01. Man's Original Purity
CHAPTER I Man’s Original Purity
What in me is dark Illumine; what is low, raise and support; That to the height of this great argument I may assert Eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men.-Milton.
Eden, man’s first and divinely prepared home, must have been a place of ecstatic beauty. Flowers must have bloomed beside rippling streams along whose banks grew waving trees and verdant fields. Songbirds must have warbled in the leafy bowers that beautified that elysian garden. Beauties ten thousand more than these that can not be described seemed fitting accomplishments of primal man’s physical, mental, and moral perfection. The Spirit of God had moved on the water that covered the chaotic world, had brought order, life, and beauty to reign on the earth. Above the newly made and beautified earth stretched the vaulted expanse of the heavens, studded with countless stars and lighted by the sun and the moon. In the production, beautification,, and vivification of this mighty earth, in the ordering of the myriad starry worlds, and in the appointment of the mighty ruler of the day and the lesser ruler of the night, the creative impulse of the Almighty seems not to have found a resting place. Nor could he find, it would seem, among all the then created worlds an object or pattern after which to fashion that semi-divine being which was to constitute the climax of his creative effort. So he said, perhaps to the angelic beings, to his divine Son, or to both, "Let us make man in our own image" (Genesis 1:26-27). IN WHAT DOES THE DIVINE IMAGE CONSIST ?
It has been supposed that man’s superiority to the lower animal creation and his dominion over all the earth, being similar to God’s unlimited dominion, constitute in man the image and likeness of God. But the likeness of God in man is more than this; for certain attributes of God-omniscience, omnipotence, infinite love, and absolute holiness-are mirrored in the personality of man finitely as intelligence, will, affection, and conscience, a n d without doubt this is all included in the expression "image of God." But it is evident that the greatest degree of likeness was in the moral nature. In whatever degree the physical and the intellectual may have shared with the spiritual or moral nature the likeness and image of the Creator, it is certain that in the primary sense it was man’s moral nature that was made in the likeness and image of God.
Paul, speaking of the redeemed nature says, "And that ye put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. " To redeem means to buy back; hence if "after God," or dike God, in the "new man" consisted in righteousness and true holiness, the likeness and image of God in primitive man, back to whose state redeemed man is brought, must have consisted in these same moral qualities. The New Testament writers state explicitly that through Christ we are redeemed into the image and likeness of God.
"But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Corinthians 3:18). "For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the first born among many brethren" (Romans 8:29). "Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world" (1 John 4:17). The New Testament abounds in proof that the divine image to which man is redeemed is a state of moral purity. "God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us; and put no difference between us [Jews] and them, [ Gentiles] purifying their hearts by faith" (Acts 15:8-9). "And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he [Christ] is pure" (1 John 3:3). "Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate " (Hebrews 13:12).
What in me is dark Illumine; what is low, raise and support; That to the height of this great argument I may assert Eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men.-Milton. THE NATURE OF PRIMITIVE HOLINESS
There are those who teach that primitive holiness was a superhuman addition to man, and not a constituent part of man’s being; but the Bible says that god made man in his own image. The image of God, then, was a constituent part of man, his moral nature, and not a superaddition to man. "Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions" (Ecclesiastes 7:29). We must distinguish carefully between holiness in nature and the life in holiness. The latter is the result of the former, for doing is the result of being. Primitive holiness, of course, had no ethical value and was, therefore, not rewardable; but it must be remembered that man was placed under a testing law of duty and that by obedience to that law he could live a life in holiness or perform deeds by his own free choice, which have ethical value and are, therefore, rewardable.
Primitive holiness, though it determined man’s tendency, was not of such a nature as to interfere with his free moral agency. This is evident (1) from the fact that God commanded man not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and (2) from the fact that man disobeyed. Had man’s moral nature precluded the possibility of an act contrary to God’s will, or, in other words, had primitive holiness robbed man of free moral agency, or the power to choose, then it would have been unreasonable for God to give man an alternative between the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life, for it were inconsistent in God to forbid that which man could not do and to enjoin that which man could not but do.
Neither was the nature of primitive holiness such as to make the grace of God unnecessary. From the fact that the voice of the Lord walked in the garden in the cool of the day we may infer that God often communed with man; so it is reasonable to suppose that man could have availed himself of the grace of God and thereby could have escaped temptation and sin.
Primitive holiness, then, was not some superadded quality of body or mind, but a purity of moral nature that would enable man to live in a state of moral uprightness. Neither was primitive holiness a super-human power that would force man, independent of choice, to a course of righteous conduct. Man had a physical, a mental and a moral nature. The physical was merely the dwelling place of the soul; the mental gave him the power of choice; the moral was pure, created upright, in the image and likeness of God; yet the preservation of that holy moral state was made dependent upon man’s obedience. Thus, man was started on his probationary career with a perfect body, a sound mind, and a pure heart, with every tendency in his favor.