37. XXXV. The Beginning of Sin in the World

XXXV. The Beginning of Sin in the World In regard to the origin of sin in the world there is in Paul’s teaching the same seeming, but only seeming, contradiction that has so often met us already. After man and the world had come into existence, sin began in the world at a particular moment through an act of the man. “Through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin.” It has sometimes been rashly inferred by unphilosophic speculation that there must have existed a state of sinlessness and moral perfection before the first act of sin was committed. Paul did not hold or teach that opinion. His doctrine and philosophic position exclude it. Such an inference from what he did state is unjustifiable. On the contrary, he says that “the first man is of the earth, earthy,” (1 Corinthians 15:47.) i.e. the potentiality of evil was involved from the beginning, and sinfulness was implicit in the nature of the first man. Sin begins when man begins. The existence of man as divided from God, and as requiring to seek reunion with God, involves in itself the tendency towards sin as a possibility. If there were no sin or possibility of sin, there would be nothing, in Paul’s view, to gain from God. The end of man’s life is to attain freedom from sin, i.e. Salvation.

It would be merely senseless to argue that, in a literal interpretation of the story of Adam (which Paul indubitably regarded as true both historically and spiritually), the first man was sinless until the first sin was committed. That is a literalism too painful and too gross. In the evolution of man’s history under conditions of time and space, the man exists and then sin enters. But the sin is potentially present in man from the moment of his creation. There is a moment when the potential becomes actual; but those who argue that Paul thought of a state of human sinlessness as reigning until Adam committed his first sin are incapacitating themselves from comprehending Paul. As has already been stated, the permanent possibility of sin, and the position of man as exposed to the temptation of sinning and as ultimately triumphing over this temptation and attaining to reunion with God, are the Divine order of creation and the law of the universe. This possibility of sinning is the measure of what we have figuratively termed the distance separating man from God. The distance is entailed in the act of making man and giving to him a distinct individuality, in which he may exercise his separate powers; and his life ought to be the gradual overcoming of the temptation to sin, the traversing of the distance that divides him from God, and finally the attaining to God once more. It is not too strong — though it is a statement that is liable to be misinterpreted and requires to be read with sympathy to distinguish between the good and the bad in our imperfect expression — to say that man is an imperfect Jesus, and as it were a Christ who has failed to realise the end of his being and the purpose of his creation; that Jesus is the expression of the Divine purpose in the creation of man; and that the life of Jesus is the guarantee that this purpose can be realised, will be realised, and (as one might almost say) must ultimately be realised. The nature of Christ is the idea of Salvation, which takes possession of the man, (Galatians 2:20,Php 3:12,1 Corinthians 13:12.) and works in him in the way of driving him on to work out his own salvation. It is merely another one among the many imperfect ways of describing the relation of man to God to say that, unless man is capable of sinning, he is not divided from God, and there can therefore be no complete creative act, until the new creature stands apart from the original Creative Power, able and free to choose for himself and to act for himself, i.e. to sin or to avoid sinning.

It may be asked. Is not this too awkward, too roundabout, too complicated a process; and therefore is it not unfair to man and unworthy of God? Why not make man so that he will come right and be righteous of himself and through his own unaided activity?

We might reply that, if man is such that he can (and therefore must) rise free from sin through himself alone, he is not really man: he is not divided from God, and there would have been in that case no act of creation, and nothing but God would exist: there would be no man. Let us, however, look at it in another way. If man were so made, he would in that case be (in modern phrase) a “Superman”. Ancient thought seems to have dallied with this idea, and worked it out to its consequences as a belief in the existence of superhuman beings, permitted by God to exist. If we assume that such beings exist, freed from the fetters and imperfections of humanity, able to know and to act, the result must be (and has actually been, according to that ancient belief) that these beings are not reminded through their own failure that they must lean on God and trust to Him: accordingly they are confident in themselves and fail to keep Him in regard, and thus they are merely led into sin in another form: they are the wicked angels, the lost spirits, the devils of popular superstition. In every supposition that either ordinary man, or “superman,” or powers and beings intermediate between God and man (such as the “angels and principalities and powers” of Jewish belief), can through their own nature and power know the truth and attain it of themselves, there is involved the consequence that the conscious memory of the Divine nature outside of them and the Divine goal in front of them dies out, and that “knowing God, they glorified Him not as God, neither gave thanks,” and therefore that “their heart was made senseless and darkened”. Thus their wisdom becomes folly; and their conception of the Divine nature is distorted; and the career of evil sketched by Paul to the Romans (Romans 1:21ff.Romans 1:14.) ensues. Sin thus comes in by another way and in another form even more serious.

