31. The Nature of Moral Government

The Nature of Moral Government

Chapter IV

Man, by sin, has gone beyond the reach of God’s love. Stepping out of God’s will into his own, he has become spiritually severed from Him, and is therefore a spiritual corpse, as dead to God in spiritual experience as though there were no God in existence. Communication between God and man is still possible, but no communion. From the prospect of perfection in love toward God through a whole-hearted choice of and obedience to His will, man has become fixed in a condition of intolerance toward that will. From spiritual harmony and fellowship with God, he has become so completely antagonistic toward Him as to be intolerant even of His presence.

God is thus confronted by a condition which ought not to be. His holy love has been thwarted, since man is now in a condition of moral ill-being and unhappiness. He must now face the situation on the basis of what He Himself is, and act upon it on the basis of what man has become.

God is righteous; man is now sinful. His love purposes to encompass man with that which will insure his eternal welfare and happiness; man’s intolerance even of His presence has put him wholly outside of that welfare. And since man has now achieved a fixed character of hatred toward God’s will, there appears to be nothing that can open the way for God to reach man. A love of God’s will by man in his condition of sin is now impossible. “The mind of the flesh is enmity (not at enmity, but enmity itself in essence) with God; for it is not subject to the law (will) of God, neither indeed can be” (Romans 8:7). And of course God cannot tolerate any will set up against His, for that would be against the welfare He has set His will to accomplish for those who will accept it from Him; and therefore even the slightest compromise one way or the other would be equally impossible. So far as anything man can do for himself is concerned, he is thus doomed to eternal enmity against God, with the consequences of that attitude inescapable.

Such a Being as reason demands God should be, however, will not let His purpose for man fail, but will go to any length consistent with His own character, and therefore with the perfect welfare of all the rest of His universe, to find some way to carry His purpose out. But what can He do, confronted by such a condition? That we may isolate the one thing that God, in the nature of things, will be compelled to do, let a supposition, with its necessary consequences, be considered.