What does it mean that sin brings forth death (James 1:15)?

"On this view we may see the force of the contrasted figures, by which the first and second death are portrayed. One is 'the lake of fire,' solemn indeed and most awful, yet bounded in its range, shut in by firm land on every side. The other is 'the deep,' 'the abyss,' 'the bottomless pit,' evil reigning, rioting, growing, deepening without limit and without end, in its fatal descent, farther and farther from light, happiness, and heaven. By the sentence of the law, fulfilled without atonement or redemption, mankind once fallen would be shut out from God's presence, and sink, and sink, and sink forever in this abyss of hopeless and endless ruin. There would have been, through ages without end, the awful reality of a God-dishonoring, God-hating, God-blaspheming, self-tormenting, God-abandoned universe. Such death is the wages of sin, its due desert, and the issue to which it naturally tends. It is the fatal harvest from the seeds of moral corruption harbored in the soul. 'Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.'"

First, he was sick. He says, "Three days agone I fell sick" (ver. 13). He was just like you, my unsaved friend. You are sick with an awful disease. It is sin. And it ends in eternal death. "The wages of sin is death." The poison of sin is in your soul and doing its deadly work. You are like the people in the desert, dying of the serpent-bite. You commit sin. "And sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death" (James 1:15). This is more than the death of the body. It is eternal death in the lake of fire.

The last verse of our chapter, so well known, gives us a concise summary of the matter. We cannot serve sin without receiving its wages, which is death. Death is a word of large meaning. In one sense death came in upon man when by sin he was utterly separated from God. The death of the body occurs when it is separated from the spiritual part of man. The second death is when lost men are finally separated from God. The full wages of sin includes death in all three senses.

The word death is used in three ways. It expresses: First, Separation morally from God through sin. Second, Separation of the body from the soul and spirit. Third, Eternal separation from God. In no case does it mean annihilation.

But some would dare to blame God for putting temptation in their way, that is sinful allurements. In verse 1 it had been a question, not of such allurements, but of tribulations, which should be endured in patience and joy. In such trials, God has a direct hand, no doubt, as in the case of Abraham (Gen.22:1); but it is not God who puts moral evil in a man's way, by which to tempt him. Satan of course did this in the garden of Eden; yet verse 14 is clear that it is a person's own lust that leads him to be drawn away. Whether Satan or men tempt him, he himself is responsible for yielding to this. And once lust is indulged, it conceives and brings forth sin; then of course sin results in death. Therefore, to judge the root of self-in-diligence is the one way for the child of God to meet this: the temptation is to be refused.

Let us lay hold of this fact and honestly face it. When we sin the tendency is for us to lay a great deal of the blame on our circumstances, or at all events on things without, when if only we are honest before God we have no one and nothing to blame but ourselves. How important it is that we should thus be honest before God and judge ourselves rightly in His presence, for that is the high road to recovery of soul. Moreover it will help us to judge and refuse the lusts of our hearts, and thus sin will be nipped in the bud. Lust is the mother of sin. If it works it brings forth sin, and sin carried to completion brings forth death.

(Vv. 13-15). The Apostle passes on to warn us of another character of trial. He has been speaking of the trial of faith that comes from circumstances without (verses 2, 3); now he warns us not to confound this form of trial with the trials that come from the flesh within. God can try us with outward circumstances, but God cannot be tempted with evil, neither does He tempt any man to do evil. We, indeed, can be tempted by evil, through lust within, and thus enticed into doing evil. Judas, enticed by the lust of money in his heart, fell into the devil's temptation to gratify that lust by betraying the Lord. The lust within led to the sin of the betrayal, and the sin of the betrayal brought forth death.

The evil temptation comes from within man, though Satan may act on him, for he ever evilly tempts to evil. So it was man at the beginning was tempted when his nature was not evil; but instead of repelling it as the Lord did, he allowed and received it; so that henceforth the race was contaminated like its fallen head. The precise contrast is seen in Christ, to Whom the prince of the world came at the end, and had nothing in Him then any more than when first tempted. But it is wholly different with us, conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity as we are naturally, though now by grace born anew. Therefore have we an altogether distinct class and character of temptation, which the Lord had not, as incompatible with His person as with His work. In Him was no lusting against the Spirit, no contrariety in Him, because He was, as no one else could be, the Holy One of God. The Word became flesh (John 1:14). Incarnation was true of Him, but of Him alone. But the believer, though having life in the Son, has the fallen nature, and hence is liable to evil temptation.

"But each is tempted when by his own lust drawn away and enticed." The Lord though tempted in all points similarly could not be in this way, because it would have denied and destroyed His moral glory, and it would have frustrated the purpose of God in saving us to His glory. That the Lord was in like manner tempted in all things has this immense limitation, "sin excepted," not sinning only in fact, which is true of course, but "sin" in the nature from which He was absolutely exempt. He had not and could not have such evil temptations from a corrupt nature, because His was expressly holy. There was no lust of His own to draw away or allure. Evil suggestion from without He therefore uniformly rejected with indignation, even if an honoured apostle, shocked at the suffering before Him as inconsistent to his mind and feeling with His glory, repudiated His death and such a death as an impossibility, and received rebuke stern beyond example. With the believer too often is it likewise, when like Peter his mind is not on the things of God but on those of men. Christ sought His Father's glory, and unrighteousness was not in Him, but He did always the things pleasing to Him. Self-will there was none. He was come to do God's will, and did it perfectly and at all cost.

Far different is the saint when thus off his guard and ceasing ever so little from dependence on God. "Then lust, having conceived, bringeth forth sin; and sin, when completed, giveth birth to death." How graphic and true! But it is the strict line of James who looks at the moral effects," and does not occupy himself or the reader with that deep sounding of "causes" which we find in the Epistles of Paul. It is scarce needed to say that both views are invaluable, and alike given by inspiration.

Now James is always practical. He does not search out the root of everything in the heart, as Paul does; he takes lust as the source which produces actual sin. Paul shews that the sinful nature is the source of lust - an important distinction, which also illustrates the difference between the two writers, or the object of the Holy Ghost in the Epistle of James, namely, the outward practical life, as the evidence of the character of that life, which owes its origin to the word of God, that had wrought through faith. With James, lust - the first movement of the sinful nature which discloses its real character - having conceived, brings forth sin, and sin being finished, brings forth death. It is the history of the workings of the evil nature. James is occupied with its effects, Paul with its source, in order that we may know ourselves; Rom. 8:8.

James 1:15. "When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin." Paul said inversely, in the Epistle to the Romans (Rom. 7:8) that it is sin which produces all manner of lust. The difference between these two declarations is this: Paul keeps himself to the spiritual principles, whilst James would look at their effects. The one completes the other. The sin which is in the nature produces the lust (Rom. 7); and the lust produces the sin in the conduct of the man. (James 1.)