440. Cloaks for Sin

Cloaks for Sin

Joh_15:22 : ’93But now they have no cloak for their sin.’94

Sin is always disguised. Decked and glossed and perfumed and masked, it gains admittance into places from which it would otherwise be repelled. As silently as when it glided into Eden and as plausibly as when it talked to Christ at the top of the temple, it now addresses men. Could people look upon sin as it always is’97an exhalation from the pit, the putrefaction of infinite capacities, the ghastly, loathsome, God-smitten monster that uprooted Eden and killed Christ, and would push the entire race into darkness and pain’97the infernal charm would be broken. Before our first parents transgressed, sin appeared to them the sweetness of fruit and the becoming as gods. To Absalom it was the pleasure of sitting upon a throne. To men now, sin is laughter and introduction to luxurious gratification. Jesus Christ in my text suggests a fact which everybody ought to know, and that is, that sin, to hide its deformity and shame, is accustomed to wearing a cloak, and the Saviour also sets forth the truth that God can see straight through all such wrappings and thicknesses. I want now to speak of several kinds of cloaks with which men expect to cover up their iniquities, for the fashion in regard to these garments is constantly changing, and every day beholds some new style of wearing them, and, if you will tarry a little while, I will show you five or six of the patterns of cloaks.

First, I remark that there are those who, being honored with official power, expect to make that a successful cloak for their sin. There is a sacredness in office. God himself is king, and all who hold authority in the world serve under him. That community has committed a monstrous wrong which has elevated to this dignity persons disqualified either by their ignorance or their immorality. Nations which elevate to posts of authority those not qualified to fill them will feel the deterioration. Solomon expressed this thought when he said: ’93Woe unto thee, O land, when thy king is a child and thy princes drink in the morning.’94 While positions of trust may be disgraced by the character of those who fill them, I believe God would have us respectful to the offices, though we may have no admiration for their occupants. Yet this dignity, which office confers, can be no apology for transgression. Nebuchadnezzar and Ahab and Herod, in the Day of Judgment, must stand on the level with the herdsmen that kept their flocks and the fishermen of Galilee; and king and president and governor must give an account to God and be judged by the same law as that which judges the beggar and the slave. Sin is all the more obnoxious when it is imperial and lordly. You cannot make pride or injustice or cruelty sacred by giving it a throne. Belshazzar’92s decanters could not keep the mysterious finger from writing on the wall. Ahab’92s sin literally hurled him from the throne to the dogs. The imperial vestments of wicked Jehoram could not keep Jehu’92s arrow from striking through his heart. Jezebel’92s queenly pretension could not save her from being thrown over the wall. No barricade of thrones can arrest God’92s justice in its unerring march. No splendor or thickness of official robes can be a sufficient cloak of sin. Henry the Eighth, Louis the Fifteenth, Catherine of Russia, Mary of England’97did their crowns save them? No ruler ever sat so high that the King of kings was not above him. All victors shall bow before him who on the white horse goeth forth conquering and to conquer.

Again, elegance of manners cannot successfully hide iniquity from the eye of God. That model, gentlemanly apostle, Paul, writes to us: ’93Be courteous.’94 That man can neither be a respectable worldling nor a consistent Christian who lacks good manners. He is shut out from refined circles, and he certainly ought to be hindered from entering the Church. We cannot overlook that in a man which we could hardly excuse in a bear. One of the first effects of the grace of God upon an individual is to make him a gentleman. Gruffness, implacability, misanthropy are fruits of the devil; while gentleness and meekness are fruits of the Spirit. But while these excellencies of manner are so important, they cannot hide any deformity of moral character. How often it is that we find attractiveness of person, suavity of manners, gracefulness of conversation, gallantry of behavior thrown like wreaths upon moral death. The flowers that grow upon the scoriae of Vesuvius do not make it any less of a volcano. The sepulchers in Christ’92s time did not exhaust all the whitewash. Some of the biggest scoundrels have been the most fascinating. If there are any depending on outward gracefulness and attractiveness of demeanor with any hope that because of that God will forgive the sin of their soul, let me assure them that the divine justice cannot be satisfied with smiles and elegant gesticulation. Christ looks deeper than the skin, and such a ragged cloak as the one in which you are trying to cover yourself will be no hiding in the day of his power. God will not in the Judgment ask how gracefully you walked nor how politely you bowed nor how sweetly you smiled nor how impressively you gestured. The deeds done in the body will be the test, and not the rules of Lord Chesterfield.

