Second Tuesday in Lent.
ON SIN.
The Nature of Sin.
1. We come now to the consideration of Sin. Sin is either:—
(a) The revolt of the created will against the Divine Will; or
(b) A voluntary violation of a commandment of God.
2. God is the Supreme Lord of all creation, and Author of our being. His Will should be the absolute law of all created beings. But as He made men and angels in the plenitude of freedom, He gave them wills, wills wholly free, and He set before them His law as the way of happiness, revealing to angels and men that so long as they conformed their wills to His Will they would be happy. Men and angels, though created free, were for all that dependent on God; but certain angels, with Satan at their head, revolted—they set their wills in opposition to the Will of God, from dependence they aimed at independence.
The fall of Adam and Eve was different; instead of a complete revolt of the will against the Will of God, it was an inclination away from God’s Will in one particular, a transgression of a commandment, not an act of rebellion.
The revolt of the will against God is a deliberate resistanceto the just and holy laws which He has laid down, and it attacks the immutable order He has appointed as the relation between Himself and His creatures. It is also a wilful attempt to change the destiny of the creature.
Thus Satan rebelled through pride, dissatisfied with what God had ordained as to his place in the hierarchy of created intelligences. He desired to be higher or different from what he was. His rebellion was against the supremacy of God.
3. Now it is but exceptional to find man wilfully, knowing what he is about, rise up in open and deliberate rebellion against God; nevertheless, such revolt is found to be among men, though it may be hoped not always, or not oftenconsciousrevolt. Those rebel against God who—
(a) ProfessAtheism. They deny His existence, His law, His providence. God has put in every conscience a witness to His being, to His law, to His providence, and to profess Atheism is not only to reject revelation, but to resist the inner testimony of the Conscience. It is incipient, encouraged, and becomes habitual, till the whole attitude of the inner nature is one of antagonism to God.
(b) Who resistGod’s moral law. Men may be ready to admit that there is a God in Heaven, but as His law limits and controls their liberty, they strive against the restraints He imposes on them, and submit only to such laws as they are forced by the law of the land, or by social society to observe. They cast God out of their consciences.
(c) Who resistGod’s truth. Men may accept the fact that God exists in Heaven, and that He has imposed on men a moral law, but they reject His revelation regarding the facts ofthe Faith, the articles of the Creed, the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Resurrection, the Commission to the Church, the Sacraments. All wilful resistance to the faith as taught by the Church, the depository of Revelation, is thus a rebellion against God.
(d) Who resistGod’s Church. The Church is the kingdom of God on earth, and all schism is a revolt against His authority as committed to His Church, and in as far as it isconsciousand deliberate, is rebellion against God, different only in degree to that of Satan and his apostate angels in Heaven. Where this is in ignorance, it is of course otherwise. God will always consider the imperfection of man’s knowledge, and if a man resists His truth, His moral law, His Church, through invincible ignorance, He will excuse such rebellion.
Simple Maltese Cross