The Philosophy of Sin and Redemption
By T. H. Starbuck
THE INTERRELATION OF THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL. NO. 14.
The Philosophy of Sin and Redemption.
“COME now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” Isa. 1:18. God wants men to possess all the knowledge they can gather on this subject from the light of reason as it is exercised in harmony with nature and revelation. He invites us to reason together with him, that is, in harmony with him, not against him, as is too often done. When Paul preached the Gospel, he reasoned out of the Scriptures and from nature. He taught wonderful things upon the theme under consideration. It will be safe to follow his example. In respect to sin and redemption, in all their features, there is nothing in them for which a reason can not be given; men, under the darkness and deceptive influences of sin, may be incapable of comprehending the logic of such things. The term reason is not used here in the sense of excuse; for no excuse can be made for sin. But the reasons why it could originate and develop can be assigned; and the reasons for the existence and operation of saving grace can be elucidated. They are all possibilities in the nature of divine government; and there is a philosophy of such things. True philosophy is an elucidation of the nature of things. Those who study the word of God most diligently can enter into such investigations with the clearest perceptions and keenest delights. Philosophy is the love of wisdom as well as the science of things. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments.” Ps. 111:10. A critical study of the nature and operations of divine law reveals the principles by which sin could originate and develop as it does, and how saving grace springs from the administration of divine government. It has been shown that the614gift of reason is power that may be turned out of its intended use into sin. Intelligence springs from the divine force of God’s Spirit acting through this physical organization (Job 32:8); and, like any power emanating from God to his creatures, it may be misdirected. “There is no power but of God,” and all evil springs from an illegitimate use of the power which God bestows upon his created intelligences. The intelligent creature can use his endowment for evil purposes, for its existence makes its perversion a possibility. The endowment of power, however, does not include the disposition to abuse it. If it did, God would be the Author of sin. Disposition is something that can be begotten and strengthened in the mind. The tendency to sin is begotten in the heart of the creature by the act of sin, and strengthened by a continuation in the evil course. The act of sin is evidence that the evil tendency is in the heart. Sin can originate only in the mind or seat of intelligence; and from thence it develops into action. God’s laws are perfect, and if allowed to operate according to his design, they are ordained to life; but there is a latent, penal force in them which becomes spontaneous when they are violated; so they are also ordained to death. “The commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death.” Rom. 7:10. The Creator sets his laws to work invariably in the direction of life, but never in the direction of death. He has ordained death only on condition of sin, and for no other purpose than to limit the results of evil. Sin is the root that produces death. Satan originated sin, and so he has the power of death; but his power is not absolute, for sin limits itself. Death springs from sin naturally because it sets the penal force of the law to work. God can not create intelligent beings without making sin a possibility; but sin is limited by the penal force of his laws. This penal force in his laws establishes the divine government and makes it perfect. The penal force of the law, when once set in operation, develops naturally to its final result, death. Transgression turns beneficent laws against the sinner, and the whole trend of their force is abnormal, or contrary to life, and death instead of life is the natural result. This order of things indicates the perfection of divine government, for it gives God the supremacy over evil. There is an infinite force in the living laws of God. The same law that binds man to sin can also bind him to the Saviour. See Rom. 7:1-6. Divine government is a necessity, for the only alternative is chance. But government stands opposed to chance as order is opposed to chaos. It is only by means of law that the material universe can exist, or that intelligent beings can exist under conditions of happiness. A chance universe is an impossibility, for nothing can exist without an adequate cause, and where there is an adequate cause there will be some kind of order or government. But as divine government is a necessity, it follows that obedience to it is also a necessity, in order to secure happiness. But obedience can not be absolutely secured without the penal force of the law. The order of heaven is just what the scripture states: Obedience and life or disobedience and death. The argument then may be briefly summarized as follows:— 1. The purpose of the Creator is to endow his creatures with the highest order of happiness possible to finite beings. 2. Intelligence is essential to secure such felicity. 3. The endowment of intelligence makes sin a possibility. 4. Sin defiles everything and is destructive of happiness. 5. Unless God’s plan of moral government embraces some provision for the eradication of sin, the happiness of his creatures would be perpetually thwarted if sin should ever originate. 6. To secure happiness, and the supremacy over evil, it is necessary that divine law should be characterized by a penal force, to compensate for the possibility of evil. 7. But as divine law is uncreated and eternal, emanating from the Deity, it follows that its latent, penal force is natural in the attributes of God. 8. The glory of God is revealed in his laws, both in their ministration of death and in their ministration of righteousness. 2 Corinthians 3. 9. Its ministration of life springs from God’s creative act, and its ministration of death from the act of sin; therefore, the transgressor is responsible for his sin, and by the act forfeits all right to life; and death, which springs spontaneously from the violated law, is just. 10. The existence of moral government shows its necessity and the possibility of sin. Laws prescribing a right course of life could not exist if a wrong course were impossible. “Where no law is there is no transgression.” This is equivalent to saying that if sin were made an impossibility in the absolute sense, there would be no divine government. 