Number of sins beyond which God pardons no more
“Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.”—Matthew 4:7
In this day’s gospel we read that, having gone into the desert, Jesus Christ permitted the devil to “set him upon the pinnacle of the temple,” and to say to him: “If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down”—for the angels shall preserve thee from all injury. But the Lord answered that in the Sacred Scriptures it is written: “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” The sinner who abandons himself to sin without striving to resist temptations, or without at least asking God’s help to conquer them, and who hopes that the Lord will one day draw him back from the precipice, tempts God to work miracles, or rather to show him an extraordinary mercy that is not granted to Christians in general.
God, as the Apostle says, “will have all men to be saved” (1 Tim. 2:4); but he also wishes us all to labor for our own salvation—at least by adopting the means of overcoming our enemy, and by obeying him when he calls us to repentance. Sinners hear the calls of God, but they forget them, and continue to offend him. God, however, does not forget them. He numbers the graces that he dispenses, as well as the sins that we commit; and so, when the time he has fixed arrives, he deprives us of his graces and begins to inflict chastisement.
I intend to show, in this discourse, that when sins reach a certain number, God chastises, and pardons no more. Be attentive.
1. St. Basil, St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, St. John Chrysostom, St. Augustine, and other fathers teach that, just as God has fixed for each person the number of the days of his life, and the degrees of health and talent he will give him—according to the words of Scripture, “Thou hast ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight” (Wis. 11:21)—so he has also determined for each the number of sins he will pardon; and when this number is complete, he pardons no more. Illud sentire nos convenit, says St. Augustine, tamdiu unumquemque a Dei patientia sustineri, quo consummato nullam illi veniam reservari—“We must understand that each one is upheld by God’s patience only until a certain point, after which no pardon is reserved for him” (Life of Christ, ch. 3). Eusebius of Caesarea says: Deus expectat usque ad certum numerum et postea deserit—“God waits until a certain number, and afterwards abandons” (Bk. 8, ch. 2). The same doctrine is taught by the fathers mentioned above.
2. “The Lord hath sent me to heal the contrite of heart” (Isa. 61:1). God is ready to heal those who sincerely wish to amend their lives, but he cannot have pity on the obstinate. The Lord pardons sins, but he cannot pardon those who are resolved to go on offending him. Nor can we demand from God a reason why he pardons one man a hundred sins, while he takes another out of life after three or four sins and sends him to hell. By his prophet Amos, God has said: “For three crimes of Damascus, and for four, I will not convert it” (Amos 1:3).
In this we must adore the judgments of God, and say with the Apostle: “the depth of the riches, of the wisdom, and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are his judgments” (Rom. 11:33). He who receives pardon, says St. Augustine, is pardoned through the pure mercy of God; and they who are chastised are justly punished. Quibus datur misericordia, gratis datur: quibus non datur ex justitia non datur—“To whom mercy is given, it is given freely; to whom it is not given, it is not given out of justice” (On Correction, Bk. 1).
How many has God sent to hell for the first offense! St. Gregory relates that a child of five years, who had already reached the use of reason, was seized by demons and carried to hell for uttering a blasphemy. The divine Mother revealed to that great servant of God, Benedicta of Florence, that a boy of twelve years was damned after his first sin; and another boy, of eight years, died after his first sin and was lost. You say: I am young; there are many who have committed more sins than I have. But is God on that account bound to wait for your repentance if you offend him?
In the gospel of St. Matthew (21:19) we read that the Savior cursed a fig tree the first time he found it without fruit: “May no fruit grow on thee henceforward forever. And immediately the fig tree withered away.” You must, then, tremble at the thought of committing even a single mortal sin, and all the more if you have already been guilty of mortal sins.
3. “Be not without fear about sin forgiven, and add not sin to sin” (Ecclus. 5:5). Do not say, then, O sinner: As God has forgiven me my other sins, so he will pardon me this one if I commit it. Do not say this; for if to the sin that has been forgiven you add another, you have reason to fear that this new sin will be joined to your former guilt, that thus the number will be completed, and that you will be abandoned.
