Post by Jesse Morrell on Jan 27, 2006 15:52:46 GMT -5
(Winkie is a famous author on Revival and also a very popular speaker worldwide.)
Me Or Adam?
By Winkie Pratney
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GOD’S GREATEST PROBLEM
God’s greatest problem is summed up in one little word: S-I-N. Heaven is at battle stations today because sin has invaded the human race and the moral Universe. It is high time the Church knew her enemy! Her first enemy is not the Devil, it is not death, it is not despair. Her enemy is SIN, and unless she learns to understand it, face it and deal with it, God can never grant us a visitation from on high to turn our nations back to Him.
John Wesley said - "Give me one hundred men who fear no one but God and hate nothing but sin and I will move the world." Do WE hate sin? Satan has successfully clouded the minds of thousands of church people on this dangerous issue. No man is a real Christian who does not hate the things God hates and love the things that God loves, as he sees them. And in all His holiness God hates sin. Sin cost Him His only-begotten Son. Sin cost the Lord Jesus His life. Sin plunged the world into a living Hell. It will yet plunge multitudes into an endless Hell. It is time we paid serious attention to the subject of sin. Our understanding of its guilt and awfulness will largely determine our view of the love and mercy of God, our presentation of the Gospel to sinners and our presentation of truth to the Body of Christ. What IS sin?
WHAT SIN IS NOT
(1) Sin is not NATURAL
A common answer when people are faced with sin is "Yes, I sin. Nobody is perfect - we’re only human!" So - you sin because you are only a person? Does human equal sinful? Nothing could be further from the truth. Only by comparing ourselves with the perfect example of TRUE humanity - the Lord Jesus - can we see just how unnatural sin is. When God became man, He took on a true human body. Jesus was not God disguised as man, but God who became man. Although He was conceived supernaturally, He was born of a perfectly normal human girl. (Luke 1:31). He grew, learned, was hungry and thirsty. (Luke 2:52; 2:40; Matt. 4:2; Lk. 4:2; Jn. 19:8). As the Last Adam, His body (though arguably not subject to death or disease like ours is now) was just as special as when our first parents walked the earth; Scripture does not go out of its way to portray it as utterly unlike any other human body. (Heb. 10:5; Jn. 2:21; Lk. 24:3,23; 1 Jn. 1:1; 1 Jn. 4:3). He ate, drank, felt weary and rested; (Mk 2:16; Lk. 24:39) and declared His body to be flesh and bones (Jn. 20:20, 27). He was a human soul . (Is. 53:11,12; Ps. 16:10; Jn. 12:27; Acts 2:27; Matt. 26:38) John, Peter, Paul and Isaiah all called Him a man (Jn. 1:30; Acts 2:22; I Tim. 2:5; Is. 53:3) He called Himself a man (John 8:40). His favorite name for Himself when He walked this earth was "the Son of Man," used seventy-one times in Scripture.
Christ, was of course, always God. He was the only man without a beginning, because He was eternal in His origin. He knew that He had come from the Father, and after His earthly mission He would go back to the Father. His essential relationship with the Spirit and the Father was never removed. But while He walked this planet, to show that it was possible to resist temptation and defeat the Devil with only the power of the Holy Spirit, the guidance of His Father, and the Word of God, the Lord Jesus used none of His Godhead powers. He laid aside His rights and powers as God to tread this world (Phil. 2:5-8; Lk. 2:52; Heb. 5:7-9) although His essential nature as God remained unchanged. To be fully "tempted in all points such as we are", and yet be "without sin", the Lord Jesus had to become fully human. To make Him out to be unfairly more than this during His brief stay on Earth is to miss completely the whole purpose of His life; not only to offer His body as a perfect substitute for our sin, but to show us the way a child of God was to live in this world! (Heb. 2:14-15; 5:5-9) Understand - the Lord Jesus had nothing available to Him on Earth that any child of God does not have available; His Father even arranged for Him to have some disadvantages! (Luke 2:7; Jn. 1:46; Jn. 8:41) The Lord Jesus was our pattern of true human nature, yet He was "without sin" (Heb. 4:15) and He "did no sin". (I Pet, 2:22) God made human nature; God did not make sin!
