damnation, can almost not accept salvation because we don't want to believe that this is it!
2) Our Word says, "He who has died is freed from sin" (Rom 6:7) When the slave died, he was freed from the dominion of his master. A dead slave is no longer a slave's master. No matter what he commands him, no matter what he tortures him, no matter what he chases him: that slave is freed from the dominion of his former master by death. Well: however cruel the slave-owner may be, if I, who have served sin, die with Christ, I am out of his power. For the Scripture speaks of such mysteries, that our old man, our self, was crucified with Christ, and that we were baptized into the death of Christ, and even that we were buried with Christ by baptism into death. And it speaks of our being made one with Him in the likeness of His death! What is meant by these strange expressions is that Christ did not die for sinful man, did not die in his place, but that in the body of Christ our old man is in him, in him our self dies, and so is freed from sin by death with Christ.
So unwilling is God to the death of sinful man, that he is able to regard the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, his damnation, as if I had died! He also sees me, my sin-serving person in Him, He sees me in the death of Jesus Christ, He sees me as one with Christ who died on the cross! And if God is willing to see it this way, then we are free to see ourselves this way. That is why the apostle continues, "In this way you also consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Rom 6,11) This does not mean that you imagine yourselves to be dead to sin, but that you regard yourselves as truly dead to sin through Christ. Behold: so unwilling does God want a sinful man to die, so willing does He want him to live, that he has nothing to do but accept what God has prepared completely for him without him, but for him! Yet the only way to be damned is to pass by the cross and despise, despise, neglect what God has done there! In hell, where men's eyes will be opened - like that rich man in the parable - the soul will wonder most of all: how could he be damned, how was it possible to go to hell, to perish, even though he had seen the cross of Christ? How was he able to perish, when "the Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost." (Lk 19,10) There he will truly see: how much easier it would have been to be saved than to perish!
3) If a man wants to perish, he must reject for a lifetime the Saviour who is everywhere seeking him! It is quite incomprehensible to our human minds that Jesus came to seek what was lost! I was amazed at this Word just yesterday when I read two well-known parables about the kingdom of God: 'Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field, which a man finding it hideth; and rejoicing in it, he goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is likened unto a merchant seeking for true pearls: he that findeth a pearl of great price, shall go and sell all that he hath, and buy it." (Mt 13,44-46) Only with such parables can one express, to some extent, the great, incomprehensible fact that He, the holy and mighty God, seeks man! For He is the man who finds treasure hidden in the field, and in his joy in it sells all that he has: by becoming man he sells his heavenly dignity, his divine authority, his human comfort and dignity here on earth, and even his life, he empties himself, he impoverishes himself, in order to buy for himself that treasure or that pearl!
He compares man, sinful man, you and me, to a treasure and a pearl, for the sake of which he is able to sell everything, to sacrifice everything, to find it, says the Lord, so to speak: everything he has! Is that how much God does not want a sinner to die, how much He wants him to repent and live! If he will do so much for man, it is natural that he should seek man, God seeks all men! Of course, God is not looking for us in the same way as we look for glasses, but in the same way as the other day I was sitting in a pastors' meeting and they called me to come out because someone was looking for me! Every worship service when your heart is warmed by God's Word, every moment when you feel a longing for God's world, when your soul trembles a little at the thought of eternity: all these are messages to get up, Jesus is looking for you! Indeed, I am convinced that every joy and every sorrow, every gift and every adversity, are all precious messages that the Lord is still looking for you: that your heart may be ready to receive forgiveness. And is it so easy to resist persistently all this gracious seeking? Is it so easy to say "no" again and again to every word of warning, every friendly call, every heartfelt cry? That is what he who would condemn must do! It is even stranger when it is done by one who does not want to be damned! If one really does not want to be lost, why does one say no? Wouldn't it be easier not to hide, not to hide, not to resist, not to run, but to stop and say: here I am, Lord, I surrender!
The message still sounds: 'I am alive, says the Lord God' - as if to say: 'I say it on my life', so that the Lord swears, as it were, that we may truly believe what he is about to say: 'I take no pleasure in the death of the unbeliever, but that the unbeliever may turn from his way and live. Repent, repent ye of your wicked ways: for why should ye die" (Ez 33:11), why should ye want to die? "O house of Israel" - that is, O ye children, the chosen of the Lord!
Amen
Date: 19 February 1950.
Lesson
Zsid 2,1-4