Man's Fatal
Disease
A few years ago a medical school graduate who had just obtained his M.D. degree began practice in a small village. An old man was his first patient. The young doctor was nervous about trying to make a good first impression. The old man listed all his ailments and waited for the doctor to give him a diagnosis. After a long examination, the young doctor had no clue as to what was wrong with his patient. Finally he asked: "Have you ever had this trouble before?" The old man said: "Yes, many times." The doctor said: "Well, you have it again." As we look at the distress, frustration, confusion, and deep maladies of our age, about all we can say is "The world has it again." But what does it have?"
Every newspaper or magazine that we pick up contains evidence of man's disease — hate, lust, greed, prejudice, manifesting themselves in a thousand ways every day. The very fact that we have policemen, jails, and military forces is an indication that something is radically wrong.
Man is actually a paradox. On the one side there is futility, degradation, and sin; on the other side, there is goodness, kindness, gentleness, and love. As Seneca said: "Men love their vices and hate them at the same time."1 Wherever we look we meet the paradox of man. On the one hand he is a helpless sinner, and on the other hand he has capacities that would relate him to God. No wonder Paul spoke of man's disease as "the mystery of iniquity."
Thus we all recognize that the human race is sick, that man has a disease that has affected the whole of life.
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The Bible calls this disease sin. The Bible teaches that man is a sinner. What is sin? The Westminster Confession defines it as "any want of conformity to or transgression of the law of God." To put it simply, sin is anything contrary to the will and law of God.
The Origin of Sin
The puzzling question is Where did evil and sin originate, and why did God allow it? The Bible teaches that sin did not originate with man, but with the angel whom we have come to know as Satan. Yet exactly how sin originated is not fully known. It is one of those mysteries the Bible does not fully reveal. We catch glimpses now and again in the Bible of the answer to this riddle. For example, in the twenty-eighth chapter of Ezekiel there is a description of a great and glorious being of whom the prophet said: "Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God . . . thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee" (Ezekiel 28:14-15). Here we find a glimpse of where it all started. In some unknown past, iniquity was found in the heart of one of the most magnificent creatures of heaven. How this iniquity got there we are not told. For some reason it has not pleased God to reveal the full answer to the mystery of where iniquity began. It is enough for us to know that it is in the world and that man has fallen under its power.
In the book of Isaiah we have another hint of the origin of evil: "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the
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stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit" (Isaiah 14:12-15). Here we have a picture of Lucifer's sin. It is a description of the iniquity that was found in his heart, but there is no explanation as to how it got there.
From these references we learn that he fell and became Satan because of his undue ambition. The New Testament gives us a glimpse concerning the sin of pride: "Lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil" (1 Timothy 3:6). Here the Apostle Paul affirms that the basic sin of Lucifer was pride.
Revolt Against God
Sin is a revolt against God. It is a setting up of a false independence, the substitution of a "life-for-self" for "life-for-God."
When we come to the entrance of sin into the human race, the Bible is much more specific. It teaches that, through one act of one man, sin came into the world, and with it all the universal consequences of sin. This one man was Adam, and this one act was the partaking of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that God had forbidden (Romans 5:12-19; Genesis 3:1-8; 1 Timothy 2:13-14). God gave to man the gift of freedom. Man could choose either to serve and love God or to rebel and attempt to build his world without God. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil served as a test.
The immediate cause of man's rebellion was the "lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life" (1 John 2:16). "And when the woman saw that the tree was
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good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and she gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat" (Genesis 3:6). Centuries later Christ faced the same three temptations in the wilderness. He overcame them all, and thereby showed to us that it is possible for man to resist the temptations of Satan (Matthew 4:1-11).
To desire what God has forbidden is to prefer self to God, and this is sin. In the Ten Commandments we are told not to covet or to lust. We are commanded not to desire anything that God has forbidden, but Adam and Eve failed their test. Their act was rebellion against God. However all moral law is more than a test; it is for man's own good! Every law that God has given has been for man's benefit. If man breaks it, he is not only rebelling against God; he is hurting himself.
God had warned earlier: "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Genesis 2:17). As a result of man's breaking this commandment of God, he died spiritually and faced eternal death. Immediate, far-reaching, and fearful were the consequences of the sin of Adam and Eve. Had they obeyed God, we can only imagine the possibilities that man would have realized in the thousands of years that have followed. There would have been no hate, no greed, no prejudice. There would have been no wars. Man would have never known suffering, disease, poverty, or death. God and man together would have built on this planet a glorious social order that is totally unknown to us today.
However, there is no use speculating on what might have been. Sin is the stubborn fact of our world. We must reckon with it.
Thus in the first chapter of Genesis we read the story of man's potential glory as a creature made in God's image and
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the effects of man's yielding to temptation with its ensuing tragedy and degradation. By this record we are shown that evil existed before man. It did not originate in him. There already existed a breach and disharmony in creation in the person of Satan, who was an angel-prince or viceroy of God. It was from this evil source that man's temptation came. Yet this does not free man from the responsibility of his own action of rebellion.
