HEREDITY
“For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. Moreover, the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord."—Romans 5:19-21
The subject as announced is that of Heredity; but I want to take another word, Inheritance, because it is a larger word in its application to these great truths. Heredity tells only half of the story of human inheritance. Something else must be told concerning every soul, and the telling of that something else is the telling of the provision of God's love.
Every baby is, as Charles Kingsley sang, "heir of all the ages gain"; and every child starts out upon the journey of life with certain inheritances, for which he has either to thank or curse his forerunners. Whether we go back to the old theological statement of this doctrine, and speak of the fall of man, and of the effect that fall has produced upon the whole human race right to this time, or no, we must all admit this truth.
It is being preached to us, both from the pulpit and the scientific platform, that man is connected with those who have gone before him so closely that he is influenced directly and positively by them. I am not attempting to explain the mystery of it—that is not my domain; I just announce the fact.
This paragraph includes the whole problem; and in forceful, clear, intelligent language makes a statement concerning it to which we are bound to pay attention, because of its paramount importance. Our scheme is, first, to consider this subject of heredity as a part of human inheritance; second, to consider the apostle's statement concerning grace as complementary; and third, to endeavor to deduce from that twofold consideration the possibilities which lie before every one of us, as we face life with all its mystery and its conflict.
In the first place, we shall consider the Biblical statement of the law of heredity. "For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners." There are hundreds of men today who put their hand upon that verse and quarrel with its theological statement, who, nevertheless, are preaching this great doctrine of heredity. Magazine writers tell us that what a man is, what a man does, and what a man will finally become, depend upon the color of his hair, upon the form of his physical being, upon what someone was before him. But if you tell them that doctrine is acknowledged, recognized here in the theology of Paul, those men are astonished; and yet it is so. "By one man's disobedience many were made sinners."
When life becomes something more to me than a game; when I cease to look upon the days as opportunities for play —and most men sooner or later feel that life is more than a game, the world other than a mere playground—then I look out upon my future and hear the call of the Divine. Within the heart of the thinking man as he faces life, there sound voices calling him to high and noble living. He may not be able to understand or explain them; he may not detect from where they come, or whose they are—those strange, luring voices—but they are there. Then that man awakens to find that he is not free from vices which he has not chosen; he realizes that there lies within the confines of his own individuality—in what realm he can hardly tell; whether physical, mental, or spiritual, he is hardly cognizant in those early days—a tendency that propels him, and inclinations that draw him along certain lines of life. They come as natural.
Let us understand that those inclinations and tendencies—the dominant inclinations and tendencies of that man's life—may not be evil. A man may find, some summer morning, when the King of day is just lighting the mountains with His coming glory, edging them with a golden hue, and the dew is quivering and sparkling upon the grass, and the voice of the bird is all that breaks the hushed stillness—he may find that within him there dwells the sacred pondering. He was a born poet; but he never discovered it until that morning. How did it happen? You cannot explain the mystery. You may philosophize concerning it, and argue about it; but there it is.
It may be that he discovered—on some evening when the sun faded into the sunset, bathing the clouds with a wondrous glory, tingling them with gold, and telling the weary watchers that behind the darkness there was the very splendor of God—that he was an artist; he was that before, but he had not recognized it. He had inherited it. It had come to him after skipping—in some strange and unaccountable fashion—one or more generations, bringing into his life the poetry of those who had gone before; the power to see, which some forerunner had.
But almost more constantly man awakens to find that the thing within him—which is there without his consent, without his creating—is an evil thing. He awakes to find that a certain desire in his life, which in itself is natural—and to say that, using the word natural in its true sense, is to say that it is pure—is distorted and out of shape. He awakes to find that there is a passionate desire, making demands, and crying with force and energy and unceasing earnestness, "Give me, satisfy me; meet my need"; in other words, a man awakes to find that lust, and passion, and greed, and evil are in him. He looks out upon life, heavily handicapped from the first, without a chance. Let us look these things squarely in the face, for this is the true story of many a man's life.