11. No excuse can be made for sin, for its results are wholly evil, while the effects of righteousness are wholly good. The good results of divine government are so apparent that the righteousness of God’s living laws is fully vindicated. While the death penalty exists potentially in the law, God takes no pleasure in the death of transgressors. (See Eze. 18:32.) The character of God is perfect in every phase. While he is infinitely just, he is infinitely merciful. Justice and mercy are in no sense antagonistic. It is both just and merciful that the sinner should die if he adheres to the ways of sin; and it is both merciful and just that he should live if he forsakes sin. Rom. 3:26. It is just as natural for God to be merciful as it is for him to be just. His manifestations of mercy are no more to be wondered at than his justice. While it was a trying ordeal for him to give his only begotten Son in order to bring a lost world back to the fold, yet his act of love was in strict accord with his nature. Had he not made the effort to save the lost, he would not have acted out his true nature; for God is love, and the act was an expression of that love. If his creatures sin and persist in that course, he could not vindicate his holiness and allow them continued existence. If those who are in sin yield to God’s way, he could not maintain his holiness and let them perish. God’s mercy may be placed even in a stronger light than this. If his creatures, by sin, place themselves in sin’s helpless and cruel bondage, he can not let them perish without an effort to save them, because that course would be contrary to his nature. John 3:16; Rom. 5:10. We know that this is true, for it is just what he is doing for a lost world. He is doing that which is just and right, because it is characteristic of his true nature. What we see of the ministrations of his grace reveals him to us as he is. In the workings of his grace his character is perfectly delineated. There is no revelation of his mercy that is out of proportion with his justice. There is nothing of the nature of policy in his dealings with sin. “His kingdom ruleth over all.” He is unlimited in his exercise of power. He is infinitely above everything of the nature of worldly wisdom. In the controversy with evil he adopts no stratagem to gain or to hold the supremacy. Condemnation and salvation are both just under their proper conditions; and his justice in either case is embodied in the principles of his law. His foreordination in either case is just, because it is the natural outgrowth of his perfect law. The salvation of the penitent and the condemnation of the guilty are both in accord with eternal truth and the nature of God. Ex. 34:5-8. The death of Christ did not change the nature of divine justice so as to make an act just, which was not just before. It was not to change the nature of things so that God could justly save the repentant. Its effect was to change the sinner, not God. God loved the sinner before Christ died for him, otherwise he would not have died. His death signified no change in the attitude of God toward the sinner, but it brought a change in the attitude of the sinner toward God. It was Heaven’s pledge that God can justly save the penitent. The author of sin had said that God could not justly save any, and that the defect was in the stern justice of the law. The darkness of sin leads the mind to view God and his law in that light. As all objects assume the color of the tinted glass through which they are seen, so man, looking at God through eyes defiled by sin, clothes him with human attributes. The idols of the heathen are human conceptions of God defiled. They have made their gods altogether like themselves. The experience of six thousand years in sin demonstrates the fact that it is utterly impossible for man to obtain true perceptions of God. Without a revelation a saving knowledge of God is impossible. So God was manifested in flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, that men might see him in the true light and know his saving power. In the work of reconciliation it is the sinner who is affected. God is not changed at all. He is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. Sin in the heart leads to the view that God, in some sense, had to be reconciled before he could consent to the salvation of repentant sinners. The evil one has exerted his skill for six thousand years to induce men to view God in that light; but it is only the gods of his own creation that have to be reconciled by a sacrifice. The misconceptions of sin have been engrafted upon our theology for centuries. If God’s system of theology teaches one thing above another, it is this, that Christ died, Not to Make God Willing to Save Us,
but to make us willing to let him save us. There was nothing in God demanding the sacrifice of his Son to make salvation possible. The conditions demanding it were all imposed by sin. Sin placed man where he could not be reached without a revelation of God’s love, and there was no other way but7the way of the cross to make man understand the love that saves. There was a stern demand for the death of Christ, but it sprang from the awful nature and conditions of sin, and not from God. Sin had separated man from a knowledge of God, and the demand for the Word to become flesh was absolute. There was no other means of insuring salvation. The sufferings of Christ are the logical result of sin. It took the best Gift that Heaven could send to earth to save from the power of transgression. By the revelation of God in Christ it was made possible for man to become acquainted with God, and to be revealed finally in the glorious liberty of the sons of God. 1 John 3:1-3. So then it is strictly true that Christ gave himself for us. In him is revealed all that lost men need. His life is the Gospel exemplified, because it is the law exemplified. The relation between law and Gospel is so intimate that it is impossible to separate them. One can not exist without the other. To believe in Christ is to believe in the law exemplified in his life. To accept Christ as our Saviour is to become loyal to the law of the Spirit of life in him. The Gospel is the natural revelation of God’s power which existed from eternity. The divine energy of his moral government develops and operates as emergencies demand. Before sin originated, its righteousness only was known; when sin developed, its wrath became known; and the Gospel is its divine energy at work reconciling the lost to God, and working out righteousness in them who forsake sin. It is not salvation by our efforts at keeping the law, but by the divine energy of the law at work in us as it operated in Christ’s life on earth. The operation of the law of the Spirit of life in him is an exhibition of God’s saving power. It is the power of God unto salvation working in believers. It was not devised or brought into existence to meet an emergency, for it always existed potentially in God. Like the seed which germinates when the conditions are right, it sprang into activity spontaneously when the conditions demanded it. It is the natural revelation of God under the conditions of sin, because it is the development of the word of his power. So, then, all who have come to know God by this revelation of his grace, can say with Paul, “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.”