Lecture XLII

PRAYER FOR A BROTHER'S SIN, BUT NOT FOR A SIN UNTO DEATH

JOHN assumes that one chief use which you will be disposed to make of your right and power to pray will be to pray for others. He puts a case. You see your brother sinning. He is “your brother.” This does not necessarily imply that he who sins is a true brother in the Lord. It has been already made manifest more than once in this epistle, that the relation of brotherhood, in the apostle’s sense of the term, is of much wider reach and range. It arises not so much out of the character and standing of him whom you call your brother, as out of the nature of the affection with which you regard him. True, your brother, in the highest point of view, is he who, being really to God a son, is really to you on that account a brother. But whoever he may be whom you love with a brotherly love; with a love that treats him as a brother; not as a mere instrument to be used or companion to be enjoyed for a day, but as one having an immortal soul to be saved for eternity; every one so loved by you is your brother. When he sins, his sin vexes you as the sin of a brother. You cannot look on and see him sinning with indifference or amusement or contempt, as if he were a stranger, or a helot, or a dog. It is your brother whom you see sinning. And therefore you speak to him as to a brother about his sin; not harshly, with sharp reproach or cutting sarcasm, or cold magisterial severity. With a brother’s voice, coming out of the depths of a brother’s bosom, you earnestly expostulate and affectionately plead with him. Alas! he turns to you a deaf ear, and you have no power to open it. But another ear is open to you, the ear of your Father in heaven; and he can open your brother’s ear. To your Father in heaven you go. You deal with him about your sinning brother’s case. You ask that life may be given to him; the “eternal life” which the sin he is committing justly forfeits. You grow importunate in asking; your importunity being in proportion to the truth and warmth of your brotherly love; you feel almost as if you could converse with God about nothing else. And you do converse with God about it,—oh, how pathetically! In all this you do well; using the liberty you have, as receiving “eternal life in his Son,” to “ask anything, knowing that he hears you.”

But is there no risk of excess or of error? May you not be too one-sided in looking at the case yourself, and in representing it to God? May you not be so concerned about the one terrible aspect of it, its bearing on your brother’s doom, as to shut out the other aspect of it, which ought never to be lost sight of, its bearing on the Father’s throne; on the holy and righteous sovereignty of his government and law? May not your sympathy with your sinning brother overbear somewhat your sympathy with him against whom he is sinning? May you not thus be led to overstep the limits of warrantable confidence, so as to ask that life may be given to him, on any terms, at any cost, in any way, irrespectively altogether of what, in your calmer moments, you would yourself recognise as the paramount claims of the Most High? Thus your prayer for your sinning brother may slide insensibly into an apologetic pleading for indulgence to his sin. You may be tempted to represent as excusable what God regards as inexcusable; and to feel as if, whatever your brother’s criminality may be, there may still be favour shown to him notwithstanding. It is to guard you against such a frame of mind that the solemn warning is given: “If a man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it.”

I am persuaded that it is in the line of this train of thought that the solution of the difficult problem here suggested is to be sought. The whole analogy of the faith, as well as the bearing of the context, favours this view. If I am right in this persuasion, some important consequences would seem to follow.

In the first place, there is no warrant in this text for the doctrine which Rome seeks to draw from it as to the distinction, in themselves,—in their own nature or in their accompanying aggravations,—between venial and mortal sins. Let the distinction be admitted as otherwise proved, it is nothing to the purpose here. A Romanist, in his anxious prayer for his sinning brother, may be tempted to put his sin into the wrong category, and to speak of it to God as venial, whereas it is really mortal. It is a temptation of the same sort that besets me; I admit it to be so. He, praying according to his creed which allows the distinction, is admonished, precisely as I who deny it am admonished. We are both warned against asking God to regard as venial what, in the view of his righteous judgment and holy supremacy, is and must be mortal But this text itself does not decide between us. And if it appears from all the rest of Scripture that the Romanist’s idea is not only unproved but disproved, the circumstance that this text might possibly be interpreted in consistency with his idea avails him nothing; since it turns out that it can be equally well, or even much better, interpreted in consistency with mine.

