A Bible Study on Man by L. A. Reed

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Feb 18, 1913

A Bible Study on Man

By L. A. Reed

II. What Man Lost by Sin

DID man lose or gain through his introduction of sin into the world? It would seem that there could be but one answer to this question. Sin is the inexcusable thing. That is what makes it sin. As the apostle Paul in the book of Romans declares — tho I do not couch it in his words — sin is that which causes what was intended for life to produce death instead. In other words, it is the great power of perversion, of destruction.

But all do not realize the heinous character of sin. Seeing it constantly about them, and experiencing it in their own lives, they become familiar with it and deceived by it. This is the deceitfulness of sin spoken of in the Word. And this explains why we have expressions on the part of men to-day that really revoice the argument of the devil when he first came to the human race in the Garden of Eden.

When establishing the Eden state, God had given only one test upon the loyalty and obedience of man. He had placed one tree against which prohibition was made. There was nothing peculiar about this tree. It was not poisonous in its fruit. There was nothing about the fruit to affect the mind or the body. It had in it no elements of providing wisdom, or even exhilaration. It was simply a test on man's obedience. The Lord had made all things and given them all over to man, that he might have dominion over the whole creation, reserving only the one tree, — this was God's. And thus alone could man be tested in the matter of rights of property.

Hence, it was not that he was to get from the tree anything intrinsically good or bad, but that in observing the prohibition he recognized God's ownership, not only of the tree, but of himself, and showed his confidence in his Creator by observing what he knew to be right. When man disobeyed and took what did not belong to him, it was a distrust of God's goodness, and disbelief in God's words, and a rejection of God's authority. This distrust and disbelief and rebellion made man a transgressor, and brought an experience with evil itself into the world.

This tree, around which a barrier of prohibition was thrown by the Creator, was called the "tree of knowledge of good and evil." It was not, as some seem to think, an endeavor to employ a means of advancement, a source of knowledge; but it stood in the way of man's experiencing evil. When man took unlawfully its fruit, he obtained in that act, which was an act of his own and not any power derived from the tree, an experience in rebellion, in disbelief, and in distrust. He mingled and formed into a compound what forever should have been absolutely separate, that is, good and evil. By this act of sin, man had brought into all the good which he had previously experienced, a new experience and a new knowledge in things evil.

As the poisoner's most successful means of destroying the life of his victim is by putting poison with food, so Satan had most effectually ruined man by getting him to find evil in that which was intended to be only for his good. God can know both good and evil by foreseeing even the end from the beginning of every act. He does not need to experience this to know it; for a knowledge of the results of all conduct lies within the prescience of God. But for man to seek to attain to a knowledge of good and evil he does not, like God, trace out its results and see its consequences while separate from it, but becomes acquainted with it, receives a knowledge of it, by taking it into his very bosom. Man's knowledge of sin comes from his experience with it, and in feeling and realizing its awful, degrading, destructive, and deadening effects.

And so the promise of Satan that man should reach exaltation and a higher plane of existence by obtaining the knowledge of good and evil, was nothing but devil's bait to fool and ruin man. What seems like desirable knowledge, is found in fact to be only ruinous experience.

And yet there are men to-day who still believe the doctrine of the devil. No less a writer than John Fiske, the historian, a man who prided himself in his own way in being a defender of Christian faith, argues very much as the devil did in the beginning. He makes the statement that "there is a sense in which we may regard the loss of Paradise as in itself the beginning of the rise of man." ("Through Nature to God," p. 7.)

In other words, the fall of man was a fall upward. When man tumbled, he tumbled forward and upward to higher and better things. How does he make this out? He tells us why he believes this: "What would have been the moral value or significance of a race of human beings ignorant of sin, and doing beneficent acts with no more consciousness or volition than the deftly contrived machine that picks up raw material at one end and turns out some finished product at the other? Clearly, for strong and resolute men and women, an Eden would be but a fool's paradise. How could anything fit to be called character ever have been produced there? But for tasting the forbidden fruit, in what respect could man have become a being of higher order than the beasts of the field?" ("Through Nature to God," pp. 38, 39.)

And here is some specious reasoning. This author deliberately states that experience in sin is necessary in man for man to be anything but a fool. His reason for coming to this conclusion is to justify the tenets of evolution. He believes that man must develop upward, and that sin is not really sin at all, but one of the means to man's advancement. Because it came from the devil, and belongs to the devil's mind and thought, this doctrine that sin and a knowledge of sin is advancement, is devilish doctrine. What Mr. Fiske is really arguing for here, is that man would have been a fool or a machine if he had not been tested. But when the test came, when the prohibition against the eating of the tree was made, had man by his own choice refused to partake of it, there is no sense whatever in which man could be called a machine. It is true that he would not know entirely the full significance of his act, and would therefore have to trust in the goodness of God, and believe the Word of God, and remain loyal to God. But that condition is just as necessary to-day for man to get out of sin as it was before to keep man out of sin. No man can go upward, or is going upward, while he is actually experiencing transgression and disobedience; and if he ever gets away from sin and from transgression and disobedience, he has to come to a place where he is willing to trust the goodness of God, to believe implicitly in the Word of God, and to stand true and steadfast in obedience to God. The conditions on God's part have not changed one iota. They can not change, because they are founded in eternal right and goodness.

But man's condition has changed. What before would have kept him out of sin, must now be accepted by man and lived up to if he would get out of sin.

Man has lost — and so far as he alone is concerned — irretrievably lost, through sin. "The wages of sin is death." In fact, sin is nothing more nor less than a process of death. Death is a part of sin; it is not something tacked onto it by the arbitrary authority of God. Therefore man lost life through sin, and he lost life forever through

sin, that is, so far as he alone is concerned.

But this loss of life was in source and fact a loss of nature. When God viewed His whole creation, including man, He declared it very good; but through sin that which had been very good now became bad, and very bad. But as man could not see it, as he could not understand and enter into the knowledge and judgment of God, the human race were allowed to exist by God's forbearance, that sin might work out and show itself exceeding sinful.

And because man had shown that he could not control himself, his power of control over creation was taken away almost completely. Whereas, before all things were put under him, Inspiration says, "We see not now all things put under him."

All this man lost through sin—his character, his dominion, and his life; and had there not been found a Man who as a man could have come into the world and fought the battle anew and fought it to a complete and glorious victory, all these things would have been lost to all eternity. But the Man Christ Jesus stood the test,—showed in His human life on earth trust in God's goodness, and belief in God's Word, and a steadfast loyalty. These He now offers to every son and daughter of Adam. It is Christ's doing the will of God that sanctifies us. Heb. 10:10. And so tho it is a fact that through man came death, also through man comes life. As Adam bequeathed his sinful nature to man, so Christ now offers His divine nature also to man. And tho the conditions of our natural birth are not all that we would have them, the conditions of the spiritual birth meet all the demands of human condition. The first man was made a living soul, but the second Man is a quickening Spirit. May we receive of His life-giving power, and triumph over the calamity of sin!