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by
A.E. Saxby
from
his book
God
in Creation, Redemption, Judgment
and
Consummation(1)
The
character, as well as the ability of the maker, is visible in the thing
that he makes. If a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, then it is
certain that the great Creator of all, who is holy in all His ways and
righteous in all His works, who is good and only doeth good and whose tenderness
is over all His works, can design nothing the end of which is not pure
happiness and usefulness. Whatever catastrophes may have intervened, and
however mysterious are the processes by which His goal will be reached,
it follows, from the fact of His unimpeachable character, that the consummation
of His work will justify all His methods.
So wide is His care, and so minute, that a falling sparrow is noted and
remembered. Peter gives Him the title of "the
faithful Creator," meaning thereby that His
responsibilities are fully met in a manner only possible to infinite power
and love. If His creatorship yearns over a fallen broken bird, how much
more will it reckon with all the forces that have combined to mar the image
of Himself in the man He has made. If He employs the discipline of a father,
the sacrificial love of a mother, the stern justice of a judge and the
passionate affection of a husband-- and all these are figures chosen by
Himself to set forth His attitude towards men and His work for and in them--
it is to the end that His great designs of love may ultimately triumph.
If He turns men to destruction, it is that He may say, "Return
ye children of men." (Ps. 90:3). If the vessel
is marred in the hand of the Potter, it is that He may make it again another
vessel. (Jer. 18:4). If His work is marred, then His own face will be more
marred than any man's, that He may buy back those who have sold themselves
for nought. Creation is full of mysteries, but the revealed character of
the
Creator suffices to assure us of a triumphant solution to them all. Only
a traitor to His person and character would deny such a God this certainty.
The greatest of all the mysteries in His fair creation is the presence
of sin. Thank God, how it can be dealt with and expelled is clearer than
how it entered, and why it was allowed to enter the universe. It
is not necessary to understand the genesis of evil to realize its departure.
The
presence of sin is so immediate upon the initial act of bringing man into
existence, that its presence is evidently deliberate and with design.
This makes the problem more acute, but it should help us all the more to
trust the faithfulness of the Divine architect of all things. It was anticipated;
for, in His Divine purpose, the Lamb was slain before the foundation of
the world. Being anticipated, sin, was, therefore, a definite
part of the Divine plan.
The
presence of sin, and the part it plays, cannot be understood, however,
unless the Creator's own declared consummation of His work be accepted
as truth. Because men have not believed His own goal to which He is professedly
moving, therefore, they have not understood the part that sin plays. While
they believe that sin has come to stay as eternally as God is alive, and
that its effects will be as endless as His own being, it is little wonder
that its genesis is a mystery. The end must justify the means as well as
the beginning. Who would venture to say that the end does this, if sin
has intruded to remain as long as God Himself will live? There must be
in the word of God a solution to this mystery which is glorifying to God
and beneficial finally to His creation.
Sin is here in the world with all its dreadful fruit. If God could not
help its coming into His creation, then we are face to face with the hopelessness
of its final expulsion from the universe. If He could not help its
appearance, then there is a rival power that is spontaneously evil as He
is fundamentally good. In such case the effort to deal with sin at
Calvary is but the strategical movement of God in the hope of overcoming
His adversary. The tragic failure of such effort, in the prospect of myriads
of His creatures being either hopelessly tormented for ever or obliterated
from existence as so much waste substance in the universe, is unspeakably
pathetic, presenting as it does in the foreground, the picture of a God
who has made the supreme sacrifice of Himself as an expedient, and has
fallen short of His cherished hope. It is suggested, on the other hand,
that God could help sin coming into the world, and that He did deliberately
allow it to come into the world, in full view of the dire results accruing
to its appearance in the shape of the endless misery of men. This view
preserves that which is essential to God's existence as Creator and Governor
of the Universe-- His omnipotence.
To suggest that He may have been taken by surprise, and has been ever since
doing what He can to remedy the harm which sin has brought about, is only
to question His omnipotence in another way, and to leave Him pitiable inadequate
to control the situation. These considerations have driven theologians
to claim that He did allow sin to enter the universe, and to admit that
it must have been in full cognizance of the awful issues. In view,
however, of the belief that the unhappy finish to His work in creation
in one direction, will be the hopeless committal of myriads of beings into
the flames of an endless hell of unmitigated conscious suffering, it has
to be admitted also, by such theologians, that God must have created man
with His express understanding and consent to this, and therefore must
have had that certainty in view in His original plan.