Secondly, there is no occasion to be solicitous in attempting to identify any particular sin, or any particular manner of sinning, as what is here said to be “unto death.” The attempt, as all experience shows, is as vain as it is presumptuous. And yet, in spite of all experience, the attempt is ever renewed. Morbid minds, or minds in a morbid state, become sensitive on the point; but without warrant or reason. Even if there were “a sin unto death” that might be ascertainable in a man’s own consciousness, the mention of it would not be to the purpose here, unless it were ascertainable also in the judgment of his neighbour or his brother. For the question is as to your praying for me. Even if I myself could know that I had sinned the sin unto death, how could you know that I had? However it might affect my praying for myself, how could it affect your praying for me? And as you have no right to judge me to that effect, so neither have I any right to judge myself. Let it be settled and fixed as a great truth, according to this and many other passages of Scripture, that there cannot be any such thing as my sinning a sin unto death, in such a sense as might warrant me, from my fear of my having committed it, to cease to pray for myself;—far less warrant you, from an opinion on your part that I have committed it, to cease to pray for me.

For, thirdly, the real and only object of the apostle is to put in a caveat and lodge a protest against the intrusion into the sacred province of confidential prayer, especially when it is prayer for a sinning brother, of a tendency which is too natural and too apt to prevail, even in one having the eternal life which the Father gives in his Son; the tendency, I mean, to subordinate the divine claims to considerations of human expediency or human pity. It is the same tendency which, when the case is our own, is apt to bias and mislead us. Let us trace its working.

1. It is of course strongest in the unrenewed mind and unreconciled heart. While under their dominion, we cannot be expected to consult for God at all; we consult only for ourselves. In forming a notion as to how God may, and as we think, ought to deal with us, we take little or no account of what may be due to him, to the honour of his holy name and the glorious majesty of his throne and law. We pay little or no regard to what the principles of his righteous moral administration and the interests of his loyal subjects may require. We think only of our own relief and safety; our own convenience and accommodation. And hence we see no difficulty in our slight offences being overlooked and our infirmities indulged, upon our making certain formal submissions, and going through some routine of service. Thus we accept the serpent’s lie: “Ye shall not surely die;” no sin of ours being, in our view, if all extenuating circumstances are taken into account, “a sin unto death.”

2. It should be otherwise with us now; now that “having the Son we have life.” We surely ought to be, as the Son is, on the Father’s side; one in interest and sympathy with him; ready to give him the pre-eminence in all things, and to subordinate even what most pertains to our own welfare to the glorifying of his name and the doing of his will. We may be thankful that this does not entail on us the suffering and sacrifice which it entailed on him, when he, in the matter of the cup given him to drink, submitted his own will to the Father’s. Well may we be thankful that, through his taking our death as his and our having his life as ours, we may have the same mind that was in him, without its bringing such pain on us. Nay, for us, our putting God and his claims first, and putting ourselves and our concerns second, is in fact the secret of our safety and our rest.

All the more on that account is it reasonable to expect that in whatever we ask of God for ourselves, in our closest communing with him about our own affairs, whether temporal or spiritual, we should allow this principle to have full scope. But is it so? Alas! the old selfish spirit is ever apt to come back and come out again. It comes out, perhaps almost unconsciously, in our secret pleading that something in us or about us may be spared which God has doomed to destruction; be it some unmortified lust in the heart, or some doubtful practice of worldly conformity in the life. If indeed we are honestly communing with God about it, placing his honour first and our case only second, we can be at no loss what to ask. We can ask but one thing; the grace of instant decision to deal with what offends, as we know that God would have it dealt with. Are we asking that, asking it in faith, and acting accordingly? Or are we still irresolute, putting in a plea for some slight indulgence, some short delay; as if, after all, the evil were not so very serious, nor the danger of tolerating it for a little longer so very great? Brother, let me solemnly and affectionately warn you,—or rather, let the beloved apostle warn you:—“All unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin unto death.”

3. In intercessory prayer, the tendency of which I speak operates powerfully and painfully. A rude and vulgar notion prevails amongst those who reject the gospel which we embrace, that we who embrace it, hugging ourselves in our own security, have a sort of pleasure in consigning all outside of our circle to inevitable and everlasting ruin. Alas! they know not, either the weakness of our filial faith, or the strength, if not of our brotherly love, yet of our natural affection. The temptation is all the other way. It is all in the direction of our tampering and taking liberties with the sovereign authority and grace of God, in accommodation to the weakness, and even the wickedness, of men. We do not say, abstractly and absolutely, that there is not a sin unto death; but we fondly hope that our brother’s sin may not be held to be so. It is not hoping that he may repent of it. Such hope cannot well be too strong; nor can our asking in terms of it be too confident. But here lies the danger. Our asking that he may repent of it, if his repenting of it is delayed, is apt,—oh, how apt!—apt in proportion as we love him, to slide unawares into our virtually asking that, though not repented of, it may be overlooked; that at least it may not be reckoned to him as “a sin unto death.”

