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I. WHAT IS IT TO MOCK AT SIN? Sin is the transgression of the law; doing what God forbids, or omitting to do what He commands. The term "mock," as applied to the law of God, may include ridiculing, trifling with its authority and sanctions, or palliating and excusing the breach of it.

1. There are some who scoff, openly profane, and set at defiance the law of God. Of these there are two classes, the one urged by their sensual appetites, the other by their intellectual pride. There are others who see the necessity of a certain attention to moral conduct, but look with a sullen, contemptuous, sceptical eye upon revelation.

2. There are some who mock at sin by " trifling" with it. They suffer almost anything to set aside obedience to God; they expose themselves unnecessarily to temptation; they frequent companies and places, involve themselves in employments, which are likely to lead them to sin, and yet mock at the idea of danger from them. They do not give the law of God, in reference to the regulation of their daily conduct, a thought either one way or the other.

3. There are others who may be said to mock at sin by "excusing and palliating it." They contend that there is more good than evil in the world. They think the gospel dispensation has lowered the requirements of the law.

II. THE FOLLY OF SUCH MOCKERS. What justifies ridicule, trifling, and palliation, and does this apply to sin?

1. We ridicule what it is beneath argument to confute. Ridicule is, at all times, a dangerous weapon, seldom befitting the spirit of a real Christian. Absurdity is the object of ridicule. But what is there of absurdity connected with the law of God, that we should laugh at the breach of it? There is something more specious in the mockery of intellectual pride at the transgression of God's law; because we are, from the depravity of our nature, less susceptible of the enormity of spiritual sins than of sins of the flesh. Ambition and pride, for instance, with the world give a dignity to the character, where drunkenness would excite disgust.

2. Where is the sense, or wisdom, of trifling with sin? Has the breach, or observance, of God's law so little to do with our happiness or misery, as really to be scarcely worth our serious attention? Are the consequences of sin unimportant?

3. The folly of excusing or palliating sin is no less manifest. It lessens the abhorrence of sin in our mind. By having low views of sin, we adopt low standards of duty, low aims at usefulness, low views of the holiness of God. To palliate sin is to destroy the harmony of the Divine attributes, to rob Christ of His glory, Christianity of its motives, and to beguile us into a fatal neglect, or even denial of its fundamental doctrines. By palliating sin we also encourage the commission of sin in others; as many a parent has found by bitter experience, in screening children from proper correction, from a foolish regard to the feelings of the moment When shall we learn that every deviation from the will of God is a loss of happiness?

(B. E. Nicholls, M.A.)

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KJV: Fools make a mock at sin: but among the righteous there is favour.

WEB: Fools mock at making atonement for sins, but among the upright there is good will.