Behold how the Scripture unfolds this truth more clearly in another place: “The Lord patiently expecteth, that when the day of judgment shall come, he may punish them in the fullness of sins” (2 Macc. 6:14). God waits with patience until a certain number of sins is reached; but when the measure of guilt is filled up, he waits no longer, and chastises the sinner. “Thou hast sealed up my offenses as it were in a bag” (Job 14:17). Sinners heap up their sins without keeping any account of them; but God numbers them, so that when the harvest is ripe—that is, when the number of sins is complete—he may take vengeance. “Put ye in the sickles, for the harvest is ripe” (Joel 3:13).
4. Of this there are many examples in the Scriptures. Speaking of the Hebrews, the Lord says in one place: “All the men that have tempted me now ten times… shall not see the land” (Num. 14:22–23). See how he numbers their sins, and how, the number once complete, he chastises. In another place he says that he held back his vengeance against the Amorrhites because the number of their sins was not yet complete: “For as yet the iniquities of the Amorrhites are not at the full” (Gen. 15:16).
We have again the example of Saul, who, after disobeying God a second time, was abandoned. He entreated Samuel to intercede for him before the Lord: “Bear, I beseech thee, my sin, and return with me, that I may adore the Lord” (1 Kings 15:25). But Samuel, knowing that God had abandoned Saul, answered: “I will not return with thee; because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord hath rejected thee,” etc. (v. 26). Saul, you have abandoned God, and he has abandoned you.
We have another example in Belshazzar. After he had profaned the vessels of the temple, he saw a hand writing on the wall: “Mane, Thecel, Phares.” Daniel was called to expound the meaning of these words; and in explaining the word Thecel, he said to the king: “Thou art weighed in the balance, and art found wanting” (Dan. 5:27). By this he gave the king to understand that the weight of his sins, in the balance of divine justice, had made the scale go down. “The same night, Belshazzar, the Chaldean king, was killed” (Dan. 5:30).
Oh, how many sinners have met with a like fate! Continuing to offend God until their sins amounted to a certain number, they have been struck dead and sent to hell. “They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment they go down to hell” (Job 21:13). Tremble, brethren, lest, if you commit another mortal sin, God should cast you into hell.
5. If God chastised sinners the moment they insult him, we should not see him so despised as we do. But because he does not punish their offenses at once, and because, through mercy, he restrains his anger and waits for their return, they take courage to go on offending him. “For, because sentence is not speedily pronounced against the evil, the children of men commit evil without any fear” (Eccles. 8:11).
But we must be convinced that, though God bears with us, he does not bear with us forever. Expecting, as on former occasions, to escape from the snares of the Philistines, Samson went on letting himself be deceived by Dalila: “I will go out as I did before, and shake myself” (Judg. 16:20). But that time “the Lord was departed from him.” Samson was taken by his enemies and lost his life. The Lord warns you not to say: I have committed so many sins, and God has not chastised me—“Say not: I have sinned, and what harm hath befallen me? for the Most High is a patient rewarder” (Ecclus. 5:4). God has patience for a certain term, after which he punishes the first sins together with the last. There comes a single reckoning, as the saying goes, and pays for all. And the greater his patience has been, the more severe his vengeance.
6. Hence, according to St. Chrysostom, God is more to be feared when he bears with sinners than when he punishes their sins at once. Plus timendum est, cum tolerat quam cum festinanter punit—“He is more to be feared when he tolerates than when he hastens to punish.” And why? Because, says St. Gregory, those to whom God has shown most mercy will, if they do not cease to offend him, be chastised with the greatest rigor. Quo diutius expectat durius damnat—“The longer he waits, the more severely he condemns.” The saint adds that God often punishes such sinners with a sudden death and does not allow them time for repentance. Saepe qui diu tolerati sunt subita morte rapiuntur, ut nec flere ante mortem liceat—“Often those who have long been tolerated are carried off by a sudden death, so that they may not even weep before they die.”
And the greater the light God gives to certain sinners for their correction, the greater is their blindness and obstinacy in sin. “For it had been better for them not to have known the way of justice, than, after they had known it, to turn back” (2 Pet. 2:21). Miserable are the sinners who, after being enlightened, return to their vomit. St. Paul says that it is morally impossible for them to be converted again. “For it is impossible for those who were once illuminated—have tasted also the heavenly gift,… and are fallen away, to be renewed again to penance” (Heb. 6:4, 6).