It is often a very terrible test of our loyalty to God our Father, and our allegiance to his crown and his commandments, that is in such a case to be applied.

4. Take an extreme instance. One whom you loved with truest brotherly love, with most intense longing to welcome him as a brother in Christ to your heart, has gone without affording you that joy; he has died, giving no sign. He was lovely, amiable, pleasant. You and he were one in kin; still more one in kind and in kindness. But he has passed away, continuing to the last in a course of life scarcely, if at all, reconcilable with even the profession of godliness. What is your temptation in such a case? Ah, it is a very awful one! It is to prefer his interest to the gospel of God, and the law of God. It is to think that, culpable as he may have been, his culpability may not have proved fatal. It is to cherish the fond imagination that, in spite of the law which he has broken and the gospel which he has rejected, he may still, on the ground of qualities which won your admiration, or sufferings which moved your compassion, find some measure of mercy in the end.

It is very tender ground on which I tread; I know it; experimentally I know it. Far, very far, be it from me, to insist on your judging a departed brother, however he may have sinned, and continued in his sin to the last. He is in the hands of God. Leave him there without questioning. Think of the old rhyming adage—

“Between the stirrup and the ground,

Mercy I sought, mercy I found.”

Think too of the more authentic instance of the thief on the cross; by all means think of that, and take what comfort you can from that. But beware! Sorely,—oh, how sorely!—are you tempted first to wish that there were some room for such as he was, even continuing still the same, within the holy city of the most high God; and then to hope that there may be. It is, I repeat, a very sore temptation. Many a brokenhearted mourner in Zion has felt it; you and I have felt it; and we have felt that, under the influence of it, we have been beginning to underrate the need of regeneration, and conversion, and a living faith, and a holy walk; to dream of men who gave no evidence here of anything like such grace, being possibly safe without it hereafter. And what next? We become insensibly more tolerant than we were of sin in ourselves; less alive to the necessity of immediate repentance and faith; more inclined to temporise and compromise; to look at things not from God’s point of view but from our own; as if he had not “given to us his own eternal life in his Son.”

Let us see to it above all things, though it may cost us often many a struggle and many a tear, that we do not suffer our firm faith in God, and our loving loyalty to him, to fall a sacrifice to the fond relentings of our own weak hearts. Whatever may be its bearing on the fate of any brother, let us, for God’s sake and our own, for God’s honour and our own salvation, accept it as a great and solemn fact, that “all unrighteousness is sin, and that there is a sin unto death.”

5. You do not pray for the dead; you do not think it lawful. It is in the indulgence of a trembling hope concerning them that the temptation of which I speak besets you. But the same temptation besets you also when you pray for the living. It is the temptation to wish that, in its application to the sin which you see your brother sinning, God’s holy law were not so very uncompromising, nor his righteous judgment so very unrelenting, as they are declared to be. No doubt you ask that your brother may receive grace to repent of his sin. But what if he should not? You have a sort of reserved notion that, even in that case and upon that supposition, there may be some chance of safety for him. That is the temptation. And it is often a most severe and stern trial of your faith to resist it; to ask life for your sinning brother; but to ask it evermore under the deep conviction that “all unrighteousness is sin, and that there is a sin unto death.”

Let us see, once for all, what the apostle’s solemn statement really implies.

In the first place, let it be very specially noted that this is the one only limitation which John puts upon the liberty of intercessory prayer. And let us mark well where the limitation applies. It does not really touch our privilege of asking life for our brother, in the true and full sense of life;—the eternal life which God gives, and which is in his Son. We may not ask for him this life, if we ask it for him as sinning, and contemplated by us as possibly sinning unto death. And for the best of all reasons we may not thus ask; for it is asking what, even with God, is an impossibility. But, short of that impossibility, there is no restriction laid on our asking; we may ask life for him, to the utmost of our heart’s desire. We may use the utmost freedom in asking life for him, provided only we do not ask it for him as sinning, and continuing to sin, unto death. Be his sin ever so heinous, let it be the sin of a whole long lifetime of ungodliness, we may ask life for him, in the line of his repenting and believing the gospel, provided only, I repeat, that we do not ask it as if life could be given him in any other way.