Sin is never natural. It is horribly unnatural. Sin is NEVER "human". It is horribly inhuman. Sin creates remorse, guilt and shame; any time we feel these three witnesses in our soul, they tell us sin is not natural. Even a simple lie-detector tells us this. The whole body reacts adversely if a man sins. Sin is in fact, a kind of insanity. (Ecc. 9:3). The insane treat their dream world as real, and the real world as a dream: so, practically, does the sinner. The insane try to do the naturally impossible; so does the sinner, when he tries to squeeze lasting satisfaction from sin. The insane suspect and fear the ones who love them most; watch the sinner as he runs madly from the God who loves him, and rushes on to Hell as if it were Heaven! This is the worst kind of insanity; not of the head, but of the heart.
No-one ever sins because they love sin. Even the worst sinner does not like to be called a sinner; he resents the fact of his selfishness, even when he is selfish! And even the worst of sinners cannot help but admire right in another, whenever that other person is sufficiently far away from him not to convict him of his selfishness. (Is. 58:1-2; Ezek. 33:32; Rom. 7:22). Nobody sins merely for the sake of doing wrong. Sinning men and women hate themselves when they do wrong. A man sins only if he wants something for himself more strongly than he wants to do right. God never planned sin for man. It is the most unnatural thing in the moral Universe. To equate humanity with sinfulness is to make God the Author of His own worst enemy; to make God responsible for the thing that has brought Him unhappiness. Do not dare say sin is "natural"!
ARE WE REALLY UNABLE TO OBEY?
(2) Sin is not unavoidable
One of the favorite heresies of the past is rapidly becoming the favorite heresy of the present. It is the lie of Antinomianism - that men cannot do what God expressly requires them to do, and therefore they may live how they like and still enter the Kingdom of God. In the midst of the greatest moral landslide the world has ever seen, in the midst of the most flagrant disrespect for law and order and government of any century, it is unblushingly proclaimed as Gospel truth from pulpits across the nation that man cannot keep the law of God! In our wariness of the dangers of legalism, we have forgotten the perils of antinomianism; we have forgotten that "the law is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ" (Gal. 3:24) and that "by the law is the knowledge of sin." (Rom. 3:20). Gone is the preaching of moral responsibility that streamed from men like William Booth, George Fox, John Wesley, and Charles Finney, that made men weep with conviction; gone is the heartbreak of the Psalmist for the honor of God when he cried "Horror has taken hold of me, because of the wicked that forsake Thy law!" (Ps. 119:56; Ps. 119:36).
Some sincere men say "God gave us good laws to keep" but in the next breath say "but He knew we couldn’t keep them."! If this is really true, then how are God’s laws good? No law is good that asks the impossible of its subjects, If God demands obedience to impossible laws, then God is not just, for even men do not require obedience to impossible laws. If even more, God demands such obedience under penalty of death, then God is not only unfair, but monstrous! What kind of Being would pass laws upon his subjects they are actually unable to keep, then condemn them to death for their failure to obey? This is a blasphemy on God’s character. Which of God’s laws are we actually unable to keep - if we love the Lawgiver? Do we have to relegate God to some other position than King of our lives and put something else in His place? Do we have to take His Name in vain? Must we steal? What man has ever been born that could not help but murder? Do we have no choice but to be sexually immoral, to lie, to covet, to dishonor parents and refuse to honor God on a special day of rest? God says "His commandments are not grievous." Do we say they are not only grievous, but impossible? The Lord Jesus said - "My yoke is easy and My burden is light." Do we say His yoke is not only heavy, but completely unbearable for any human being?
The Bible expressly declares that God has given good laws. All the laws of God are based on the one great Law of Love. Love is to govern the actions of all moral beings in God’s Universe - that every moral creature should unselfishly choose the highest good of God and His Universe according to their real, relative values. As God’s own being is greatest, He must be loved first of all; then all others in the order of their true value under God. The Ten Commandments are just a letter expression of that law, given when men began to ignore the original love law written on their hearts. They define man’s obligations God-ward in the first three commandments, then those of his obligations to his fellow men in the last seven. The Lord Jesus summed these in His two commandments (Matt. 22:36-40; Mk. 12:28-34; Lk. 10:25-28) covering what Moses had already given. (Deut. 6:5; Lev. 19:18) Paul summed up the Law into the one basic word "love" (Rom. 13:8-10; Gal. 5:14; 1 Tim 1:5; Jas. 2:8-10. This Law, expressed in different ways, is given as the unchangeable condition of happiness and holiness. It defines human obligations and can never be changed or suspended in our present relationships. (Gal. 3:19; Ps. 19:7; Matt. 5:17; Rom. 7:12; 1 Tim 1:8)
No saint in Scripture thought they were "unable" to keep God’s laws. Moses didn’t (Ex. 24:3; Deut. 5:1, 6:24-25; 10:12-13). Neither did Joshua (22:5) Ezra (7:23-26) David (Ps. 19:7; 40:8) his psalmist friend (Ps. 119:165-168) or Daniel (9:9-11) or others! (2 Kings 17:13, 7-18, etc.). The Lord Jesus Himself told men to obey His Father’s laws; this was the test of being a true disciple. (Matt. 5:17-20; 19:17; Jn. 14:15,21; 14:23-24; 15:10). The Apostle John stresses this obedience. (1 Jn. 2:3-6; 3:18-22). Obeying God’s love law simply means living for Him with no selfish interest; to live up to all the light you have with all the effort of will, mind and feeling necessary for the task in hand. For the Christian, obeying God and keeping His commandments are a natural part of his new life. Only a sinner finds it hard to walk in God’s ways; when he tries to use law as a means to his own end, the ultimate gratification of his own selfishness. And he will fail.
