SINS OF OMISSION
‘These ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.’
It scarcely admits of a question, but that every sin, which was ever committed upon the earth, is traceable, in the first instance, to a sin of omission.
I. Sins of omission investigated.—What will be the subject of inquiry at the end of the world? Will it be the omissions, or the commissions, which will be chiefly investigated at the day of judgment? The answer is plain. The only sins recorded against those who perish are sins of omission. ‘I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat.’
II. Sins of omission condemned.—Why is any man lost, that is lost? Is it because he did certain things? It is the having done those things, he omitted to use God’s way of escape, to go to Christ. In the Old Testament, you will observe, almost all the commandments have a ‘not’ in them. But in the gospel law it is exactly the converse. The precept is not negative. It is direct and absolute. ‘Thou shalt love God’: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour.’ And therefore the transgression must consist in an omission.
III. Chasms in the soul.—It is a wonderful part of God’s method with us, that very often He makes one sin, not only the punishment, but the actual corrective, of another sin. Every sin which can be seen, is only an index of another sin which cannot be seen. In your consciences read first your omissions. Leave the surface, and deal more with those true birth-places of all sin and of all unhappiness—the voids in your duties and the chasms in your souls.
—The Rev. James Vaughan.