by A. W. Tozer
A generation ago when the deity of Christ was under attack from several directions as once and was being stoutly defended by Bible-believing Christians everywhere, a little aphorism was often heard uttered with emphatic finality: "It's not the sin question, it's the Son question!"
This was a short way of saying that the great problem before the human race was not its sin but its opinion of Jesus Christ, and that the disposition of the individual soul on the final day would be based not upon its relation to sin but upon its having accepted the deity of Christ as an article of faith.
If we take into consideration that this saying was a blunt sword forged for the heat of theological battle we can understand its popularity and sympathize with those who swung it so boldly against the enemies of truth; nevertheless we need not overlook its weakness nor accept it as a complete truth, which it certainly is not.
One count against this aphorism is that it is an aphorism. If great truth could be compressed into an epigram we have several hundred pages of Scripture to account for that need never have been written. I shy away from every effort to expound difficult doctrine by means of a pious quip; it's just too neat and at best can present only one facet of the truth, leaving the other two or ten or fifty facets hidden from view.
We'll pass over the alliteration, which is of course wholly artificial and only one degree removed from a pun, and state simply that the whole thing is false to the facts. Granted that solid truth might once in a rare while get itself crammed into an epigram, and even that the epigram might conceivably contain a pun, this "not the sin question but the Son question" is still not true. It dismisses too lightly something that God takes mighty seriously; viz., the fact of human sin and the solemn responsibility of every man for the sins he has committed.
The idea that since the emergence of Christ into our world there is no longer any sin problem is completely preposterous, and not less so is the notion that the approach of the lost man to God is theological instead of moral. Yet this is what the not-the-sin-question thing has taught the religious world to believe. This idea has been expanded, extended and illustrated in how many thousand sermons over the last fifty years till it has become part of the total belief of evangelical groups all over the world. I have personally heard earnest men tell their hearers that they need never fear being sent to hell because of their sins; that the only thing that could possibly condemn them is their failure to "accept" Christ. Thus the whole terrible sin question has been reduced to a theological technicality, and sin itself, that damning and destructive enemy of God and men, has been whitewashed and rendered tolerable, contrary to the whole spirit and mood of the Scriptures and to the beliefs of Christians since the days of the apostles.
Regardless of what men may say, we are still face to face with the sin question, and no man who has neglected to deal with his sins can even remotely understand the question of the deity of Christ and the mystery of the Godhead. Until the sinner has been brought before the bar of God and convicted of personal guilt, any notions he may have about Christ are bound to be academic, nothing more, and wholly unrelated to life.
One deadly result of our failure to face up to the fact of sin is the widespread moral insensitivity which characterizes Christians these days. Because there is only a Son question and not a sin question at all, there is little or no repentance required as a preparation for saving faith. The new convert accepts Christ and adopts a certain easy code-a bit above that of the irreligious world, to be sure, but infinitely below that of the New Testament. The nerve has died in the Christian conscience and the sin that would have driven our Christian fathers to their knees in a paroxysm of repentance leaves us almost untouched. It's lots easier to shift the whole thing over to the "Son question" and escape the pains of repentance. Lots easier, but extremely dangerous, and this latter is what we appear to have forgotten.
( The Size of the Soul, Chapter 44 )
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