IS SIN A "SOMETHING"?
(3) Sin is not physical
Many think they have explained the fact of sin in the human race by using a phrase we shall call "Doggie Logic". It goes essentially like this: "A dog is not a dog because he barks: he barks because he is a dog. Thus, man is not a sinner because he sins; he sins because he is a sinner." The assumption is, of course, that all sin flows from a preexistent sinful nature, and it is this nature that creates the sinful acts of the sinner. Just as the bark of a dog comes undeniably from the fact that he is a dog, so man’s sin will flow inescapably from the fact that he is a sinner, and was born so. It sounds nice; is it true? There are unfortunately two things wrong with this logic. They are serious flaws, because once they are assumed, they actually destroy the basis of the very thing they seek to prove - that all men are guilty of, and responsible to God for their sin. These logic flaws are:
A MAN IS NOT A DOG. A dog’s actions are right if he barks, because God created a dog to express itself naturally by barking. But God did not create men to sin! A dog’s bark is natural; sin is not. The Bible everywhere represents sin as an alien invasion to a moral nature made in the image of God. Assuming that man sins because it is his normal nature to sin, also assumes that sin is natural. A dog barks because he is a dog. A man can also bark if he chooses to. Does this prove that he is a dog? No, it proves that he has chosen to do a thing he was never created to do naturally. If a man sins, it merely proves that he has chosen to sin, and his sin will certainly be treated as unnatural in the eyes and judgment of God.
Do we need a sinful nature to sin? Is it necessary to have an preexistent "implanted sinfulness" to enable man to do wrong? If one sinner can be found in Scripture who sinned without first having a sinful nature, the answer is no, and the case is closed. And of course, there are at least three moral beings who committed sin without sinful natures. Satan was the first. The first man Adam was the second, and then his wife Eve. The angels who were cast out of heaven were apparently first perfect. No moral being needs a sinful nature to sin. If he is given one that makes it really impossible for him not to do right, he is not guilty, but helpless.
Neither does sin reside, as some sincere men have speculated, in the blood. Scriptures associate mortality with blood, but never morality. It is a symbol of human life. As the key electrochemical and circulatory system of the body, it is both the "life of the flesh" and the "circuitry" of the soul. As a statement of outpoured life, it is certainly a precious symbol of Christ’s atoning sacrifice. (Is. 53:10-12; Heb. 9:22-23; Matt. 26:28; Acts 20:28; Rom. 3:24-26; 5:9-11; Eph. 2:13; Heb. 10:10-14; 10:19-20; 1 Pet. 1:18-19; 1 Jn. 1:7). But blood in the Bible does not carry good or evil. If we can transmit morals through blood, then a blood transfusion from a saint will make a man more holy, and one from a sinner will make a saint less sanctified. It will follow then, that a prenatal blood transfusion on a "blue" baby will give it a totally different nature. Now, while it is true that the blood of any creature contains its life essence and the blood of Christ cleanses from sin, no Scripture assigns either sin or love to blood. Blood never holds morals in the Bible.
What is sin if it isn’t a substance? As Christians we speak of sin as a power or a force and know it is something much more than just an isolated wrong decision. Somehow personal sin can keep record in our body, mind and emotions. All habits, both good and bad, are developed the same way: by repetitive choices, stored as patterns in our memory. Sinful patterns built around a life of supremely serving ourselves can be terrifyingly addictive and far stronger than any wishful intention to do better. We may see and approve what is good, but have no power in our own strength to escape the bondage.