Take the most familiar illustrations that you have dealt with yourself again and again; the story of how a man awakens to find that he was born a drunkard, and another man awakens to find that he was born impure. He cannot deny it. If the great crowd have never realized these things, it is because the fires of passion have not been intense, because in their lives there has been no consuming sense of this great fact—but there it is. I talked to a man some year or two ago who was drinking. I shall never forget the way he appalled me, as with passionate earnestness he looked into my face and, said, "Sir, don't talk to me about drink." "But why?" I asked. "Because," he said, "you are ignorant concerning it." "But what do you mean?" "You talk to me about a desire for it, and you know nothing of what you are talking about. Do you know that my father and his father both committed suicide while in delirium tremens? Drink!" he said; "you put a glass of wine there, and tell me of a certainty, upon the oath of God, that if I drink I will be shot—I would still drink it!"
We have to face these facts. Young men who are going from our city and country homes are suddenly overwhelmed, and fall in the conflict. Why? They did not choose the sinful things; but suddenly, under certain conditions of life, they find a devil in them that had been sleeping and they have been taught to deny his being. Somehow he is aroused, and he masters them. They have inherited evil tendencies from someone gone before. So that I say today men are starting in life from this standpoint without the semblance of a chance; they are handicapped in the race from the beginning, and from before their birth.
That is exactly what the apostle says here: "By one man's disobedience"—and whether that man is Adam or your father, it does not affect the matter "By one man's disobedience many were made sinners." That is the great law: sinners by birth; sinners by the very force that dwells within them, and for which they are not responsible. Such is the story of the lives of thousands of our fellow men today. What have we to say to these things? What has the preacher to say? What has the Church of Jesus Christ to say? What has the gospel of Jesus Christ to say?
It has to say that there is another truth which Jesus Christ came to proclaim, side by side with that first one; and that the man who only declares that, tells but half the common truth of every life and soul of man. And what is the other truth? It is contained in this same passage to the Romans, and the 10th verse, "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound"; and that statement of the 10th verse is linked to the second half of the 19th verse: "So by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. Where sin abounded grace did much more abound."
In order that we may understand the force of this gospel of the grace of God —and this really is the gospel of the grace of God—we must get back from that position upon which we have been standing, and consider it from a different standpoint. First of all we must come to understand that God always deals with man personally and individually. This seems a very difficult statement in face of what we have been saying.
Those of you who have read Ezekiel 18 will remember that it opens with a challenge on the part of God to the people of Israel, and the challenge is this: "How say ye, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge?" That proverb has not dropped out of use; men are perpetually using it. You will hear it in conversations and in the papers. You will hear the story of some young man's wrongdoing, and hear someone commenting upon it; and of the wrongdoing of his father, saying, with a wise look and a shake of the head, that has more in it than all the speech: "Yes, the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." "Well, but," you say, "is it not true?" Absolutely untrue. That proverb that is binding and misleading men is absolutely false. There is no truth in it. "Surely, but it is in the Bible?" Twice. It is both in Ezekiel and Jeremiah. But it is there in order that it may be contradicted. You search the context out for yourselves. It is not a clear, lucid, true, correct statement of God's dealing with men to say, "The fathers eat, and the children's teeth are set on edge..." God does not punish a son for his father's wrongdoing. "Oh, but surely that is not correct. Do we not read in Exodus, where the law is given, 'I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children even unto the third and fourth generation.' Does it not say that?" No. "Oh, but it does." Find it and read it. I will let any man read it who can find it. It does not say it at all; it is not in the Book, my friend. "Then, what does it say?" Listen, "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me." And you have no right to miss out these five words, and rob the whole passage of its essential meaning. What is its essential meaning? If the generations continue to hate, they will have punishment; and it goes still further—"and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me." And that is what Ezekiel says. God says: "All souls are Mine; I take man by man, individually"; and if the father is a good man and the son is evil, the son shall be punished; and if the father is an evil man, and the son is righteous, the son is not to be punished for the evil of the father, but he is to live.
But is not this more difficult of comprehension; for remember, I emphasize it and abide by it. I want you to see that God does not visit the iniquity of the father upon the children; that God does not smite, and strike, and burn a man, even in this life, because his father was evil. Why, the whole conception is blasphemy.