One reason for this which is advanced by the advocates of this theory,
is, that this may be intended to serve as a warning to the rest of His
creation of the terrible consequences of rebellion. In a revolt under human
government such an object would be achieved by the execution of a few of
the ringleaders, but God is represented as executing, or rather putting
on an endless rack, all the rank and file of rebels, numbering perhaps
far more than those who by His grace have been rescued from such a fate.
His omnipotence is certainly salved by this admission, but His character
as Creator suffers. If it is argued that He blots them out of existence
rather than put them to endless misery, then the problem of a creation
useless for all intents and purposes and displaying nothing but suffering
and misery as the outcome of His handiwork, equally confronts us, giving
rise to queries as to His wisdom. If it be suggested that all this complexity
of human life, with its sin and sorrow, was necessary to produce the elect
of God and to educate them, it would seem that an overwhelming regret must
possess each member of the elect race at the thought of such ruin and misery
being the background necessary for their perfection.
What solution is offered, to meet these terrific problems, that threaten
to undermine faith in both the wisdom and love of God? The onus of failure
is placed by some upon the stubborn will of man, and this is supposed to
meet all the difficulties. It really brings into prominence another
omnipotence which, because it baffles the omnipotence and love of God,
is by far the greater. Man will not and God cannot. This sums up
the situation created by this view. It appears on the surface to be fair
until a few questions are asked. Where did man get this terrific ability
to defy God? It was the bestowment originally of God himself, who thereby
has created and allowed a rival force which He knew when He created it,
would prove in its rebellion impervious to all the overtures of His love,
and the activities of His omnipotence.
Another query that rises to the lips is whether this will of man in every
case has been perfectly free and unbiased in its choice. We reply that
in the plan of God it was allowed to be fixed in its bias away from God
in the rebellion of the first human pair, and that, in all those mighty
potentialities which influence thought and life, man is the victim of heredity
and circumstances over which he had no control whatever. When we ask if
the Creator, who planned all this, meets every man with the fullest possible
facility to turn from evil and choose the good, we discover that vast multitudes
in the past have been left in ignorance and darkness, and even today, with
Calvary a fact, by far the larger section of the present existing human
race on the earth is in circumstances the reverse of helpful to its acquirement
of the knowledge of God.
If these problems are expressed as above, we are in danger of being branded
as infidel-makers, in that we suggest trains of thought that may cause
doubt of God in minds that think. But minds were made to think, and this
is a thinking age, and men are thinking and along these very lines.
Indeed, it is this very inadequate and illogical theology that has made
many of the best to think. If the Bible could offer no other solution then
we might be wrong in stating these problems, but we have discovered that
there
are other explanations that do not demand the scrapping of any of the Divine
attributes, but rather make them shine in fullest radiancy in the conception
and accomplishment of the purposes connected with the creation of man.
We therefore cast all blame for making infidels upon a false theology
and set about the task of presenting truth that will unmake such infidels
and show them the true God.
The true solution is one that lies clear upon the pages of the written
word of God. It gives us the Divine reason for creation and its goal. God
expresses His satisfaction at the sight of His first activities in this
sphere. "And God saw every thing that He had
made and behold it was VERY GOOD." Since
He knew the end from the beginning, and in His view at the moment all the
issues of His act were unveiled before Him, then His verdict included the
issue, as well as the initiation of creation. To make Him approve of
the findings of accredited theology in this survey of creation would be
to make Him satisfied with endless sin and rebellion, for, according to
generally accepted ideas, these features, so abhorrent to God (Habakkuk
1:13), are to be as endless as He Himself will be.
Of the
final outcome of His creation God Himself declares that He will be "All
in All," that when the vast drama of human destiny reaches the culminating
point of divine government even His enemies will be subjected; death, the
fruit of sin, will be abolished as having done its work; Christ will be
the Head of a redeemed race, and God will be, as Bengel put it,
"everything
to everybody." Such a climax is worthy of
such a God, and justifies the creation of man with all its complex problems.
