Man sins chiefly with his soul, and therefore his soul also is attacked with the most grievous spiritual judgements. (1.) God smites the soul with blindness and darkness of understanding. Man is by nature spiritually blind; yet he still has some natural knowledge of divine things. But even what he still has is justly taken away from him (Mt 13:12). His foolish heart is still more darkened (Rom 2:21), and so he deceives himself. He says, “I am rich and increased with goods”, and he knows not that he is “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked” (Rev 3:17). God, who it is most important for him to know, is hidden from him: the gospel of salvation is hidden from him (2 Cor 4:3), and God sends him a strong delusion, so that he believes a lie (2 Th 2:11).
(2.) To this is added hardness of heart, so that he becomes like a stone, impenitent and without feeling. Before this he could sometimes relent on account of his sins and be afraid of destruction. But God is greatly displeased with him; He allows his heart to wax gross, makes his ears heavy, and shuts his eyes, lest he should see with his eyes, and hear with his ears, and understand with his heart, and convert, and be healed (Is 6:9,10).
(3.) God also abandons him to the thraldom of his sins, so that “his own iniquities” take him, and he shall be “holden with the cords of his sins” (Prov 5:22). The Lord lets his lusts loose on him, which seize him and drive him forward, and so he is given “over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient” (Rom 1:28).
(4.) He is also punished by God with the overlordship of Satan. The god of this world blinds his mind, so that the light of the gospel does not shine unto him (2 Cor 4:4). That powerful ruler drives him from sin to sin, who “worketh in the children of disobedience” (Eph 2:2,3), and takes him captive in his snare at his will (2 Tim 2:26); Satan will sometimes terrify him, as he did Saul (1 Sam 16:14).
(5.) God’s spiritual judgement sometimes proceeds so far with the sinner that He gives him up to a restless conscience, which torments him continually. It will upbraid him constantly for his improper conduct, present God to him with terror as a righteous judge, and even in laughter afflict his heart with sorrow. And that gnawing worm may cause him, with Judas, to choose even strangling (Mt 27:5).
But what danger there would be if the sinner were punished only in this life; then his end would draw near, and after death he would not suffer any more. But what must cause him to cry out for grief of heart is that God will plague him for ever with the punishment of eternal fire (Jude 7), with “the damnation of hell” (Mt 23:33).
By this (1) he will be deprived of all that was honourable, pleasant and profitable to him in this life, and did in some measure moderate his distress. He may not have a moistened finger to cool his tongue, and only a painful remembrance of the good things which he received in his lifetime will remain with him, to afflict him grievously (Lk 16:24,25). What will distress him most is that he will be excluded from the enjoyment of the blessed God, for he “will be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power” (2 Th 1:9). He is now indeed alienated from the life of God, but he does not know God or the happiness of communion with Him, and he does not concern himself with these things. Therefore his separation from God does not grieve him, or he flatters himself with a vain hope that God will yet be favourable to him. But when a dreadful eternity shall surprise him, he will then know, with anguish of soul, what God is, what it is to enjoy Him, and what it is to be separated from Him. How his vain hope will leave him to the greatest distress, without any relief!
(2) He will not only miss all that is good, but he will also be subjected to a painful feeling of all that is evil, for (a) God will not meet him as a man (Is 47:3), but He will “stir up all His wrath” (Ps 78:38), and cause the sinner to drink “the wrath of the Almighty” (Job 21:20). If a man cannot endure that his neighbour, whose goodwill he seeks and needs, should behold him in wrath, then how insupportable will the power of God’s anger be to him (Ps 90:11)! The damned will cry out, more than the heathen and Roman persecutors at the opening of the sixth seal, “to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: for the great day of His wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?” (Rev 6:16,17).
(b) The sinner’s conscience will also rage terribly against him, and gnaw and sting him like a worm (Mark 9:44,46,48). It will continually upbraid him with all his iniquities, in their aggravating circumstances, because he has sinned dreadfully against such an exalted Majesty, against so many obligations and faithful warnings, and in such a senseless manner has lost his priceless salvation for a few insignificant trifles.
(c) What will equally afflict him is that he will always persist in sinning – he will, in the most horrible manner curse himself and his neighbour with whom he sinned during his lifetime; indeed he will blaspheme God because of his pains, like the worshippers of the beast when the fifth viol shall be poured out upon his seat (Rev 16:10,11). Sin is now indeed the element of the sinner. But it will then be to him like boiling water to a living fish, although it cannot live out of the water, which is its element.
1Taken, with editing from VanderKemp’s sermons on the Heidelberg Catechism. VanderKemp (1664-1718) was an eminent minister in Dirksland in The Netherlands.