p. 7 | Sin and Death

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · May 6, 1908

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 34, No. 19.

Sin and Death.

IT follows logically that if death is the result of sin, then where there is no sin, there can be no death. While the end of sin is death, the end of righteousness is declared to be life eternal. Rom. 6:20-23. Christ "did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth." He was the Spotless One from God. He Himself declares of Satan, "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me." But Christ came under the power of death. How was this possible, if there can be no death where there is no sin?

In entering under the dominion of death, Christ fell not as the lawful prey to the grim destroyer, but, standing in the sinner’s place, He met the penalty of a broken law, suffering in man’s stead, that, by the power thus attained, He might recover man from the thralldom of sin and death, and raise him up to sit with Himself in righteousness and glory. Eph. 2:4-7. "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities." "The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." Christ voluntarily entered the dominion of the enemy. His soul was made an "offering for sin." He "poured out His soul unto death." He Himself declared, "I have power to lay it [My life] down, and I have power to take it again." But as Christ, on account of His righteousness, voluntarily submitted to the power of death, it could have no authority to retain Him under its dominion. He could not "be holden of it." Acts 2:24.

As death could not hold Christ under its dominion, when He was manifested in this world in the person of Jesus, neither can death hold Christ under its dominion when He is manifested in this world in the lives and characters of His followers.

Hopelessness of a Good Example.

WHAT men need most is not more knowledge of the right, but more power to do the right that they already know. This power is offered to them by Jesus Christ, and by Him only. In bestowing the power, He becomes their Saviour. And therein is the life-and-death difference between the truth that Christ is a Saviour, and the hopeless idea that he is only a unique example. As the latter, he looks upon the man in the gutter, sodden and paralyzed with sin, and says, "I am the example you ought to follow; get up on your feet, be a man, and walk as I do." But the more perfect the character of Christ as an example, the more hopeless is the outlook for the man in whom sin has destroyed the power to imitate Him.

As Saviour, Christ reaches down to that man, puts His arm around him, lifts him up, washes him clean with His own hands, takes him home with Him, and then, if the man is willing, lives with him every hour of his life. Not only that; Christ lives in him, replacing the sin-poisoned, death-poisoned life with His own sinless life that conquers sin; gives him a new will for the atrophied one, new power, new hopes, new desires. The man begins to live eternal life: he is saved. But a saviour who was only a perfect example to men could never have saved him.