Foremost amongst the difficulties of the subject, and preeminently essential
to be understood, is the question of:
THE GENESIS OF SIN.
The mystery of mysteries centers in the appearance of sin almost at the
same moment as the inception of human responsibility. Who is responsible
for its presence? In a striking phrase the Word of God tells us that God
Himself is responsible for the appearance of sin (Isaiah 45:7, Amos 3:6).
Not that He originated it, or designed it, but is responsible for its presence,
as He is equally responsible with the opposite quality of good. "I
am the Lord. . . . I form the light and create darkness; I make peace and
create evil, I, the Lord, do all these things." The
Persian King Cyrus is addressed in this chapter as the chosen instrument
for the deliverance of God's people. The Persian creed, though singularly
pure and noble, had one grave defect. They believed in one God, indeed,
and thought of Him so nobly that their symbol for Him was a circle with
wings-- the circle to denote the completeness, the perfection, the eternity
of God; and the wings to denote His all-pervading presence. But while they
believed in one only God, the Maker of all that was good, they also, and
out of reverence for One to whom they dared not attribute any wrong, believed
in an anti-god whom they made responsible for all that was evil. Ahriman,
as they called this evil spirit, was not perhaps the equal of Ahuramazda,
the good creative spirit, but he was independent of Him, and His perpetual
rival. He was not made by God, nor was he subordinate to Him; and it was
he, not God, to whom all that was evil in nature and in human life was
to be attributed. In short, they sacrificed the omnipotence of the God
of heaven to His righteousness, and to save His goodness curtailed His
power. This mistaken conception of the situation called forth the striking
protest from God seven times in the 45th chapter Isaiah, that there was
no God beside Him, together with the admission that evil has its accorded
place in the designs of infinite goodness.
Sin,
therefore, was a possibility in the survey of the Creator, but only a possibility
as He permitted it. His character, so plentifully portrayed in Scripture
and proven in personal experience, should have been enough to assure us
that the permission of sin would never have been granted without adequate,
nay without overwhelming justification in His mind as to the glorious outcome
of allowing its ravages in His fair handiwork.
Still the problem remains that, granting all this, it is difficult to see
how sin could evolve without God's express interference and action. What
is sin? From God's point of view it is the transgression of the law and
the transgression of the law is lawlessness. Lawlessness is simply the
doing of that which is right in our own eyes, irrespective of imposed standards
of righteousness on the part of properly constituted authority, Divine
or human.
Sin,
then, in other words is unbridled self; and self is preoccupation with
that which, fundamentally, is legitimate and God given. There is no sin
in the realm of the body, soul, or spirit, but, when tracked to its roots,
manifests a preoccupation with a legitimate appetite or faculty. Concentration
upon personal beauty, the gift of God, births pride. Legitimate appetites
of the body, pampered by self-indulgence, foster lust, and when lust is
finished it brings forth sin. (James 1:15). Sin, then, is simply
self gratification on any line of human experience.
Who was the first to enter upon this path, and how could such preoccupation
be possible? These are questions that have now to be met. There must have
been at some time in the creation of God a first being who followed the
path in which eventually all have trod and will tread. There is a solidarity
in the fall of all created beings, even as there is, praise God, a solidarity
in connection with their restoration. (Romans 5:12-19). To Bible readers
it is hardly necessary to say that Satan appears to have been the first
to tread this path of self and sin. Scripture makes it clear that it was
he who tempted that first human pair, and the form of the temptation was
the same as that which had originally ensnared him, "Ye shall be as gods,
knowing good and evil." The same reasoning, in his own case, led to his
effort to usurp the throne of God, and to his expulsion from the high place
of responsibility given him by God.
We can turn to Ezekiel 28 for light upon this point. Here, in the figure
of the Prince of Tyre, it seems evident that Satan is personified. According
to Josephus, this was Ethbach II, who was the reigning Prince of Tyre,
and who claimed Divine honors as occupying the seat of the temple of Melkarth,
which Herodotus mentions as the oldest sanctuary known in the annals of
mankind. His island residence sprang out of the waters, and he calls it
"the
seat of God in the midst of the seas." His
arrogant assumption of Divine position and prerogative make him a fitting
type, or personification, of Satan, for it is clear that the prophet passes
on to describe one who was more than man. Terms are used which could only
apply to some great being previous, and superior to even this mighty Prince
of Tyre.