Thus the Bible teaches that man's chief problem is spiritual. The basis of the problem is revealed in the Genesis account of man's temptation and fall. God created man free. He was not only free to obey but also free to disobey. If disobedience had not been an option, then obedience would have no meaning.
In this freedom man was subjected in effect to two options that counteracted each other. God offered man supremacy and power if he submitted to divine law and government. Satan offered man enlightenment and god-likeness if he would disobey God. Although the rewards of obedience far outweigh those of disobedience, man chose to disobey.
What was the result? Satan had promised man the knowledge of good and evil, and in a distorted form he kept his word. But instead of perceiving from the free height of the good, he perceived the "good" from the deep abyss of the evil. According to God's plan, man through victory in temptation should have perceived what good is and what evil would be. But through sin he actually perceived what evil is and what good would have been. And because he deliberately sinned, he must now also be cut off from the tree of life. Death entered the human race, and hell began in paradise.
The universe we live in is under God's law. In the physical realm, the planets move in split-second precision. In all the universe we see harmony, order, and obedience. God is no less exacting in the higher spiritual and moral order.
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Although God loves man with an infinite love, He cannot and will not countenance disorder. Therefore He has laid down spiritual laws which, if obeyed, bring harmony and fulfillment, but if disobeyed bring discord and unhappiness.
The specific result of Adam's sin followed in a number of ways. Both Satan and Adam had challenged God's law. They did not so much break it as break themselves upon it. As God warned: "In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die" (Genesis 2:17). The result was death as predicted. The life of beauty, freedom, and fellowship Adam had known was now gone. His sin resulted in a living death. Nature became cursed and the venom of creation was thrown into disharmony. Paradise gained was now paradise lost! The earth was now a planet in rebellion!
What Is Sin?
There are many words in the New Testament that are translated "sin." One of the commonest is hamartia. It means "a missing of the target." Sin is the missing of the target at which life must aim and which life ought to hit. Thus sin is failure to live up to God's standards. Since not one of us is capable of fulfilling all of God's laws at all times, we are all "target missers." The Bible said of the very beginning of humanity: "All flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth" (Genesis 6:12). According to King David: "They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one" (Psalm 14:3). Isaiah the prophet confessed: "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way" (Isaiah 53:6). And King Solomon declared: "There is no man which sinneth not" (2 Chronicles 6:36).
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We Are Sinners by Choice
While the tendency to sin has been passed on to us from our first parents, we are all sinners by choice. When we reach the age of accountability and are faced by the choice between good and evil, we all at some time or other choose to get angry, to tell a lie, to act selfishly. As David said: "Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me" (Psalm 51:5). This does not mean that he was born out of wedlock, but rather that he inherited the tendency to sin from his parents. Thus Jeremiah said: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9).
A seventeen-year-old boy stabbed an old man to death in Brooklyn. Later at the police station he said: "I don't know why I did it." "There is," said a great lion tamer, "no such thing in the world as a tamed lion. A lion may be on good behavior today and a whirlwind of ferocity tomorrow." None of us can really trust our hearts. The Bible vividly puts it like this: "Sin croucheth at the door" (Genesis 4:7). Given the right circumstances, most of us are capable of almost any transgression.
This does not mean that every person is devoid of all qualities pleasing to men. Man may have certain moral qualities. He may be a gentleman in every sense of the word. However, the Scriptures teach that every person is destitute of that love for God that is the fundamental requirement of the law. It means that the average man is given to prefer "self" to God.
Because man fails to meet God's requirements, he is guilty and under condemnation. Being guilty means that he deserves punishment. God's holiness reacts against sin, because He is a holy God. Thus there is "the wrath of God" (Romans 1:18).
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The Results of Sin
The Bible teaches that sin affects the mind. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God . . . neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. 2:14). While a man may be brilliant in some things, he may be grossly confused about spiritual realities. The Bible teaches that there is a veil over his mind. Before a person can be converted to Christ, this veil must be lifted. This is done by the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit. Without this "veil-lifting" there is no possibility of a man's coming to God. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not anti-intellectual. It demands the use of the mind, but the mind is affected by sin. It is in the service of a rebellious will. In the final analysis a man must submit his mind to the Lordship of Christ. During recent years, I have seen a number of intellectuals respond to the Gospel. Many of them have tried to come head first, and it will not work! There must be a response of the whole man — intellect, will, and emotions — to the saving initiative of God.
The Bible teaches that sin affects the will. Jesus said: "Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin" (John 8:34). There are vast numbers of persons living under the tyranny of pride, jealousy, prejudice, or perhaps they are living under the bondage of alcohol, barbiturates, or narcotics. Even some who do not want to do the things they are doing are powerless to quit. They have become slaves. They cry for freedom but there seems to be no escape. But Christ said: "You will know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32). He is the truth. He can set you free.
Sin also affects the conscience, making us slow to detect the approach of sin. The Bible talks about the deceitfulness of sin.