Then what are we to do? We are side by side and face to face with two apparently contradictory statements. Man does not start fair in life; he is handicapped through hereditary tendencies in his blood. If he sin, he is punished; and yet you tell me that God takes man by himself, and deals with him without reference to what his father was. Perfectly true. I am not going to call into question the character of God, to lie this down as something I am bound to discover somewhere or other, in some way or other. If this law be a law of life from which I cannot escape, that I inherit the tendencies to wrong from my father; and if it be also law that God takes me, and deals with me, and punishes or rewards me, without any reference to my connection with my father, then in order to do that, He must, somewhere and somehow, provide an antidote to the poison which is already in my veins. He must bring to me, side by side with the tendencies to wrong, something that shall be at any rate as strong as that tendency, and that is able to overcome it. That is the logical statement of the thing as I understand it; that is, if God be "just"—I will not say "love." I want to put this incomparably, especially to some young man feeling the force of some hereditary taint, and help him, as the gospel has helped me.
I have a tendency to a form of evil in my nature and in my blood; and then I come here and I read, "God will not punish my father if I go wrong. The soul that sinneth, IT shall die." And I take my stand in one of those solemn moments of life to which man comes when he rises in his true dignity, and, realizing he has a right to deal with God, he says, in the presence of the Holy One, "I did not choose to be born with this tendency to evil. It is here without my choice and without my consent; and if Thou, O God, art going to deal with me upon the pure line of righteousness, without reference to the things I have received from my forefathers, then, if Thou art a just God, Thou must provide an antidote of force greater than the force that is born within me, that will quench its fires and set me free; and I am bold to say, if the gospel has no message like that, it is no gospel for me." It may be a gospel for a man who has not experienced the fires of passion. From a gospel that merely says, "Copy this perfect example," I turn away; for it cannot be mine because of the fires that exhaust my physical power, dethrone my mental vigor, paralyze my brain, and dim my vision. I must have a negation force of evil, stronger than the negation of good that flows in my veins, and throbs in my nerves, and masters me, whether I will or not. Now, that much I say, God must do what my text tells me He has done. Just as "by one man's sins or disobedience, many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous."
What is this story, then? It is the old story that I need not stay to tell. It is the story of the coming from heaven of God to tabernacle in human flesh, and live human life, and meets human temptation, and overcome all that temptation. It is the story of God suffering for sin; it is the story of the Cross upon which the pure life of the one perfect Man was given as a ransom for many, so that by His coming, and His pure living, and His sacrificial dying, He has brought to every soul a second inheritance, the inheritance of powerful, forceful, valuable righteousness.
Am I born to passion's fires? I am also born to the quenching power of the love of Jesus. Am I born with tendencies to wrong? I am also born to that Holy Spirit as a birthright which can hold, keep, and purify me, and present me at last in the very presence of God. Do you tell me tonight that your father, or his father, or someone generations back, was given over to some fearful form of sin, and that, although it has been slumbering for two generations, it has reappeared in your life; and do you tell me, with a wail of anguish, that that is your inheritance—that awful form of sin, that has gripped you with irresistible tenacity, and thwarted you at every turn? My brother, I tell you that there is another inheritance; that you are born to the life of Christ. When you come here, the story is so old that men have begun to be uninterested. And our schools are not permitted to tell of this wondrous solution to every child that sits under their teachings. And our churches are not getting this answer to all the children that possess this problem. Oh, how one longs, not for a new theology, but for a new setting and phrasing of it, that shall arrest the thought of men today! I am not here to preach morality as a beautiful thing—everyone believes it. We are all agreed upon that. I do not think there is anybody, I do not care how far down he may be, who does not believe that purity, and righteousness, and morality, are lovely attributes of man's nature. I am not here to talk about that, I announce this fact: that where there is a man fast bound with chains of sin and passion and lust, Christ by the power of His Holy Spirit can shatter those chains, and quench those fires, and set that man free.