Again, let me say that the mere profession of religion is but a poor wrapping to protect a naked soul. The importance of making a public profession of religion, if the heart be renewed, cannot be exaggerated. Christ positively, and with the earnestness of the night before his crucifixion, commanded it. But it is the result of Christian character, not the cause of it. Our church certificate is a poor title to heaven. We may have the name and not the reality. There are those who seem to throw themselves back with complacency upon their public confession of Christ although they give no signs of renewal of heart and life. If Satan can induce a man to build on such a rotten foundation as that, he has accomplished his object. We cannot imagine the abhorrence with which God looks upon such a procedure. What would be the feelings of a shepherd if he saw a wolf in the same fold with his flocks, however quiet he might seem to lie, or a general if among his troops he saw one wearing the appointed uniform who, nevertheless, really belonged to the opposing host. Thus must the heavenly Shepherd look upon those who, though they are not his sheep, have climbed up some other way, and thus must the Lord of hosts look upon those who pretend to be soldiers of the Cross while they are his armed enemies. If any of you find yourselves deficient in the great tests of Christian character, do not, I beg of you, look upon your profession of religion as anything consolatory. If you have taken your present position from a view that you have of Christ and your need of him, rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory and clap your hands for gladness; but if you find yourself with nothing but the name of life, while dead in trespasses and sins, arouse before the door is shut. That gilded profession’97the world may not be able to see through it, but in the day of divine reckoning it will be found that you have no cloak for your sin.

Furthermore, outward morality will be no covering for the hidden iniquity of the spirit. The Gospel of Christ makes no assault upon good works. They are as beautiful in God’92s eye as in ours. Punctuality, truthfulness, almsgiving, affection and many other excellences of life that might be mentioned will always be admired of God and man, but we take the position that good works cannot be the ground of our salvation. What we do right cannot pay for what we do wrong. Admit that you have all those traits of character which give merely worldly respectability and influence, you must acknowledge that during the course of your life you have done many things you ought not to have done. How are these difficult matters to be settled? Ah, my friends, we must have an atonement. No Christ, no salvation. The great Redeemer comes in and says, ’93I will pay your indebtedness.’94 So that which was dark enough before, is bright enough now. The stripes that we deserve are fallen upon Christ. On his scourged and bleeding shoulders he carries us up over the mountain of our sins and the hills of our iniquities. Christ’92s good works accepted are sufficient for us but they who reject them, depending upon their own, must perish. Traits of character that may make us influential on earth will not necessarily open to us the gate of heaven. The plank that will be strong enough for a house floor would not do for a ship’92s hulk. Mere morality might be enough here but cannot take you through death’92s storm into heaven’92s harbor. Christ has announced for all ages, ’93I am the way, the truth and the life, him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out.’94 But pitiable in the day of accounts will be the condition of that man, though he may have given all his estate to benevolent purposes and passed his life in the visiting of the distressed and done much to excite the admiration of the good and the great, if he have no intimate relation to Jesus Christ. There is a pride and a depravity in his soul that he has never discovered. A brilliant outside will be no apology for a depraved inside. It is no theory of mine but a declaration of God, who cannot lie, ’93By the deeds of the law shall no flesh living be justified.’94 Open the door of heaven and look in. Howard is there, but he did not secure his entrance by the dungeons he illumined and the lazarettos into which he carried the medicines. Paul is there, but he did not earn his way in the shipwrecks and imprisonments and scourgings. On a throne, overtopping perhaps all others, except Christ’92s, the old missionary exclaims: ’93By the grace of God I am what I am.’94

Again, exalted social position will be no cloak for sin. Men look through the wicket door of prisons, and seeing the incarcerated wretches exclaim, ’93Oh, how much vice there is in the world!’94 And they pass through the degraded streets of a city, and looking into the doors of hovels and the dens of corruption they call them God-forsaken abodes. But you might walk along the avenues through which the opulent roll in their pomp and into mansions elegantly adorned, and find that even in the admired walks of life Satan works mischief and death. The first temptation Satan wrought in a garden, and he understands yet most thoroughly how to insinuate himself into any door of ease and splendor. Men frequently judge of sin by the places in which it is committed, but iniquity in satin is to God as loathsome as iniquity in rags, and in the Day of Judgment the sins of the avenue and the slum will all be driven in one herd. Men cannot escape at last on the plea of being respectably sinful. You know Dives was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day, but his fine clothes and good dinners did not save him. He might on earth have drunk something as rich as champagne and cognac, but at last he asked for one drop of water. You cannot trade off your attractive abodes here for a house of many mansions on high and your elegant shade groves here will not warrant you a seat under the tree of life. When God drove Adam and Eve out of Eden, he showed that merely living in a garden of delights and comforts will never save a man or a woman. By giving you so much earthly luxury and refinement, he intimated that he would have you enjoy yourselves, but he would not have you wrap yourself up in them as a cloak to hide your sins. God now walks in your garden as he did in Eden, even in the cool of the day, and he stands by your well as he did by a well in Samaria, and he would make your comfort on earth a type of your rapture in heaven.