In Romans 7:7-24, the Apostle Paul personifies sin to show its power over an enlightened, but unconverted mind. He calls it the law of sin and death. Any habit of wanting our own way clashes with the judgment of conscience and God’s moral law. Any such developing death-style of evil habit (the "law" or "rule of action of sin") conflicts with the changeless reality of the true state of things, the law of God. A sinner may discipline his life to try to break some bad habits, but no-one ever escapes unaided the ultimate addiction of serving ourselves. Without the drawing power of the Holy Spirit, no sinner can free himself. Only Christ by the Gospel can truly deliver him. (Rom. 7:25; 8:1).
Paul illustrates the battle by speaking as if he is presently in it. That it is only an illustration and not a present personal problem is clear; the passage ends in true freedom. He speaks of the tug of this "law of sin" as if it is at home in his bodily members. "Flesh" is a phrase used to describe the concentration on emotional gratification through our five senses. We feel excited desires sparked into unnatural strength by habits of selfish gratification in our bodies. Jesus comes to break the cycle of death and bring deliverance.
Even here Paul does not really make a case for "physical" sin, and certainly is not seeking to prove it as his helpless inheritance. He is not concerned with how a man sins, but the fact of an internal battle raging that cannot be won alone. His point is to show us we have no hope of salvation in ourselves; the law of moral thermodynamics is against us. Who can help him get free? Only Jesus Christ, who faced all the temptations in His own body and did not give in at all; only Jesus, whose perfect character was sealed in death and whose resurrection demonstrates His power to face our worst and ugliest and win.
If sin is physical, in what form does it exist? Is it solid, liquid or gas? If sin is identifiably material, can it be isolated in a test-tube? Can it be injected into a saint to make him wrong? May we see the phenomena of a vial of sin concentrate? This is, of course, absurd. All efforts to trace actual sin to some biologic or materially organic connection with parents have failed of genetic, medical or physiological evidence,. Attempts to trace actual wrong to some gene or chemical deficiency is the humanist's last shot at explaining morality, and still fails to deal with the universality of sin. At the most, all inherited traits from parents simply contribute influences for later selfish choices.
How then, can we account for the fact that all have sinned? It is customary to trace this universal sinfulness to some kind of organic connection with Adam. Out of the mass of historical theological opinion, we may reduce all views to two basically opposite ideas:
Augustine, began with the premise that souls, like bodies were transmitted to children. Thus man was unable to help sin, since he inherited a sinful soul. The logical conclusion of a premise like this is that man is not to blame for his sinful nature, and cannot properly be urged to repent of it, since true repentance involves self-condemnation by the sinner. It follows then, that man can do nothing in salvation; God makes all the choices, and man becomes a mere puppet in His hands. In such a system, man can be sub-Scripturally devalued; being human is equated with sinfulness. Doctrines of infant d**nation, physical baptismal regeneration, unconditional eternal security; annihilation or Universalism, and forms of fatalism may logically follow. On the other hand, the Bible holds man fully responsible for sin; though he is indeed damaged, hurt and unable to save himself, he is not pictured as irresponsibly "helpless". He himself can choose to respond to God’s Spirit drawing him to repent, believe Jesus and obey His Word.
Pelagius, held that a man was born innocent, free of contamination; if left to his own way, he would "naturally" choose God. Logically then, a man might actually save himself from sin by consistent right choices; he does not need a Savior at all! If this was true, why should God need to intervene in our lives? Given the right teaching and environment, we can carve out our own holiness and happiness without Christ! This leads to the unscriptural deification of man, and the dangerous errors of humanistic and rationalistic thought, which may lead on to religious atheism and the abandonment of God altogether. On the contrary, the Bible teaches that man is incapable of saving himself; that his plight cannot be corrected by education or environment, but only by the sovereign drawing power of God the Holy Spirit, who alone can lead a man into a "grace-by-faith" salvation not based on man’s works. We all need God, even the holy angels who never sinned at all.
All other positions on human depravity place somewhere between these two extremes. Our own understanding of this subject will modify every facet of practical theology! This is no mere theoretical issue, but essential to our picture of the Gospel. If we excuse sin, we shall do so at the expense of God’s love, and at the peril of our souls. If we dogmatise as sin what Scripture does not support, by calling temptations, influences and involuntary actions "sinfulness", we will be bound and falsely condemned by the Enemy of our souls, too busy fighting our own failures to turn the world upside down, while all Heaven mourns. We have seen what sin is not; to resolve these difficulties, let us see what sin is.