You, my brother, have a twofold inheritance: you have the inheritance to evil which has mastered you up to this point, and thwarted your best intentions; and you have also the inheritance in the power of Jesus Christ that is to come in, and be the force that releases you.
Oh, accept it, will you, not as theory, but as fact proven again and again in the past two thousand years; proven again and again in this very year. If we could only institute a strict question, there are thousands of souls who would testify to this fact: "I was the slave of sin, of lust, of passion, of greed, of unrighteousness; but Jesus Christ coming into my life by the power of the Holy Spirit, has set me free." And when they have kept their testimony, we will be hard and critical, and say, "That is the testimony of thy own lips; so now tell me what do thy neighbors and friends say? Let the worldly man come in and tell me how that man lives who is a Christian, and the testimony from the world will be overwhelming." "We have seen the transformation wrought by the Son of God; we have seen our neighbors—irascible, sour, hard-hearted—become tender, sweet, loving, compassionate, like the very Son of God Himself." The testimony is on every hand. Have we not a right to apply a scientific test to that matter, as to all others? If we can find one man, a thousand men, a million men, in the course of the ages of the Christian era, who have been absolutely transformed, perfectly re-made, changed, so that there was no comparison between what they are and what they were, have we not a right to say something has brought this about? And have we not a right to accept that great united testimony as it comes upon us—that what has wrought it has been the grace of God?
My brother, I want you to see the force of this. It is not merely that there is for you an inheritance of a power to be righteous which is equivalent to the power of evil. I like the grandeur and the overwhelming magnificence of Paul's expression, "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." What are the possibilities that grow out of it? Let us simply put our hands on them. That is all we can do. "That," in the last verse, "as sin hath reigned, grace may reign through righteousness unto eternal life." There are three points, then, of the result of the coming into this life of the power of the grace of Jesus Christ. The three points are these: (1) Reigning sin is deposed, and (2) in its place the grace of Jesus Christ takes the throne and reigns; and (3) the result is "eternal life"; and that eternal life is not merely life that is long-continued, but life that is broad and wide and magnificent in its possibilities.
Now, to gather up the great lessons that I want to inscribe upon your hearts and mine. You have inherited a tendency to evil. I grant it you. You didn't choose it. You were born with it. Now listen: God never yet has, and never will, punish any man for inheriting anything.
In the next place, let me say that heredity is not the final word. Reverting to what I said at the commencement—the color of your hair, and the shape of your head, and your temperament, are not all the story of your own life. What is the other side? The grace of God; the Spirit of God. Grace is the complement; grace is the negative of sin. You are born with a tendency to sin, but you are also born into the birthright of the life and passion of the Son of God; and so Jesus Christ becomes the touchstone of character. Reject Him, and you are a victim to those tendencies which are slumbering within your own nature; but accept Him, and you may put your conquering foot upon every enemy that faces you, and in His name have the victory.
Thus Christ becomes the touchstone of judgment. The question before the throne of eternal righteousness will be, "What did this man and that man do with Jesus?" It will not be available for me to say in the day of that final judgment, "O God, I was born with a tendency to the sin that ruined me: is there no excuse for me?" for the answer of the impartial Judge would be, "If thou wast born with a tendency to sin, thou wast also born into the birthright of the conquering life of Jesus Christ, and thou didst deliberately choose to reject the life and cling to the death; then that choice seals thy doom" and so, by this provision of grace, every man still stands alone in his responsibility to God. Every man has this chance —the chance of what Jesus did for him upon the Cross of His passion. The whole truth concerning my inheritance is not told until I have understood that it is a twofold inheritance, from Adam and from Jesus Christ. With this difference, that my inheritance from those who have gone before me comes to me along the line of succession; but my inheritance in Jesus Christ He has trusted to no line of succession, but He brings it to me Himself, by the power of His Spirit, and deals with me in direct personal communion.
Do you feel that passion fires are slumbering within thee? Give yourself to the Son of God; and by His Holy Spirit He will quench the fires, and hold you in the hollow of His own pierced hand, and make you pure as He Himself is pure, in the day that He presents you to His Father. All tendencies to sin may be overcome, and is overcome when souls are surrendered to the Christ of God.
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