Furthermore, mere soundness of religious belief will not hide our iniquities. There are men whose heads are as sound as great learning can make them, whose hearts are as rotten as Tom Paine’92s or Charles Guiteau’92s. It is important that we be theoretical Christians. It is utter folly in this day for a man to have no preference for any one form of faith, when it is so easy to become conversant with the faith of the different sects. An intoxicated man staggered into my house one night begging for lodging. He made great pretensions to religion. I asked where he went to church: He said: ’93Nowhere; I belong to liberal Christianity.’94 But there are those who never become Christians because their obstinacy prevents them from ever taking a fair view of what religion is. They are like a brute beast in the fact that their greatest strength lies in their horns. They are combatant, and all they are ever willing to do for their souls is to enter an ecclesiastical fight. I have met men who would talk all day upon the ninth chapter of Romans, who were thoroughly helpless before the fourteenth chapter of John. But there are those who, having escaped from this condition, are now depending entirely upon their soundness of religious theory. The doctrines of man’92s depravity and Christ’92s atonement and God’92s sovereignty are theoretically received by them. But, alas! there they stop. It is only the shell of Christianity containing no evangelical life. They stand looking over into heaven and admire its beauty and its song, and are so pleased with the looks from the outside that they cannot be induced to enter. They could make a better argument for the truth than ten thousand Christians who have in their hearts received it. If syllogisms and dilemmas and sound propositions and logical deductions could save their souls, they would be among the best of Christians. They could correctly define repentance and faith and the atonement, while they have never felt one sorrow for sin nor exercised a moment’92s confidence in the great Sacrifice. They are almost immovable in their position. We cannot present anything about the religion of Christ that they do not know. The Saviour described the fate of such a one in his parable: ’93And that servant which knew his Lord’92s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.’94 Theories in religion have a beauty of their own, but if they result in no warmth of Christian life it is the beauty of hornblende and feldspar. Do not call such coldness and hardness religion. The River of Life never freezes over. Icicles never hang on the eaves of heaven. Soundness of intellectual belief is a beautiful cloak, well woven and well cut, but in the hour when God shall demand our souls it will not of itself avail to hide our iniquities.

My friends, can it be that I have been unkind, and torn from you some hope upon which you were resting for time and eternity? Verily, I would be unkind if, having taken away your cloak, I did not offer you something better. This is a cold world and you want something to wrap around your spirit. Christ offers you a robe today. He wove it himself and he will now with his own hand prepare it just to fit your soul. The righteousness he offers is like the coat he used to wear about Judea, without seam woven from top to bottom. There is a day of doom. Coward would I be if I did not dare tell you this. It shall be a day of unutterable disappointment to those who have trusted in their official dignity, in their elegant manners, in their outward morality, in their soundness of intellectual belief. But I see a soul standing before God who once was thoroughly defiled. Yet look at him and you cannot find a single transgression anywhere about him. How is this? you ask. Was he not once a Sabbath breaker, a blasphemer, a robber, a perjurer, a thief, a murderer? Yes, but Christ hath cleansed him. Christ hath lifted him up. Christ hath rent off his rags. Christ hath clothed him in a spotless robe of righteousness. That is the reason why you cannot perceive his former degradation. This glorious hope in Christ’92s name is proffered today. Wandering and wayward soul, is not this salvation worth coming for, worth striving for? Do you wonder that so many with bitter weeping have besought it and with a very enthusiasm of sorrow cried for divine compassion? Do you wonder at the earnestness of those who stand in pulpits beseeching men to be reconciled to God? Nay, do you wonder at the importunity of the Holy Ghost who now striveth with thy soul? In many of the palaces of Europe the walls are mosaic. Fragments of shells and glass are arranged by artists and aggregated into a pictorial splendor. What! made out of broken shells and broken glass! Oh, yes; God grant that by the transforming power of his Spirit we may all be made a part of the eternal palaces, our broken and fragmentary natures polished and shaped and lifted up to make a part of the everlasting splendors of the heavenly temple!

For sinners, Lord, thou cam’92st to bleed,

And I’92m a sinner vile indeed.

Lord, I believe thy grace is free;

Oh, magnify thy grace in me.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage