Father, I thank you.
O Lord, O God, blest of thy law,
my sense of heart, that we may also
come to recognize it.
May we also love thy law.
Meditate therein day and night, that knowledge shall
complete openness before the reproof and the condemnation
of thy law, but not for the perfect
satisfaction that thine own Son has given to
thy law, and that obedience which is perfect,
which is undefiled and undefilable, that righteousness which
is acceptable with thee, and do thou grant
unto us that closed in that righteousness we
may emulate more and more the perfection of
our Redeemer who was holy, harmless, undefiled, and
separate from his name, amen.
Now I will begin with the fourth supposition
of our formulation of the doctrine of faith.
I just came to look at the source
of the arrows, namely the all-pervasiveness of
God's law, the all-pervasiveness, and the point
there is simply this, that the law of
God extends to all relations of life, that
we are never in any moment, never in
any moment relieved of the obligation which God's
law entails for us.
Because there is never a moment, never a
circumstance in which we are not under obligation
to love and serve God, love
and serve God.
And if that is true with respect to
love, it ought to be true with respect
to law, because love and law are correlated.
As we found out yesterday, if love is
the fulfillment of the law, you never have
love, but in relationship to law and in
the fulfillment of it.
Now this is just another term that we
are never amoral or non-moral.
We are always either moral or immoral, but
never non-moral.
Now it is that principle, the all-inclusive
obligation to God, that gives sanctity to
all of our subordinate obligations.
I say it is this that gives sanctity
to all of our subordinate obligations.
We do have obligations to our fellow creatures,
to our fellow men, because
they are institutions invested with authority, institutions
of God's appointment invested with authority, and to
them we owe subjection.
Within the spheres, we owe subjection within the
spheres to which these institutions belong, or
the spheres which are defined by these institutions.
Now if these subordinate obligations were not
derived of, there
would be a contradiction, contradiction entering into human
life.
We owe subjection to our fellow men within
these spheres only because they are
divine organisms, and all
subordinate obligations, it's always true, it's
always traceable.
All subordinate obligation is always traceable to our
higher divine obligation.
Now you might ask, why deal with this
in connection with the subject of sin?
Why?
It is thoroughly germane to our topic for
this reason that nothing is sin unless it
is first of all a violation of that
higher divine obligation.
Nothing is sin unless it violates that higher
divine obligation.
It is the truth enunciated in the scripture.
There is one lawgiver, one lawgiver.
So if the ordinances of man, the ordinances
of man require us to violate the law
of God, then we must, we must obey
God rather than man.
And therefore the only criterion of sin is
the law of God.
Now, we
disobey only when the
human ordinance is
in access of divine institution and authority.
But if a human ordinance is a legitimate
exercise of God-given authority, then disobedience is
sin not simply because the act
is in violation of the human ordinance, because
the human ordinance was divine institution.
Now that is the plain effect of the
teaching of Paul, for example, in Romans 13,
1-7.
Let every soul be subject to the higher
powers, for there is no power but of
God.
The powers that be are ordained of God.
And he that resisteth the powers resisteth the
ordinance of God.
He goes on, of course, to speak of
conscience.
You must be subject not only for wrath,
but also for conscience's sake.
Now, conscience, of course, always relates itself to
the law of God.
God alone is lord of the conscience.
And if we obey out of conscience, it
is because we recognize in the human ordinance
an exercise of divinely instituted authority.
Now, it may be sometimes that human institutions
impose ordinances that are in excess of their
God-given authority.
I say they establish ordinances which are in
excess of God-given authority.
When these ordinances require us to violate the
law of God, then we must, as I
said, disobey men and obey God.
But if these ordinances of men are in
excess of God-given authority, but do not
require us to violate the law of God,
do not require us to violate it, then,
of course, obedience is a matter of expedience.
It may be inexpedient to disobey.
It may be expedient to comply.
But we must remember this, that if they
are, if these ordinances are in excess of
divine authority, then we may violate them without
sin, when a higher divine obligation requires us
to do so.
And that is utterly germane to our assessment
of what sin really is.
Sin must be defined as violation of the
law of God, as anomia.
Hence the law by which sin is to
be judged is not variable, not variable.
Circumstances and conditions will affect
the heinousness of violation.
Circumstances and conditions do affect the heinousness, the
gravity, but circumstances and conditions do not
determine what the law of God is.
Circumstances and conditions do, of course, determine which
aspects of the law of God pertain to
us in these circumstances and conditions.
I say they determine what, what relevance, what
is the relevance of the law of God
in these situations.
But they do not of themselves determine what
the law of God is.
And that's why you can have in this
the permanent invariable of divine
obligation.
And it is these principles enunciated in command
which are the criteria by which we are
to judge what sin and sinfulness is.
Well, that's all on that.
Now, we come to the fourth.
Men's subdivision.
Death is not
necessarily a sin if we violate it.
That is to say, you see, they may
be in such a state that the divine
law requires us to violate it.
And therefore, if they are in a sense
of God-given authority, they do not necessarily
oblige us.
Now, there are many laws in existence, in
a state mediant to violate, but,
nevertheless, there are circumstances which arise but it
is an obligation to violate them because we
have that higher divine obligation evolving.
And that applies, of course, in many, many
situations of life.
And consequently, I think, it's necessary to liberty
of conscience discharge of our divine obligations to
recognize that fact.
Sometimes it is necessary out of out of
obedience to God to violate.
And that's not simply when the audience is
expressly in violation of divine commandment.
Of course, sometimes it's expressly in violation when
the magistrates, of course, commanded Peter and his
associates to desist from preaching the gospel.
You remember they said, we must obey God
rather than men.
The human requisition, the requisition of the magistrates
was expressly in violation of their divine commission.
On other occasions, laws on the part of
men may not be so blatantly in violation.
The law of God, now they may not
ordinarily require us to violate the law of
God.
That is, compliance with them may not ordinarily
require us to violate the law of God.
And consequently, it is expedient that we should
obey them as Christians.
But sometimes we shall have to disobey consciously
and deliberately in order to fulfill our higher
divine obligation.
Now, for capital B, no, I said that
sin was a real evil, sin was a
specific evil, sin was a moral evil, and
that is C.
And now we come to D.
Isn't that correct?
Real evil, specific evil, moral evil.
That's the way I said it yesterday?
Yes, yes.
Oh, I would have to let you know.
But if you all hadn't let us adhere
to that, real
evil, specific evil, moral evil, I may have
slipped at that point.
But if you have your notes, sin
involves pollution, blame, liability.
These three points.
Pollution, blame, and liability.
Now, if you like Latin, if you like
Latin, if
you want to pursue
your studies, read the Latin itself.
And there is a great deal of theology
involved in it.
Now, that, of course, as
we found already, refers to the defilement of
heart and of mind, the defilement of the
disposition of heart, which all sin, and
it is very important to bear in mind
that sin is never abolitional abstraction,
never abolitional abstraction.
That is, a lack of will, abstracted from
that which is most determinative in the human
personality.
That which is most determinative in the human
personality is the heart, what the Bible calls
the heart.
That is, that which is most determinative morally
and religiously is the heart.
That which is most determinative in the human
personality is the heart, what the Bible calls
the heart.
That is, that which is most determinative morally
and religiously is the heart.
And what is being emphasized here is the
depravity of the heart, a part from which
no sin exists.
Isolate, isolate a sinful action from
that from which it issues, and it is
a pure abstraction that has no reality, that
does not exist out of the heart are
the issues of life, out of the heart
are the issues of death.
Oh, you can see how important is this
aspect, the use of the silence of depravity,
that we are.
Then, secondly, it involves blame, and that simply
means that the person is blameworthy, blameworthy for
everything that is in contravention of divine obligation.
He is blameworthy for everything that is in
contravention of divine obligation.
And there you can see how important it
is, again, to emphasize that aspect of sin,
because in a great deal of pseudo-Christian
ethics, in a great deal of pseudo-Christian
ethics, there is the tendency to excuse the
person, perhaps because of ignorance, perhaps
because of supposedly ameliorating circumstances and conditions under
which the sin was committed.
But the point here is that wherever there
is sin, wherever there is the contravention of
a divine obligation, either by way of omission
or commission, either by way of coming short,
or by way of overtransgression, there is the
blame devolving upon the person of whom that
sin is predicated.
Therefore you have liability, and that refers to
the penalty, the penalty that
accrues to the person because of his blameworthy
disposition and action.
I prefer to call it the judgment of
God, the feeling of judgment devolving upon the
person or accruing to the person because of
his contravention of
the law of God.
The judgment, of course, is inevitable, because sin
is the contradiction of God, and that
which is a contradiction of God must elicit
God's displeasure, indignation, and wrath.
And the judgment of God is always epitomized
in His wrath.
Now here it is necessary to
understand the precise force of a
term which you will always find in theology,
reactus, Latin term.
It is a substantive, and the corresponding adjective
is reus, reus, that is reactus.
Reactus really means liability, liability.
Sometimes you will find theologians using the expression
reactus corpi, reactus corpi, in distinction
from the reactus canon.
That is a misuse of the term reactus,
complete misuse of the term reactus.
The classic reformed theology vigorously rejected the distinction
between reactus corpi and reactus canon, on the
grounds that reactus is always something intermediate
between corpi and canon, always something intermediate, as
canon states quite properly,
that reactus is something that arises from corpi
and leads to pain.
Something that arises from corpi and leads to
pain, that it arises from blame and leads
to penance.
So bear that in mind, that in reformed
theology reactus is always conceived of as the
liability arising from blame or corpi, the liability,
and therefore we really speak of reactus canon,
that is the liability to penalty, but not
of reactus corpi.
Now let's simply to set straight that terminology.
In English we often use this word guilt,
guilt, g-u-i-l-t, but there
is a certain ambiguity attaching to the use
of that word guilt in our common speech,
as also to the adjective guilty.
When we say a person is guilty, a
person is guilty, we mean that he has
perpetrated a certain wrong, perpetrated a certain wrong.
And we speak of the guilt as synonymous
with the sin itself.
That is, it is often used to denote
the wrong committed, the wrong committed.
So guilt in common parlance is the synonym
of transgression, of sin, and
we should not interfere with that common parlance,
that common usage, because it is common usage
that determines the connotation and denotation of a
person.
But in theology, in theology the word guilty
and also the term guilt is often used
to denote the Latin term reactus, and
therefore denoting the liability arising from sin.
That is to say, it is often used
in theological discussion to denote what in Latin
is called obligatio ad senum, obligatio ad
senum.
Now, when in theology guilt is used in
that restricted sense, bear in mind that that
is what it has reference to, has reference
to the obligation to the judgment of God
which accrues to sin.
Now to conclude our discussion of the whole
subject, if you may take a moment, moving
observation, it is very important that our thinking,
our thinking, be oriented to these answers, comprehended
under these three subdivisions, and I may enforce
subdivisions at that time.
Why yes, now, because today we may find
a great deal of emphasis upon the undecidability,
the undecidability of sin, the hatefulness, and
even the selfishness, without any truly
Christian assessment of sin as lawlessness, and
as involving pollution, blame, and guilt.
Pollution, blame, and guilt.
Using guilt in the more restricted sense, which
I have just stated.
The biblical estimate of sin was that it
is law, not only undecidable, but damnable.
And it is that concept of wrong that
enshrines in itself.
It is that concept of wrong that enshrines
in itself all that has been, all that
I have said, respecting sin as violation of
the law of God.
And this is also important in our present
-day context, to lay particular emphasis, particular
emphasis upon the judgment, the judgment which necessarily
attaches to sin that contradiction of God and
of His perfection.
When sin is conceived of as contradiction of
God and of His perfection, then we must
appreciate the correlating, the correlating, namely, that we
act against it with holy displeasure, with indignation,
with wrath and condemnation.
We are here confronted with a divine impossibility,
a divine impossibility.
And this divine impossibility is not His weakness,
but His strength, not His reproach, but His
glory.
He cannot deny Himself.
And therefore, to be complacent towards that which
is the contradiction of God is a divine
impossibility, a divine
impossibility, that God is holy, that He is
justice, truth, and that He is love.
And because He is love, He loves Himself
supremely.
Loving Himself, we cannot but confront that
which is an assault upon His dispute
with His power, doubt of His
contradiction, of His veracity.
Well, just now to pass on to the
next main subdivision of our discussion, the doctrine
of faith, the second main subdivision of our
discussion, the doctrine of faith.
I have dealt with nature, then with time,
then with it, under these.
Now we come to the next main subdivision,
the imputation of Adam's tree.
Imputation.
This, of course, is concerned with our relationship
to the imputation of Adam's tree.
Now I'm going to be lecturing on this
for a week or so, and I will
be following the lines of what I have
in the little book of the imputation of
Adam and Eve.
I'll be saying for the next week or
so, but I could just let you read
the book, but I do not think that
you will get the material as well
as you would if I go over the
main point, because there is a great deal
in that book that I'm not going to
deal with, and I'm afraid you would get
lost, especially in the latter part of this
book.
And so I'm going to lecture on this
a bit in order to abbreviate and somewhat
simplify and also drive home the main considerations
bearing upon this all-important question.
Now, in dealing with this subject, there are
two passages in particular in the New Testament
that bear upon the question.
They are not the only passages, but there
are two passages in particular and these are
Romans 5, 12-19, 1 Corinthians 15, 22.
They are the pivotal passages and a good
deal of the discussion will pertain to the
interpretation of Romans 5, 12-19.
Now, in dealing with that passage, there are
five main subdivisions under which I shall discuss
it.
A.
The syntactical construction, the syntax of the passage,
the syntactical construction.
Then second, the sin contemplated, that's capital D,
capital C, the union involved, the union involved,
then D, the nature of the imputation, and
then five, and finally, the sin imputed, D,
D, C, D.
The syntactical construction, the sin contemplated, the union
involved, the nature of the imputation, sin imputed.
Now our discussion of this will involve a
great deal of historical theology and that is
required because the discussion of this question can
only be oriented, can only be dealt with
adequately if it is oriented to the question
of historical theology, to the question that embed
in the discussion of this matter in history.
Now, our bell will ring presently, so I
won't go further today.