The Mission of Christ by Ellet Joseph Waggoner

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 30, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 41.

The Mission of Christ.

By Ellet Joseph Waggoner

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:16. In previous numbers of the SIGNS, we considered briefly the subject of eternal life—that which those have who believe in Christ. We learned that eternal life is the gift of God through Jesus Christ (Rom. 6:23), and that therefore none can ever possess it unless they have the Son. John 3:36. The question now arises, "What shall those have who do not believe in Christ?" In this article, and succeeding ones, we shall seek a Bible answer to this question. An understanding of this subject is necessary, not merely that we may be driven to Christ through fear of the consequences of unbelief, but that we may have a proper appreciation of the love of God. We cannot praise God, and his love to us as manifested in Christ, as we ought, unless we understand, as far as our finite minds are capable of understanding, that from which his love rescues us.

In the first place, we notice that their condition is different from that of believers in Christ. This has already been shown. Christ said to the unbelieving Jews, "Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life." John 5:40. The obvious meaning is that they had not life, and could not have it without coming to him, and accepting him as their Saviour. From John 3:17 some would argue that all mankind will be saved, because Christ said "For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might have life." Such a conclusion shows the folly of basing a theory on a single text, regardless of other texts or the context. The eighteenth verse explains the seventeenth. "He that believeth on him [the Son] is not condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God." Now we know why God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world. That would have been an unnecessary proceeding. The world was condemned already. His mission was to save as many as possible from a lost world. "God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Rom. 5:8. The tenth verse of this chapter shows that being sinners is equivalent to being enemies; and that is why the world was condemned, because all have sinned.

God sent his Son "that the world through him might be saved;" there was opportunity for all the world to be saved if they would, but they must comply with the condition,—belief on Christ. And

now what is to become of those who do not accept this condition? The verse quoted at the beginning of this article tells us: "For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." From this we learn that if God had not sent his Son, the whole world would have perished; and since the condition of salvation is belief in Christ, it necessarily follows that those who do not believe in him will perish; they will accept nothing from Christ, and therefore they receive the same doom that they would if he had not come.

In the passage under consideration (John 3: 16-18), there are two classes brought to view, believers and unbelievers. The first class receive the reward of eternal life, the second class are left to perish. Now since these two classes are directly opposite in character, it must follow that to perish is the exact opposite of eternal life. The opposite of life is death, and the opposite of eternal life is eternal death. That death is what unbelievers receive, we learn from Rom. 6:23: "The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord."

In Rom. 5:12 we learn how the whole world came to be in this state of condemnation, on account of which they would all perish if it were not for Christ. Paul says: "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned;" &c. Adam was the one man by whom sin entered into the world. The stream, unassisted, cannot rise higher than the fountain, and therefore Adam's posterity were necessarily born into a state of sin. When Adam sinned, God looked down the ages and saw the whole human race in a state of rebellion, and, consequently, of condemnation; and then it was that his great love was manifested, in giving his only begotten Son to die for a rebellious world. Since the sentence pronounced upon Adam extended to the whole human race, we will turn and examine it.

In Gen. 2:15-17 we learn that God placed man in Eden to dress it and to keep it, giving him permission to eat freely of the fruit of every tree, with one exception. Concerning that the Lord said: "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." There has been much bewildering comment on this verse, the conclusion usually being that the death here threatened was threefold, viz., "death spiritual, death temporal, and death eternal." But as in the giving of a law, so also in pronouncing the penalty for its violation, the words must be understood in "their usual and most known signification." When the words of a law or of a penalty are such as are in common use, no one is justified in placing any construction upon them. Now the term "die" in the text is unqualified, and it must therefore mean simple death. It cannot mean spiritual death for the following reasons: 1. Nothing is said about any such kind of death. 2. According to the commonly accepted meaning of spiritual death—a state of sin—the act of eating the forbidden fruit would have been spiritual death; and consequently the penalty pronounced upon Adam for a certain act would have been the commission of the act prohibited! But the penalty was not the act itself, but something that should follow that act. Neither could it mean temporal death, i. e., death for a time; for that would be equivalent to a pardon before the sin was committed; which would be absurd. As before stated, the penalty was simply death.