As the writer already quoted
says, "It could
never be said of any human being except Adam and Eve, ‘Thou wast in Eden,
the garden of God,' if this means the literal Eden. . . . No man has ever
been called the ‘anointed cherub that covereth; no man has been set upon
the holy mountain of God, no man has walked up and down in the midst of
the stones of fire,' but the cherubim of Ezekiel I are found there. Of
no man could it be said that he was ‘perfect in his ways from the day he
was created, till unrighteousness was found in him.' No man or woman has
been created, except Adam and Eve; all others have been born. But all this
answers to ‘the prince of this world,' the great enemy of souls, whose
tool and instrument for the time this King of Tyre was."
These considerations made it manifest that God is unveiling here those
assumptions of Satan which led to his fall. He aimed at being God. He desired
to become as God-- the very suggestion that he put to Adam and Eve. He
aspired to the worship of himself by others. Was it not this very blasphemous
proposition that he even sought to inject into the mind of the Son of God?
"All
these things will I give thee if Thou wilt fall down and worship me."
That which led on to this presumptuous attitude was preoccupation with
that perfection which was the gift of God. "Thine
heart was lifted up because of thy beauty: thou hast corrupted thy wisdom
by reason of thy brightness." (Ezekiel
28:17). Here was the genesis of sin. If began in preoccupation with that
which was legitimately his, as the gift of God; that perfection of person
with which God had graced him. This led to pride, and "pride,"
as the Scripture says, "goes before destruction
and a haughty spirit before a fall."
Thus
we see who it was that first traversed the path away from God, and we note
the process by which the departure took place. The difficulty still
remains how any creature made in the purpose of God and held by His power,
could thus deliberately purpose a path of action so antagonistic to the
God from whose hand he had come.
It goes without saying that God could have kept both Satan and Adam from
falling, and that there was no inherent tendency in them to stray from
the path of rectitude, when they came from His hand in creation. Nor can
we conceive that, of themselves and apart from God's purpose, such a thing
as the turning of their gaze from their Creator to themselves could have
occurred. It must have been an action on God's part that precipitated the
fall. That is to say, not some initial action of His which gave an
impetus to their movement away from Him and to themselves, but some passive
consent of His to their trial under certain conditions, which sprang from
his volition and could not be without His permission. What was there that
He could do, what is there that He is actually recorded as having done
in other cases, which would provide just that test necessary to ascertain
how they would act when left to themselves.
Does not this last sentence clear up the mystery? Were they not left to
themselves, isolated for the moment in their own God-given capabilities
and responsibilities, that it might be seen whether, under such conditions,
they would abide in Him, or move out to a self-chosen destiny? It is recorded
of Hezekiah that "in the business of the ambassadors
of the princes of Babylon, God left him to try him, that He might know
all that was in his heart." (2 Chron. 32:31).
Do we not see in this incident the principle that God employed at the first
to discover how unaided creatures would act? In some such way God acted
with Job, withdrawing His hedge of thorns through which the enemy could
not break, in order that Satan might try this perfect man, though only
as far as he had Divine permission. We have often felt that the story
of Job might well be the story of creation in miniature.
Job was a perfect man untried, just the condition in which creation was,
while maintained in its pristine perfection by the power of God. The satisfaction
that the Creator would have gotten out of a creation which continued perfect
in every part would doubtless have been very real. It would, however, have
always been open to the taunt that Satan flung at God when he hinted at
the possibility accruing from God's withdrawn support. And it would have
lacked that absolutely voluntary choice of God's will, which would have
resulted from a deliberate rejection by the creature's own will, as well
as a definite choice of the Divine will in preference. God longed for this
kind of obedience from His creation.
The only way open to God, to secure such a full voluntary submission to
His will, was to permit evil. In other words to permit the will of His
creatures to act unrestrained by the constraint of His own will, so that
their own ways were chosen in preference to His.