Me Or Adam?
By Winkie Pratney
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GOD’S GREATEST PROBLEM
God’s greatest problem is summed up in one little word: S-I-N. Heaven is at battle stations today because sin has invaded the human race and the moral Universe. It is high time the Church knew her enemy! Her first enemy is not the Devil, it is not death, it is not despair. Her enemy is SIN, and unless she learns to understand it, face it and deal with it, God can never grant us a visitation from on high to turn our nations back to Him.
John Wesley said - "Give me one hundred men who fear no one but God and hate nothing but sin and I will move the world." Do WE hate sin? Satan has successfully clouded the minds of thousands of church people on this dangerous issue. No man is a real Christian who does not hate the things God hates and love the things that God loves, as he sees them. And in all His holiness God hates sin. Sin cost Him His only-begotten Son. Sin cost the Lord Jesus His life. Sin plunged the world into a living Hell. It will yet plunge multitudes into an endless Hell. It is time we paid serious attention to the subject of sin. Our understanding of its guilt and awfulness will largely determine our view of the love and mercy of God, our presentation of the Gospel to sinners and our presentation of truth to the Body of Christ. What IS sin?
WHAT SIN IS NOT
(1) Sin is not NATURAL
A common answer when people are faced with sin is "Yes, I sin. Nobody is perfect - we’re only human!" So - you sin because you are only a person? Does human equal sinful? Nothing could be further from the truth. Only by comparing ourselves with the perfect example of TRUE humanity - the Lord Jesus - can we see just how unnatural sin is. When God became man, He took on a true human body. Jesus was not God disguised as man, but God who became man. Although He was conceived supernaturally, He was born of a perfectly normal human girl. (Luke 1:31). He grew, learned, was hungry and thirsty. (Luke 2:52; 2:40; Matt. 4:2; Lk. 4:2; Jn. 19:8). As the Last Adam, His body (though arguably not subject to death or disease like ours is now) was just as special as when our first parents walked the earth; Scripture does not go out of its way to portray it as utterly unlike any other human body. (Heb. 10:5; Jn. 2:21; Lk. 24:3,23; 1 Jn. 1:1; 1 Jn. 4:3). He ate, drank, felt weary and rested; (Mk 2:16; Lk. 24:39) and declared His body to be flesh and bones (Jn. 20:20, 27). He was a human soul . (Is. 53:11,12; Ps. 16:10; Jn. 12:27; Acts 2:27; Matt. 26:38) John, Peter, Paul and Isaiah all called Him a man (Jn. 1:30; Acts 2:22; I Tim. 2:5; Is. 53:3) He called Himself a man (John 8:40). His favorite name for Himself when He walked this earth was "the Son of Man," used seventy-one times in Scripture.
Christ, was of course, always God. He was the only man without a beginning, because He was eternal in His origin. He knew that He had come from the Father, and after His earthly mission He would go back to the Father. His essential relationship with the Spirit and the Father was never removed. But while He walked this planet, to show that it was possible to resist temptation and defeat the Devil with only the power of the Holy Spirit, the guidance of His Father, and the Word of God, the Lord Jesus used none of His Godhead powers. He laid aside His rights and powers as God to tread this world (Phil. 2:5-8; Lk. 2:52; Heb. 5:7-9) although His essential nature as God remained unchanged. To be fully "tempted in all points such as we are", and yet be "without sin", the Lord Jesus had to become fully human. To make Him out to be unfairly more than this during His brief stay on Earth is to miss completely the whole purpose of His life; not only to offer His body as a perfect substitute for our sin, but to show us the way a child of God was to live in this world! (Heb. 2:14-15; 5:5-9) Understand - the Lord Jesus had nothing available to Him on Earth that any child of God does not have available; His Father even arranged for Him to have some disadvantages! (Luke 2:7; Jn. 1:46; Jn. 8:41) The Lord Jesus was our pattern of true human nature, yet He was "without sin" (Heb. 4:15) and He "did no sin". (I Pet, 2:22) God made human nature; God did not make sin!