Right here we are met with an objection. Says the objector: "You cannot take the words of the penalty in their exact literal signification, because they read thus: 'In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,' and the record says that Adam lived nine hundred and thirty years." Still we say

that the penalty means just what it says. If it does not, then Adam had no means of knowing what would be the penalty if he should sin. The objection arises from the erroneous supposition that the sentence has been carried into effect. Those who make it seem to forget the words of Christ, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish." If God had not so loved the world, the sentence would have been executed, Adam would have died that very day, and we, his posterity, would never have existed. It was not Adam alone whom God loved, but the whole race whom he had created in him. On account of this great love, the execution of the sentence was stayed, and man was granted another trial. The plan of salvation was devised, and Christ agreed to take the sins of the world upon himself, and rescue man from his lost condition. Bear in mind the fact that God did not revoke the penalty; he merely stayed its execution, in order to give man a chance to accept the conditions of pardon. If none of Adam's race should accept these conditions, then they would all suffer the penalty threatened to him; if a few accept the conditions, then they alone escape the threatened doom. And so when we read that Christ was given that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, we understand that the original penalty announced to Adam was that he should perish. "To perish" signifies, "to be destroyed; to go to destruction; to come to nothing; to be blotted from existence." That this will be the doom of all who disregard the love and mercy of God in Christ Jesus, is fully borne out by the Scriptures, as we shall see.

It may not be out of place to briefly consider the marginal reading of Gen. 2:17: "Dying thou shalt die." By some this is supposed to afford an answer to the objection that Adam did not immediately die, and that therefore the words of the penalty cannot be taken literally. From this marginal reading they gather that the penalty threatened was that the seeds of death, as it is expressed, would be sown in Adam as soon as he sinned, or, in other words, that he would become mortal, and would eventually die. But this does not help the matter at all; for if we substitute "dying thou shalt die," for, "thou shalt surely die," we are still shut up to the fact that this was to occur "in the day that thou eatest thereof." The truth is that the marginal reading does not express to us the meaning of the original so correctly as do the words of the text, "Thou shalt surely die." It is a construction that often occurs in the original, when emphasis is required. It is used in Gen. 2:16: "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat." The marginal reading is, "eating thou shalt eat." This does not mean that he should begin to eat and continue to eat until the act of eating should be consummated, but was an emphatic permission to Adam to eat.

The same construction is used in Ex. 3:7, where the Lord says, "I have surely seen the affliction of my people." Had our translators done as they did in Gen. 2:16, 17, they would have placed in the margin, "Seeing I have seen." Then, according to the interpretation given to the marginal reading of Gen. 2:17, it would mean that God began to see, and continued to see, until finally he saw. This would make nonsense of the text, yet it would be as legitimate an interpretation as the other. The expression is simply an emphatic statement that God had seen the affliction of his people; and Stephen, in his discourse (Acts 7:34), marks this emphasis by the repetition of the statement: "I have seen, I have seen." So the statement in Gen. 2:17 did not mean that man should begin to die and continue to die until he should finally be dead, but it was an explicit and emphatic declaration that death should immediately follow his sin. If we should translate this passage as Stephen did the similar construction in Ex. 3:7, it would read: "In

the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt die thou shalt die." This would well express the meaning. A parallel to this emphatic declaration of the death penalty is sometimes heard in human courts

"Thou shalt surely die." This penalty was unequivocal and unconditional. But for the merciful forbearance of God, and his love as manifested in the promised sacrifice of Christ, the human race would have been blotted from existence, in Adam.

We have now found how man incurred the wrath of God; and in succeeding articles we shall learn more fully how that wrath will be manifested to all who do not flee to the refuge offered. The consideration of the words spoken to Adam after he had sinned: "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return," must be deferred until we have finished the subject now before us. E. J. W.