There is a sense in which every one knows that he is a sinner. Every one admits it, just as he admits any abstract Scriptural truth. But a man of the world looks upon sin rather in its relation to himself and its relation to other people than in its relation to God how it is ungrateful to God, how it grieves God, how it wounds Christ, how it offends the Holy Ghost. Neither does he measure sin by its true measurement, that whatever has not a pious motive, whatever does not give honour to God, whatever comes short of the glory of God, is sin. The practical question for us is this: How is the knowledge of sin to be attained?
I. It is the province of the Holy Ghost. He, and He alone, ever shows a man his sins. Therefore Christ spoke of it as the Spirit's first great office. "When He is come, He will reprove the world of sin."
II. By the Lawis the knowledge of sin. The Law becomes the schoolmaster, which, convincing us of sin, leads, or rather drives, us to Christ.
III. The Gospel of Jesus Christ convinces us of sin. We often learn the extent of an evil by the intensity of the remedy which is used to relieve it. What a remedy was the death of the Son of God! What an unutterable evil then sin must be!
IV. There is a knowledge of sin by sin itself. Very frequently a man is first taught to read himself by one of his deeper falls. In order to know sin, we must (1) pray for more light to be thrown on our dark hearts; (2) leave the cold, uninfluential generalities about sin, and deal with some particular sin that has power over ourselves; (3) think of the holiness of God till all that is unlike Him begins to look dark; (4) believe in the love of Jesus to us: realise, if it be only in the smallest degree, that there is a power in Him, and that power is for us.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,6th series, p. 9.
References: Job 13:23. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. viii., No. 336; Ibid., Evening by Evening,p. 189; Preacher's Monthly,vol. iii., p. 151.Job 13:24. T. Martineau, Hours of Thought,vol. i., p. 315.Job 13:24; Job 13:25. R. Allen Davies, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiii., p. 225.Job 13:26. Homiletic Magazine,vol. vii., p. 129; Preacher's Monthly,vol. v., p. 97. Job 14:4. Homiletic Magazine,vol. xiv., p. 37.