Sin Immeasurable

Spurgeon takes the question "Who can understand his errors?" to argue that our sin is genuinely beyond our own comprehension — we cannot count its number, weigh its guilt, or grasp its special aggravations, especially when those sins are committed against a praying mother, a merciful escape from death, or special spiritual privilege — and that to fully understand our sin we would need to first understand things permanently beyond human reach: the true depth of our fallen nature, the full spiritual strictness of God's Law, the blinding perfection of God's holiness, the horror of Hell, and the full weight of suffering Christ bore on the cross. From this he draws two negative lessons — that no one can hope to be saved by their own righteousness, since even their good deeds are tainted and their omissions alone would condemn them, and that no one can hope to be saved by working up the correct feelings or a complete sense of their own guilt first, since that guilt can never be fully grasped by anyone this side of eternity. He closes with the positive lesson that makes the rest bearable: though human sin is too vast to measure, Christ's atoning blood is wider and deeper still, so that anyone — however great their sin — who simply trusts in Jesus as he is, just as they are, will be saved, while no amount of slight sin can save the one who refuses to believe.Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on February 12th, 1860.