NEITHER LOGICAL NOR SCRIPTURAL.
A KIND friend who professes to find all her theology in the Scriptures without regard to human teachings, gives this expression to her faith on the result of Adam's sin:—
"The mortality of the body was then announced to Adam; but that was not the penalty of the broken law. The penalty was eternal death."
It is easy for one to mistake the operations of his own mind, and to color by the bias of education that which he thinks he has received solely as the result of unassisted study. If the writer of the paragraph above quoted were asked where in the Scriptures the supposed facts therein stated were learned, we think it would be found a difficult thing to point to the text.
We are led to infer, from the manner of the statement, that the writer supposes "the mortality of the body was then announced to Adam" as an incidental truth, not directly or necessarily connected with his sin or its penalty. But that is not what we learn from Genesis. Let us take three facts of the record. 1. The penalty declared. "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."
2. The sin. The woman took of the fruit; "and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat." 3. The sentence. If there is any doubt in regard to the meaning of the penalty, it must be settled when we hear the sentence pronounced. In this case the Lord himself is both legislator and judge; therefore there can be no question whether the penalty and sentence will exactly correspond. The sentence was as follows: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." This was not incidental, or a mere declaration of the fact that his body was mortal; far from it. It was the penalty itself. It was prefaced with these words: "Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it." His death was occasioned by his eating. If he had not eaten he would not have died; he would not have returned unto the ground out of which he was taken, but he would have lived forever. We cannot see how anybody can deny this without denying the record of the Scriptures. Again, in what Scripture may we learn that the penalty "was eternal death?" Does the Bible say so? or is that conclusion the result of training in theories or in human reasoning? That the death pronounced would have been eternal if no remedy had been interposed is very evident. If no provision had been made for recovery "from the land of the enemy" through the promised seed of the woman, then indeed would death have been "an eternal sleep." But no Scripture gives it in those terms. And that idea presents an insurmountable difficulty to the doctrine of the atonement. Christ, as our substitutionary sacrifice, died for us. By his suffering the penalty in our behalf, it is possible for God to be just and justify the believer in Jesus. But if that penalty were eternal death, then Christ never died for us—never met the demands of the broken law in our behalf—never vindicated divine justice in opening to us a way of salvation. That would leave the throne of Heaven under a cloud. But the penalty was death; that death resulted in returning man to the ground out of which he was taken; and it then depended altogether on the clemency and love of God whether that death should be eternal, or become temporal—for a time—by the introduction of a gospel. Had Jesus met such a penalty of the law, and suffered an eternal death, the atonement would have failed; he would have remained dead forever—his soul would have been left in hades—he would have seen corruption, and the resurrection of Adam's race would never have been accomplished. We thank God that this theory of penalty is only a theory of man, and not the teaching of the Scriptures. There is now to be a "second death," which there never would have been if there had been no gospel; for without the gospel there would have been no resurrection. There cannot be two deaths to any person without a resurrection intervening. And this is not a second eternal death; that were impossible, and this proves that the first was not eternal. But the second will be eternal unless there is a resurrection beyond it. Do the Scriptures teach that there will be a resurrection or a revival from the second death? They do not. That is the finality of the wicked, "to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever."