Be Sober-Minded Because We Are All Sinners

You are all sinners and guilty before God; conceived in iniquity, born in sin, you are by nature children of disobedience, and children of wrath; whether you have ever thought of it or not, certainly it is so; the Scripture hath concluded you are all under sin, and consequently under a sentence of death, like that of a physician upon his patient when he pronounceth his disease mortal; nay, like that of a judge upon the prisoner when he pronounceth his crime capital, so that both ways your danger is imminent and extreme. And shall not the consideration of this prevail to make you sober?

Were your bodies under some threatening disease which, in all probability, would in a little time cut off the thread of your life, I believe that would make you serious — that would make you solemn; were you condemned to die shortly by the hand of justice, that would sober you; and is not the death and ruin of an immortal soul more to be dreaded than that of a mortal body?

And should not the danger of that give a louder alarm to the most secure, and cast a greater damp upon the most jovial, than of the other?

And when you are told, that though the disease is mortal, it is not incurable; though the crime is capital, it is not unpardonable; how should that yet further prevail to make you serious — to make you very solicitous, very industrious to get the disease healed, and the crime forgiven? Your case will not allow any of your time or thoughts to run waste, or to be trifled away, but you have need by sober-mindedness to employ both in a due attendance to the things that belong to your everlasting peace.

You are sinners, and therefore have reason to think very meanly and humbly of yourselves, not to expect applauses, or resent contempts, nor to aim at great things in the world. What have such vile wretches as we are to be proud of, or to promise ourselves in this world, who owe our lives, which we have a thousand times forfeited, to the divine patience?

You are sinners, and if yet you are in a state of sin, “in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity,” the misery of your state is enough to give an effectual check to your vain mirth, and would do it if you knew and considered it. “Rejoice not, O Israel, for joy, as other people: for thou hast gone a whoring from thy God” (Hos. 9:1). Joy is forbidden fruit to wicked people. There cannot be a more monstrous absurdity than that which they are guilty of, “who say to the Almighty, Depart from us”; who set Him at a distance, set Him at defiance, and yet “take the timbrel and harp, and rejoice at the sound of the organ. They spend their days in wealth” (Job 21:12,13).

If through grace the power of sin is broken in you and you are delivered from the wrath to come, and being in Christ, there is no condemnation to you, yet the very remembrance of the misery and danger you were in and are delivered from — how near you were to the pit’s brink and how you were snatched as brands out of the burning — should make you serious. You still carry a body of death about with you, which should make you cry out, Oh wretched creatures that we are! We are compassed about with enemies that war against our souls; you have not yet put off the harness, but have reason still to “fear, lest a promise being left you of entering into rest, any of you should seem to come short”; and this is enough to make you considerate, and cautious and sober-minded.

In short, till you have by faith in Christ made your peace with God and are become sincere Christians, you have no reason to rejoice at all; and when you have done it, and have some comfortable evidence of a blessed change through grace wrought in you, you will then have better things to rejoice in than this world can furnish you with; and having tasted spiritual pleasures, will be dead to all the delights of sense; offer them to those that know no better.

Rev. Matthew Henry (1662–1714) pastored a Presbyterian congregation at Chester, England, for twenty-five years. He is best known and loved for bis Bible commentary (1708–10). This series of articles is taken from bis The Young Christian.

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