Sin is never natural. It is horribly unnatural. Sin is NEVER "human". It is horribly inhuman. Sin creates remorse, guilt and shame; any time we feel these three witnesses in our soul, they tell us sin is not natural. Even a simple lie-detector tells us this. The whole body reacts adversely if a man sins. Sin is in fact, a kind of insanity. (Ecc. 9:3). The insane treat their dream world as real, and the real world as a dream: so, practically, does the sinner. The insane try to do the naturally impossible; so does the sinner, when he tries to squeeze lasting satisfaction from sin. The insane suspect and fear the ones who love them most; watch the sinner as he runs madly from the God who loves him, and rushes on to Hell as if it were Heaven! This is the worst kind of insanity; not of the head, but of the heart.
No-one ever sins because they love sin. Even the worst sinner does not like to be called a sinner; he resents the fact of his selfishness, even when he is selfish! And even the worst of sinners cannot help but admire right in another, whenever that other person is sufficiently far away from him not to convict him of his selfishness. (Is. 58:1-2; Ezek. 33:32; Rom. 7:22). Nobody sins merely for the sake of doing wrong. Sinning men and women hate themselves when they do wrong. A man sins only if he wants something for himself more strongly than he wants to do right. God never planned sin for man. It is the most unnatural thing in the moral Universe. To equate humanity with sinfulness is to make God the Author of His own worst enemy; to make God responsible for the thing that has brought Him unhappiness. Do not dare say sin is "natural"!
ARE WE REALLY UNABLE TO OBEY?
(2) Sin is not unavoidable
One of the favorite heresies of the past is rapidly becoming the favorite heresy of the present. It is the lie of Antinomianism - that men cannot do what God expressly requires them to do, and therefore they may live how they like and still enter the Kingdom of God. In the midst of the greatest moral landslide the world has ever seen, in the midst of the most flagrant disrespect for law and order and government of any century, it is unblushingly proclaimed as Gospel truth from pulpits across the nation that man cannot keep the law of God! In our wariness of the dangers of legalism, we have forgotten the perils of antinomianism; we have forgotten that "the law is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ" (Gal. 3:24) and that "by the law is the knowledge of sin." (Rom. 3:20). Gone is the preaching of moral responsibility that streamed from men like William Booth, George Fox, John Wesley, and Charles Finney, that made men weep with conviction; gone is the heartbreak of the Psalmist for the honor of God when he cried "Horror has taken hold of me, because of the wicked that forsake Thy law!" (Ps. 119:56; Ps. 119:36).
Some sincere men say "God gave us good laws to keep" but in the next breath say "but He knew we couldn’t keep them."! If this is really true, then how are God’s laws good? No law is good that asks the impossible of its subjects, If God demands obedience to impossible laws, then God is not just, for even men do not require obedience to impossible laws. If even more, God demands such obedience under penalty of death, then God is not only unfair, but monstrous! What kind of Being would pass laws upon his subjects they are actually unable to keep, then condemn them to death for their failure to obey? This is a blasphemy on God’s character. Which of God’s laws are we actually unable to keep - if we love the Lawgiver? Do we have to relegate God to some other position than King of our lives and put something else in His place? Do we have to take His Name in vain? Must we steal? What man has ever been born that could not help but murder? Do we have no choice but to be sexually immoral, to lie, to covet, to dishonor parents and refuse to honor God on a special day of rest? God says "His commandments are not grievous." Do we say they are not only grievous, but impossible? The Lord Jesus said - "My yoke is easy and My burden is light." Do we say His yoke is not only heavy, but completely unbearable for any human being?
The Bible expressly declares that God has given good laws. All the laws of God are based on the one great Law of Love. Love is to govern the actions of all moral beings in God’s Universe - that every moral creature should unselfishly choose the highest good of God and His Universe according to their real, relative values. As God’s own being is greatest, He must be loved first of all; then all others in the order of their true value under God. The Ten Commandments are just a letter expression of that law, given when men began to ignore the original love law written on their hearts. They define man’s obligations God-ward in the first three commandments, then those of his obligations to his fellow men in the last seven. The Lord Jesus summed these in His two commandments (Matt. 22:36-40; Mk. 12:28-34; Lk. 10:25-28) covering what Moses had already given. (Deut. 6:5; Lev. 19:18) Paul summed up the Law into the one basic word "love" (Rom. 13:8-10; Gal. 5:14; 1 Tim 1:5; Jas. 2:8-10. This Law, expressed in different ways, is given as the unchangeable condition of happiness and holiness. It defines human obligations and can never be changed or suspended in our present relationships. (Gal. 3:19; Ps. 19:7; Matt. 5:17; Rom. 7:12; 1 Tim 1:8)
No saint in Scripture thought they were "unable" to keep God’s laws. Moses didn’t (Ex. 24:3; Deut. 5:1, 6:24-25; 10:12-13). Neither did Joshua (22:5) Ezra (7:23-26) David (Ps. 19:7; 40:8) his psalmist friend (Ps. 119:165-168) or Daniel (9:9-11) or others! (2 Kings 17:13, 7-18, etc.). The Lord Jesus Himself told men to obey His Father’s laws; this was the test of being a true disciple. (Matt. 5:17-20; 19:17; Jn. 14:15,21; 14:23-24; 15:10). The Apostle John stresses this obedience. (1 Jn. 2:3-6; 3:18-22). Obeying God’s love law simply means living for Him with no selfish interest; to live up to all the light you have with all the effort of will, mind and feeling necessary for the task in hand. For the Christian, obeying God and keeping His commandments are a natural part of his new life. Only a sinner finds it hard to walk in God’s ways; when he tries to use law as a means to his own end, the ultimate gratification of his own selfishness. And he will fail.