I know that a question may be raised even here, as to the extent to which we may absolutely and unconditionally ask for our sinning brother faith and repentance, and having asked, may positively know that “we have the petition that we have desired of God.” I know that there are difficulties in the direction now indicated. They are difficulties connected with that decree of election which alone secures the salvation of any sinner;—but they are difficulties which we may conceive of as possibly hindering the salvation of some sinner for whom we pray. They are difficulties, however, which do not touch such intercessory prayer more than they touch any other sort of prayer;—and indeed all prayer, generally and universally. The decree of election can no more hinder my praying confidently for my sinning brother, than it can hinder my praying confidently for my sinning self. In either case, it is one of “the secret things belonging to the Lord our God,” not one of “the revealed things belonging to us and to our children.” At all events, this text has nothing to do with that. It imposes no restriction on our prayer arising out of God’s eternal purpose. The only restriction which it does impose is one rendered necessary by our own infirmity, and the temptation to which it exposes us. We are not to ask, what we are tempted to ask, that our brother, continuing in sin, may yet be saved; that while still sinning unto death, he may nevertheless somehow live. But under that reservation, reasonable surely, and necessary, we have all liberty, so far as this text is concerned;—and it is the only text in all the Bible that can by any possibility be supposed to fetter or abridge our liberty;—we have all liberty, I say, to ask life for our brother. It is a wide charter, altogether broad and free.

But, secondly, there is an obvious practical application suggested by the reservation. If we ask life for our brother, knowing that he cannot have it while sinning unto death; or, in other words, that he cannot have it otherwise than in the way of believing and repenting; our prayer for him, if sincere, must imply our personal dealing with him with a view to his believing and repenting. If what we asked for him were simply life,—life in any sense and on any terms,—we might let him alone. Having asked, we might think that we could do nothing more to help in bringing about the desired result. But it is not so; it is far otherwise. We may take part along with him whom we ask, the hearer of prayer, in what we ask him to do; we must take part along with him, if our asking is real and earnest. To ask God to give life to our sinning brother while we ourselves “suffer sin upon him”—not warning him even with tears;—sin, the very sin that is hurrying him on to death;—what mockery!—how insulting to our God, and oh, how cruel to our poor brother himself!

Finally, in the third place, let our conviction be clear, strong and deep, that “all unrighteousness is sin, and that there is a sin unto death.” Let us see that there is no faltering, no hesitancy as to that great fact or truth. Upon both the parts of this solemn declaration let our faith be firm, and let our trumpet give no uncertain sound. It is at this point that a stand is to be resolutely made against all antinomian licence in religion; for it is at this point that the enemy has always pressed the church most hardly, and alas! the church has too often shown herself weak. The knowing ones who corrupted the gospel in John’s own day undermined the citadel at this very point. They held and taught that unrighteousness, unholiness, uncleanness, which would be sin in any one else, might be no sin in the spiritual man. It could only defile the body. And what of that, the body being perishable? It could not touch the essence of the living and immortal soul. Sin therefore, even when persevered in to the end, might yet be not unto death. John does not reason with these wicked men; it is not a case for reasoning. He meets their vile, foul, base imagination with the stern assertion of law and appeal to conscience: “All unrighteousness is sin, and there is a sin unto death.”

Ever and anon, from age to age, the same abominable devil’s creed has troubled and polluted the church of God. Nay, even when the church is undisturbed by it, still, ever and anon, it troubles and pollutes the child of God, in some one or other of its insidious temptations.

For alas! alas! it is but too congenial to the sloth and selfishness and sensuality that still prevail too much within him. Ah me! how apt am I to cherish the secret, half-unconscious notion, that this or that infirmity besetting me, or besetting my much-loved brother,—infirmity which, if I saw it attached to any one else, I would not scruple for a moment to denounce as sin,—may somehow in my case, or in my brother’s, be more mildly characterised and more gently dealt with! How apt am I to hope that this or that little secret sin which I feel cleaving still to me, or see cleaving still to my brother, may after all, and in the long run, not prove fatal! Ah, if there be but the faintest taint of this damnable heresy lurking in your inner man, how can you be prosecuting, with anything like earnestness, the work of your own personal sanctification, or seeking, with anything like faithfulness, the sanctification of your brother;—asking God to give you life, or to give him life? Be very sure that if you would be safe yourself, and if you would save him, you need to shun, as you would a pestilential blast, or the very breath of hell, whatever tends, however remotely, to confound the everlasting distinctions of right and wrong, or shake the foundations of truth and virtue which are the very pillars of the universe and of the throne of God. It is a “word which doth eat as a canker.” Beware, and again I say beware, of scepticism on the great eternal principles of moral duty—of the moral law. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked.” “The unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” “All unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin unto death.”