7. Listen, then, sinner, to the admonition of the Lord: “My son, hast thou sinned? Do so no more, but for thy former sins pray that they may be forgiven thee” (Ecclus. 21:1). Son, do not add new sins to those you have already committed, but be careful to pray for the pardon of your past offenses; otherwise, if you commit another mortal sin, the gates of the divine mercy may be closed against you, and your soul may be lost forever. When, then, beloved brethren, the devil tempts you again to yield to sin, say to yourself: If God pardons me no more, what shall become of me for all eternity?
Should the devil reply, “Fear not, God is merciful,” answer him by saying: What certainty, or even what probability, have I that, if I return to sin, God will show me mercy and grant me pardon? Hear what the Lord threatens against all who despise his calls: “Behold I have called and you refused… I also will laugh in your destruction, and will mock when that shall come to you which you feared” (Prov. 1:24, 26). Mark the words I also: they mean that, as you have mocked the Lord by betraying him again after your confession and your promises of amendment, so he will mock you at the hour of death. “I will laugh and will mock.” But “God is not mocked” (Gal. 6:7).
“As a dog,” says the Wise Man, “that returneth to his vomit, so is the fool that repeateth his folly” (Prov. 26:11). Blessed Denis the Carthusian gives an excellent exposition of this text. He says that, as a dog that eats what it has just vomited is an object of disgust and abomination, so the sinner who returns to the sins he has detested and confessed becomes hateful in the sight of God. Sicut id quod per vomitum est rejectum, resumere est valde abominabile ac turpe sic peccata deleta reiterari—“Just as it is highly abominable and shameful to take back what has been rejected through vomit, so it is to repeat sins that have been blotted out.”
8. O folly of sinners! If you buy a house, you spare no pains to obtain every security against the loss of your money; if you take medicine, you are careful to make sure that it cannot harm you; if you cross a river, you cautiously guard against any danger of falling in; and yet, for a fleeting enjoyment, for the satisfaction of revenge, for a beast’s pleasure that is over almost as soon as it is had, you stake your eternal salvation, saying: “I will go to confession after I commit this sin.” And when, I ask, will you go to confession? You say: “Tomorrow.” But who promises you tomorrow? Who assures you that you will have time for confession, and that God will not take your life, as he has taken the life of so many others, in the very act of sin?
Diem tenes, says St. Augustine, qui horam non tenes—“You hold the day, you who do not hold the hour.” You cannot be sure of living another hour, and yet you say: “I will go to confession tomorrow.” Listen to the words of St. Gregory: “He who has promised pardon to the penitent has not promised tomorrow to the sinner” (Hom. 12 in Evan.). God has promised pardon to all who repent; but he has not promised to wait until tomorrow for those who insult him. Perhaps God will give you time for repentance, perhaps he will not. But should he not give it, what will become of your soul? In the meantime, for the sake of a wretched pleasure, you lose the grace of God and expose yourself to the danger of being lost forever.
9. Would you, for such fleeting enjoyments, stake your money, your honor, your possessions, your liberty, and your life? No, you would not. How then does it happen that, for a wretched gratification, you lose your soul, heaven, and God? Tell me: do you believe that heaven, hell, and eternity are truths of faith? Do you believe that, if you die in sin, you are lost forever? Oh, what rashness, what madness, to condemn yourself willingly to an eternity of torments in the hope of afterwards reversing the sentence of your own condemnation!
Nemo, says St. Augustine, sub spe salutis vult aegrotare—“No one chooses to fall ill in the hope that he will recover.” No one can be found so foolish as to take poison in the hope of warding off its deadly effects by the ordinary remedies. And will you condemn yourself to hell, saying that you expect to be delivered from it afterwards? O folly!—which, in keeping with the divine threats, has brought, and brings every day, so many to hell. “Thou hast trusted in thy wickedness, and evil shall come upon thee, and thou shalt not know the rising thereof” (Isa. 47:10–11). You have sinned, trusting rashly in the divine mercy: the punishment of your guilt will fall suddenly upon you, and you will not know from where it comes.
What do you say? What resolution do you make? If, after this sermon, you do not firmly resolve to give yourself to God, I weep over you, and I count you as lost.
Points for Reflection
1. “My son, hast thou sinned? Do so no more, but for thy former sins pray that they may be forgiven thee” (§7)
2. “If God pardons me no more, what shall become of me for all eternity?” (§7)
3. “God has promised pardon to all who repent; but he has not promised to wait until tomorrow for those who insult him” (§8)