IS SIN A "SOMETHING"?
(3) Sin is not physical
Many think they have explained the fact of sin in the human race by using a phrase we shall call "Doggie Logic". It goes essentially like this: "A dog is not a dog because he barks: he barks because he is a dog. Thus, man is not a sinner because he sins; he sins because he is a sinner." The assumption is, of course, that all sin flows from a preexistent sinful nature, and it is this nature that creates the sinful acts of the sinner. Just as the bark of a dog comes undeniably from the fact that he is a dog, so man’s sin will flow inescapably from the fact that he is a sinner, and was born so. It sounds nice; is it true? There are unfortunately two things wrong with this logic. They are serious flaws, because once they are assumed, they actually destroy the basis of the very thing they seek to prove - that all men are guilty of, and responsible to God for their sin. These logic flaws are:
A MAN IS NOT A DOG. A dog’s actions are right if he barks, because God created a dog to express itself naturally by barking. But God did not create men to sin! A dog’s bark is natural; sin is not. The Bible everywhere represents sin as an alien invasion to a moral nature made in the image of God. Assuming that man sins because it is his normal nature to sin, also assumes that sin is natural. A dog barks because he is a dog. A man can also bark if he chooses to. Does this prove that he is a dog? No, it proves that he has chosen to do a thing he was never created to do naturally. If a man sins, it merely proves that he has chosen to sin, and his sin will certainly be treated as unnatural in the eyes and judgment of God.
Do we need a sinful nature to sin? Is it necessary to have an preexistent "implanted sinfulness" to enable man to do wrong? If one sinner can be found in Scripture who sinned without first having a sinful nature, the answer is no, and the case is closed. And of course, there are at least three moral beings who committed sin without sinful natures. Satan was the first. The first man Adam was the second, and then his wife Eve. The angels who were cast out of heaven were apparently first perfect. No moral being needs a sinful nature to sin. If he is given one that makes it really impossible for him not to do right, he is not guilty, but helpless.
Neither does sin reside, as some sincere men have speculated, in the blood. Scriptures associate mortality with blood, but never morality. It is a symbol of human life. As the key electrochemical and circulatory system of the body, it is both the "life of the flesh" and the "circuitry" of the soul. As a statement of outpoured life, it is certainly a precious symbol of Christ’s atoning sacrifice. (Is. 53:10-12; Heb. 9:22-23; Matt. 26:28; Acts 20:28; Rom. 3:24-26; 5:9-11; Eph. 2:13; Heb. 10:10-14; 10:19-20; 1 Pet. 1:18-19; 1 Jn. 1:7). But blood in the Bible does not carry good or evil. If we can transmit morals through blood, then a blood transfusion from a saint will make a man more holy, and one from a sinner will make a saint less sanctified. It will follow then, that a prenatal blood transfusion on a "blue" baby will give it a totally different nature. Now, while it is true that the blood of any creature contains its life essence and the blood of Christ cleanses from sin, no Scripture assigns either sin or love to blood. Blood never holds morals in the Bible.
What is sin if it isn’t a substance? As Christians we speak of sin as a power or a force and know it is something much more than just an isolated wrong decision. Somehow personal sin can keep record in our body, mind and emotions. All habits, both good and bad, are developed the same way: by repetitive choices, stored as patterns in our memory. Sinful patterns built around a life of supremely serving ourselves can be terrifyingly addictive and far stronger than any wishful intention to do better. We may see and approve what is good, but have no power in our own strength to escape the bondage.
