 |  |
Sin.
Its Origin and Entry.
pp. 170 - 173
A question of the deepest gravity, and one that reaches up to the very throne of God
Himself, is the question of the origin of sin and its entry into the creation of God.
Starting from a point that is not only revealed in the Scriptures, but is within the scope
of our understanding, we learn that:--
"By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin" (Rom. 5: 12).
That one man is ADAM (verse 14), and Adam is the one who by his disobedience
introduced sin and death into the world over which he had been placed. While this
clearly answers the question as to how sin entered the world, it still leaves unanswered
the question why it should have been allowed, and who was its originator. The idea of
incriminating God is repulsive to our spirit of sonship. Whatever we may have yet to
learn, we have learned the fundamental fact that sin is hateful in the sight of God:--
"He is the Rock, His work is perfect: for all His ways are judgment: a God of truth and
without iniquity, just and right is He" (Deut. 32: 4).
God has a purpose, and that purpose will stand against all opposition: but we must not
reduce the opposition to a fiction and unreality in our emphasis upon the supremacy of
the power and will of God. One school of teaching presents to us a God whose wisdom
and power is seriously called in question by the way in which it represents His relation to
sin. Another school, to rescue the character of God from such charges, declares bluntly
that sin was planned by Him, that He is the creator of moral evil, that in fact God is doing
evil that good may come. To write such words is not pleasant, but hurtful, yet we do not
believe we have misrepresented the case.
As in many cases, the truth lies midway between these extremes. Scripture tells of an
enemy at work within the universe of God. When we ask the question as to the origin
and the entry of sin, we may reply in the language of Christ, "An enemy hath done this".
The lesser instance may help us to understand the greater. The Lord had come declaring
that the kingdom had drawn nigh; He had presented Himself as the anointed King;
suddenly after centuries of silence the heavens had opened and God had borne witness to
His beloved Son; mighty miracles were wrought that would have brought Tyre and Sidon
to repentance, but the people of Israel believed not. In the parables of Matt. 13: the
Lord explains some of the reasons why He had been rejected, and among the causes
which He enumerates is the activity of AN ENEMY. That enemy is the devil.
If the sin of unbelief (John 16: 9) was real, if God in Christ really meant what was
preached, then, however much we magnify the fact that God knew that Israel would
reject His Son, we must not do so in such a way as to represent their action as other than
sinful. We have not given place enough for the activity of "the enemy", and though we