There was only one way to secure such a deliberate intelligent choice of
His will. It was by allowing the creature full liberty to choose for himself
an opposite path and to follow it to the bitter end. The faithfulness of
the Creator to His work would have been impugned had He not provided that
such a choice would ultimately be over-ruled to produce a result that would
not only justify the process by which the end was reached, but would be
pre-eminently satisfying to the creature himself as well as to the Creator.
There is in Isa. 45:7 an illustration in the physical sphere illustrative
of the method used in the spiritual. Darkness is the withdrawal of light.
So evil results from the withdrawal of good.
"For God made man what he is; God ordained the circumstances in which man
is placed: God knew that such circumstances, operating on such a creature,
would inevitably involve him in sin and misery through all eternity. With
this clear foresight, to alter nothing in the nature of the creature, to
alter nothing in the arrangement of the circumstances, but to persist in
giving him that very nature, and in placing him in those very circumstances,
the inevitable result of which He knew would secure the production of this
endless sin and misery-- is malignant in the highest possible degree; and,
were the Deity malignity itself, He could not act worse."
By
revelation we know that the nature and the name of God is Love.
This is enough to prove to us that, unless He had foreseen an ultimate
issue to His work which would be worthy of such a terrific process as the
destruction of His handiwork by sin, He could never have planned such a
road to the consummation of His desire. What was that desire? It was to
have a race of beings whose experience of their own will being gratified
would once and for all rid them of all further longing to be independent
of Himself in their activities. It was to demonstrate through the sufferings
of sin to what that pathway of self will lead, and thus to provide an experience
which would create a loathing for lawlessness in the redeemed race, and
instead implant a love for holiness within them.
It was further to furnish the race that He had brought into existence with
such a marvelous evidence of His oneness with them in the incarnation and
sacrifice of His Son, that His creatures would be overwhelmed at the vast
expenditure of the Divine nature and resources on behalf of His off spring.
(Acts 17:24-28).
In the redeemed race there will be two things which will spring out of
the history of the ages which will satisfy God for all His costly work.
One
is the utter repudiation of his own will, at which every man will arrive
as the result of his experience of the gratifying of his own wishes. The
other is the complete and voluntary choice of God's will to which every
man will come as the highest and supreme good. Man's will has been allowed
to be free in its choice of evil, that ultimately it may be free in its
choice of God.
After an exhibition of the inability of man without law and then under
law, to recover from his fall, or even to desire to lift himself from the
mire of his own folly and sin, God sent forth His Son at the ripe moment
of His purpose that He might redeem them that were under the law. In the
Person of His Son there was wrought out, as the Head of the redeemed race,
a voluntary obedience in the face of every kind of incitement to rebellion
and self will, which became the spring and pattern of the obedience into
which the Son will conduct the race to the closing scene of 1 Cor. 15:22-28.
The next act in this great drama of creation and redemption is the gathering
of a company out of this present age, in whom God's will shall have become
their supreme choice in the face of all the antagonism and fascination
of this present evil age. That "God may
be all in all" is the far-off goal to which
He is moving. To the principle that He shall be ALL In ALL and His will
supreme, Calvary was the great "Amen" of the
Son. He is the "Amen"
echoing only the Father's purpose. With Him, out of this age, will come
the company who, through the severest test, in the power of Calvary,
will say "Amen"
also. To do God's will is here and now in this realm of sin and sorrow
their undying and burning ambition. In them God is tasting the first fruit
of His purpose in creation. The drama is not yet complete. Through the
ministry of the Christ-- the Head and the body perfected-- in the ages
yet to come, the fulfillment of the words of Christ will take place, "I,
if I be lifted up from the earth will draw all men unto ME."
It has been said that, "Inasmuch as God Himself
alone is the only and absolute first cause, it follows that in the last
analysis, He is inevitably responsible for the ultimate consummation."
The
consummation is revealed in 1 Cor. 15:22-28 as that of the happy, holy,
intelligent, freewill subjection of the race to their Creator that He may
be "ALL in ALL."
Sin with all its suffering stands revealed as part of the process by which
this is brought about. Nowhere did sin strike more terribly than
in the Person of the Creator Himself in slaying its God at Calvary. Creation
discovered the way to His original purpose. Thus, to the One whom he slew,
man becomes, through the power of that very deed which was the supreme
self sacrifice of God, subjected at last in the completest voluntariness
to his Creator and Redeemer.
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