p. 6 | SIN EVER THE SAME by W. L. Winner

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 25, 1897

SIN EVER THE SAME.

By W. L. Winner

God “will render to every man according to his deeds; to them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life; but unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil; of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile; but glory, honor, and peace, to every man that worketh good; to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile; for there is no respect of persons with God. For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law; and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law (for not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified . . . .); in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my Gospel.” Rom. 2:6–16.

According to these declarations judgment will be rendered to every man according to his deeds. As regards his written law (the Decalogue), and those to whom it comes, a man's deeds shall decide whether or not he shall be justified. A man is not “just before God” as a hearer of the law, but the doer of the law “shall be justified.”

Thus, before entering upon his masterly argument establishing righteousness by faith, Paul plainly sets forth a justification that is dependent on works, and is to be applied to man in the day of judgment. This teaching coincides with that expressed by his fellow-laborer and apostle James: “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.” And “whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty [the Decalogue], and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed [margin, “doing”].” Christ also set his seal to the essentiality of man's doing the will of God, that it may be possible for him to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Matt. 7:20, 21. Doing God's will is keeping his law. See Ps. 40:8.

Paul, therefore, in effect declares that there is justification that cometh by works, as regards God's law, and that it is imperatively demanded, and is absolutely effective; but only a little further on he declares that there is no doer. He proves that all are under sin, both the Jews who had, and rested in, the law, and Gentiles also, who “do by nature the things contained in the law,” declaring that “there is none righteous, no, not one; . . . there is none that doeth good, no, not one;” and he forcibly brings together not less than nine different portions of God's Word sustaining his declaration.

Up to this point Paul has made no reference to the law as relating to its office, or as an instrument applied to man in his lost estate. He has spoken of the doer and his prospects in the judgment as contrasted with the hearer. It is also made evident that there is no doer—that there is no righteousness in man as descended from Adam. Turning now to the law, he shows that it worketh wrath. After admitting that the doer of the law shall be justified, he now shows that the law is not the agent of justification. It is the instrument of condemnation. He says that by the deeds (doings) of the law, shall no flesh be justified in his sight, because the law (as a rule of conduct when applied to man) causes every mouth to be stopped, and all the world becomes “guilty before God,” or, as the margin reads, “subject to the judgment of God.” “By the law is the knowledge of sin.” It reveals sin. But now he declares the agent of justification. It is “His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God.”

The righteousness of God is now manifested without (apart from) the law, the law and the prophets witnessing to that righteousness. It is the same righteousness brought to view in chap. 2:5. It is manifested by faith in Jesus Christ unto all and upon all that believe.

There are four texts of Paul's writing that if associated together epitomize the whole subject: “The doers of the law shall be justified;” “By grace are ye saved;” “The just shall live by faith;” “We shall be saved by His life.”

The moral requirements, that in infinite justice must be the same to all men and in all ages, is God's law—a separation from the world—walking with God. The power to do this having been lost, God's free grace provides a motive power, faith, which expression of infinite mercy enables man to appropriate Christ's life, and by faith in him to have the righteousness of that life imputed to him. Christ in his life in the flesh did no sin. The law as applied to that life in its legitimate capacity as a searcher, a revealer of sin, found it spotless. The law testified in his case that his life was pure and faultless, and that it had no claims upon that life which had not been satisfied fully.

Now, there has been lived out one perfect life, and the testimony of God's great rule of judgment has declared that it is so. That righteousness wherein Adam failed, and which would have assured him life—life is inherent in obedience—was wrought out by Christ; and Christ was entitled to all the rewards and benefits inherent in, and coming from, that righteousness. As it is twice declared by God through Solomon, “Keep my commandments and live,” so Christ himself declared, “I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love.” And Peter, in referring to Christ's resurrection, declares that God “loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that he should be holden of it.”

Christ as a man did not have to die, and herein is the merit of Christ's sacrifice. He freely GAVE himself for us. He was made “to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” He suffered for the sins of the whole world freely and voluntarily, thus becoming a propitiation for the sins of the whole world. 1 John 2:2. The truth of that fact is further attested by Paul in Rom. 8:3. Christ by “a sacrifice for sin [margin] condemned sin in the flesh;” and for the same reason as given to the Corinthians, quoted above, but differently expressed, “that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us,” etc. We thus see that by Christ's infinite sacrifice we are to be “made the righteousness of God,” and “that the righteousness of the law” is to be “fulfilled in us.” These two expressions are synonymous (see Isa. 51:7); and this condition is ours if by faith we accept the promise that Christ's life is imputed to us.

Thus we see the scope and purpose of the law in its two forms, engraved by the finger of God on tables of stone, and embodied in Christ's life. It is the same in both forms. In Christ's flesh, or life, it has all the power and prerogatives that it ever had. It is still the revealer of sin; indeed, Christ showed by his life and words the exceeding depth and comprehensiveness of every commandment. He abolished nothing; that which was sin (transgression of law), from the days of Adam down, was by his life condemned. He “condemned sin in the flesh,” and surely he did not lead a double life. What he condemned as sin, then, must constitute sin ever after. His life condemned stealing; it always was a sin, it will always be a sin, likewise adultery, murder, lying, blasphemy, idolatry, and Sabbath-breaking. All sin is comprehended in the transgression of God's Ten Commandments, which comprehend all duty. Eccl. 12:13. Sin is transgression of the law; where there is no law, there is no transgression. Christ fulfilled (kept) all the law, and thereby condemned all sin. By faith we are saved by his life; that is, his righteousness (right-doing) is imputed to us. We are accounted doers. Shall mortal man declare that Christ's righteousness clothed the man who by faith looked to him in ages long ago, differently from the man who accepts him now? Shall man by his teachings declare that God is to have one rule of judgment for the first four thousand years, and a different rule for the balance of time? W. L. WINNER.