righteousness and justice. He transgresses the laws of God and his
nature. Man's sin is everywhere doing its destroying work. There is
individual, social, corporate and national sin (Romans 3:23). This
fact of sin is not only set forth in the Bible in unmistakable terms,
but every government recognizes it in its laws and courts of justice.
Society puts up its bars to protect itself against the sinner, and all
literature proclaims the evil results of sin.

What ought to be man's attitude to sin? Shall he make light of it and
call it a necessary part of living? Shall he continue in it, although
he recognizes its evil results, and draw others with him into greater
and larger violations of the laws of God and man? These are practical
questions. Some temporize with sin and say, "Let us lead outwardly
correct lives, but within certain bounds we will do as we please";
hence arises the practice of secret sinning.

Christ came declaring that man's relation to sin should be
uncompromising. He used vigorous language in regard to sin. He said,
"Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that
offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh!
Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off and cast
them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or
maimed, rather than having two hands or feet to be cast into
everlasting fire" (Matthew 18:7,8). But Jesus in thus advocating
heroic treatment for sin was but doing what eminent surgeons are
advising every day in regard to certain dangerous bodily
diseases. Jesus also laid His finger on the source of sin when He
declared, "For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders,
adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: these
are the things which defile a man" (Matthew 15:19). A man must think