In Romans 7:7-24, the Apostle Paul personifies sin to show its power over an enlightened, but unconverted mind. He calls it the law of sin and death. Any habit of wanting our own way clashes with the judgment of conscience and God’s moral law. Any such developing death-style of evil habit (the "law" or "rule of action of sin") conflicts with the changeless reality of the true state of things, the law of God. A sinner may discipline his life to try to break some bad habits, but no-one ever escapes unaided the ultimate addiction of serving ourselves. Without the drawing power of the Holy Spirit, no sinner can free himself. Only Christ by the Gospel can truly deliver him. (Rom. 7:25; 8:1).
Paul illustrates the battle by speaking as if he is presently in it. That it is only an illustration and not a present personal problem is clear; the passage ends in true freedom. He speaks of the tug of this "law of sin" as if it is at home in his bodily members. "Flesh" is a phrase used to describe the concentration on emotional gratification through our five senses. We feel excited desires sparked into unnatural strength by habits of selfish gratification in our bodies. Jesus comes to break the cycle of death and bring deliverance.
Even here Paul does not really make a case for "physical" sin, and certainly is not seeking to prove it as his helpless inheritance. He is not concerned with how a man sins, but the fact of an internal battle raging that cannot be won alone. His point is to show us we have no hope of salvation in ourselves; the law of moral thermodynamics is against us. Who can help him get free? Only Jesus Christ, who faced all the temptations in His own body and did not give in at all; only Jesus, whose perfect character was sealed in death and whose resurrection demonstrates His power to face our worst and ugliest and win.
If sin is physical, in what form does it exist? Is it solid, liquid or gas? If sin is identifiably material, can it be isolated in a test-tube? Can it be injected into a saint to make him wrong? May we see the phenomena of a vial of sin concentrate? This is, of course, absurd. All efforts to trace actual sin to some biologic or materially organic connection with parents have failed of genetic, medical or physiological evidence,. Attempts to trace actual wrong to some gene or chemical deficiency is the humanist's last shot at explaining morality, and still fails to deal with the universality of sin. At the most, all inherited traits from parents simply contribute influences for later selfish choices.
How then, can we account for the fact that all have sinned? It is customary to trace this universal sinfulness to some kind of organic connection with Adam. Out of the mass of historical theological opinion, we may reduce all views to two basically opposite ideas:
Augustine, began with the premise that souls, like bodies were transmitted to children. Thus man was unable to help sin, since he inherited a sinful soul. The logical conclusion of a premise like this is that man is not to blame for his sinful nature, and cannot properly be urged to repent of it, since true repentance involves self-condemnation by the sinner. It follows then, that man can do nothing in salvation; God makes all the choices, and man becomes a mere puppet in His hands. In such a system, man can be sub-Scripturally devalued; being human is equated with sinfulness. Doctrines of infant d**nation, physical baptismal regeneration, unconditional eternal security; annihilation or Universalism, and forms of fatalism may logically follow. On the other hand, the Bible holds man fully responsible for sin; though he is indeed damaged, hurt and unable to save himself, he is not pictured as irresponsibly "helpless". He himself can choose to respond to God’s Spirit drawing him to repent, believe Jesus and obey His Word.
Pelagius, held that a man was born innocent, free of contamination; if left to his own way, he would "naturally" choose God. Logically then, a man might actually save himself from sin by consistent right choices; he does not need a Savior at all! If this was true, why should God need to intervene in our lives? Given the right teaching and environment, we can carve out our own holiness and happiness without Christ! This leads to the unscriptural deification of man, and the dangerous errors of humanistic and rationalistic thought, which may lead on to religious atheism and the abandonment of God altogether. On the contrary, the Bible teaches that man is incapable of saving himself; that his plight cannot be corrected by education or environment, but only by the sovereign drawing power of God the Holy Spirit, who alone can lead a man into a "grace-by-faith" salvation not based on man’s works. We all need God, even the holy angels who never sinned at all.
All other positions on human depravity place somewhere between these two extremes. Our own understanding of this subject will modify every facet of practical theology! This is no mere theoretical issue, but essential to our picture of the Gospel. If we excuse sin, we shall do so at the expense of God’s love, and at the peril of our souls. If we dogmatise as sin what Scripture does not support, by calling temptations, influences and involuntary actions "sinfulness", we will be bound and falsely condemned by the Enemy of our souls, too busy fighting our own failures to turn the world upside down, while all Heaven mourns. We have seen what sin is not; to resolve these difficulties, let us see what sin is.