Ancient religious thought in an almost unconscious way developed this line of speculation to the ultimate issue that these higher beings become powers of evil, separate permanently from God, hostile to God, foes to man as the work of God, and bent on preventing man from fulfilling the purpose of God (except in so far as they repent, master their pride, and seek humbly to return to Him). The fanciful theory of the “super-man” was worked out by ancient thought in this form, and was thus disproved by reducing it to an absurdity. You cannot have the “super-man” without finding that you have merely got the “devil” under another name.

If, therefore, the division from God involved in the act of creation is real, the possibility of sinning is inevitably involved in it. If that division is not real, then there is nothing except the Divine, and no creation of human nature has occurred. The consciousness of God in the human mind, present there as continuously and completely as possible, is the condition of the higher life and the true end of human nature, Man attains towards this end by living it and making it real in his character; as he learns to swim by swimming, so he learns to realise God, to be conscious of God, to know God, by doing so and being so. If he attempts to do right and to be righteous through himself and his own power, he is thereby forgetting God; his consciousness of God is interrupted through his own “senseless” exaltation of himself into the place of God; and he has turned his back and moved in the contrary direction away from God. The element of deliberate action and perverse choosing is involved in his conduct. Now, whereas the aim of life is reunion with God, i.e. absolutely unbroken, continuous and unending thinking with God and like God, it is purely absurd if men should try to attain this end by forgetting Him and giving themselves the glory.

If our interpretation of this passage of Romans 1:21 ff. is right, Paul is there just stating the converse of his own words to the Galatians defining the true life, (Galatians 2:20: the same thought is re-expressed in emphasised form, i.e. “in large letters,” in 6:14.) “It is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me”: i.e. he (as the representative true Christian) thinks continuously and always with God, sees God in everything, has no consciousness except of the Divine purpose and will that moves and rules in every act of nature and of history, and thus his own individual will has been merged in the will of God, not by losing its distinct personality, but by attaining to its full development: he has not been absorbed and annihilated in the Divine, but in the Divine consciousness has attained the perfection of his own true individuality. He is reunited with God, and yet remains his individual self in glorified form and in spiritual body. But yet — “not that I have already attained or am already made perfect; but I press on . . . toward the goal unto the prize of the upward calling of God in Jesus who is the Messiah”. (Php 3:12-14.)

There is but one “Way”. The way of this Salvation is, and must inevitably be, the passionate, enthusiastic, whole-hearted recognition of the real nature of Jesus as the message of God, the merging of one’s own nature in the recognition of this message, the living of the Christ-life, i.e. being “crucified with Christ,” the sacrifice of one’s older false self in order to attain to one’s true self, the seizing of Christ as one has been seized by Him. This is the law of growth: the process is defined by its ultimate and perfect stage. The completion of the process is involved already in the first step onwards, because the first step marks the guiding law of the whole. The Christian is already perfect, because he will be perfect; and yet immediately and always comes the instantaneous recognition that in all this process he himself has done nothing, but Christ and the message and purpose of God are working in him: not for one instant may he forget to give God the glory and render to Him the thanks,” (Romans 1:21.) otherwise the whole process is vitiated and turned to self-glorification, arrogance and deterioration. In each moment of growth all the process and the law are involved: one attains and yet one has not attained, but only grown a stage; and God remains in front, outside, beyond oneself, and the Divine in the man has still to press onwards towards reunion with the Divine which stands before. The reunion is ever in the process of being consummated, and yet is not consummated. Such is the law of the universe and the nature of Christ.

What then is Christ, and what is the knowledge of Christ and of God?