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Psychologists have learned that they can put a frog in hot water and he will jump out. However, if they put a frog in lukewarm water and gradually heat it, they can boil him without his jumping. So it is with sin. There was a time when you were disturbed and conscience-smitten about a certain sin. It may have been immorality. It may have been a lie. It may have been the first time you cheated in school. But now your conscience bothers you hardly at all. Your heart has become hardened. You no longer have a sensitivity to things you know to be wrong. You have built up a rationalistic system to keep your conscience quiet. In the first chapter of Romans the Apostle Paul said that because men were so given over to their sins, "God gave them up." God once said concerning Ephraim: "Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone" (Hosea 4:17).
This is one of the most terrifying results of sin. You begin to call black white — and white black. You no longer know the difference between good and evil. I have met men who are habitual liars. They have lied so long that they no longer can distinguish between the truth and a lie. Their sensitivity to sin has been almost completely deadened.
The totality of this infection is reflected in every part of the Scriptures. It is reflected in every newspaper we read. It is reflected in every radio and television newscast. Thus man is described as being totally depraved. This does not mean that man is totally sinful, hopelessly and irreparably bad, without any goodness at all. It means that sin has infected the totality of man's life, darkening his intellect, enfeebling his will, and corrupting his emotions. He is alienated from God and in need of restoration. His natural, instinctive inclinations are away from God and toward sin.
Man in his self-assertion, like his father Adam, would like to believe that he can build his world without God. That is his depravity. He would like to believe that his problems can
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be solved by more knowledge, by diplomacy, by negotiation, by his own manipulation. That is his depravity. He would like to believe that he can save himself by his own good works and efforts. That, too, is his depravity.
The Threefold Death
Because all men have sinned, all are under the penalty of death. Not only does man suffer as a result of sin in this life, but he must face the judgment to come. As it was with Adam, so it is with all men. God punishes sin with a threefold death — physical, spiritual, and eternal.
First, there is physical death. The Bible says: "It is appointed unto men once to die" (Hebrews 9:27). The Bible teaches that there is "a time to be born and a time to die" (Eccles. 3:2) As Psalm 89:48 asks: "What man is he that liveth and shall not see death?" Thus the Bible states clearly that God has already made an appointment for each man with death. There is for each man a day, an hour, a minute. The Bible talks in many places about the brevity of life. We are told that our physical lives are "a tale that is told" — "a weaver's shuttle" — a "flower that fades" — "grass that withers." One generation passes and another comes. If God had not given the judgment of physical death on the human race, men would have continued in their sins until the earth would have become hell itself. Each generation has a fresh new start. Thus although death is a penalty for sin, divinely imposed on individuals, when it comes to successive generations of mankind, death is a blessing.
Because of the brevity of life, the Bible warns that we should be prepared to meet God at all times. "Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months are with thee, thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass" (Job 14:5).
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The Bible exhorts us: "Prepare to meet thy God" (Amos 4:12), Caesar Borgia said in his last moments: "I have provided in the course of my life for everything except death; and now alas! I am to die entirely unprepared."
Second, there is spiritual death. There are millions of persons here and now who are suffering spiritual death. Almost any day you can pick up a newspaper and read of those whose lives testify that they are empty or lost. They were made for fellowship with God, and they are separated from their Maker. This is spiritual death. It is the separation of the soul from God, the separation of man from the One who said: "I am . . . the life." It is spoken of in Scripture as being "dead in trespasses and sins" (Ephesians 2:1).
Third, there is eternal death. The Bible has a great deal to say about hell. No one spoke more about hell than Jesus did, and the hell He came to save men from was not only a hell on earth. It was not only some condition in which men are now living. It was something to come. Jesus never once taught that anyone on earth was living in hell now. He always warned of a hell to come. Whatever He meant by hell, essentially it is the separation of the soul from God as the culmination of man's spiritual death. There are many mysteries here, and we dare not go beyond the teaching of Scripture. It is enough to warn men that Jesus said: "And these shall go away into everlasting punishment" (Matthew 25:46). Jesus also said: "The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 13:41-42).
Sir Thomas Scott, the former Lord Chancellor of England, said on his deathbed: "Until this moment I thought there was neither God nor hell. Now I know and feel there are both, and I am doomed to perdition by the just judgment of the Almighty."
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Thus the Biblical position is that something happened to man, that he became something other than what God created, and that he continues to be what he was not intended to be. This requires a recovery, and the recovery must be radical and revolutionary. It must turn man around and give him a new direction.
The need for spiritual rebirth is evident to the most casual observer of human nature. Man has fallen. Man is lost. Man is alienated from God. Man's recovery must begin at the point of his fall. He chose self rather than God. If he is to be recovered, he must choose God over self. Man lives under the sentence of death. This condemnation can be lifted only if man, by a free act of his own will, makes a complete reversal of his original choice.
The first hint of the gospel comes from Genesis 3:15: "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." This is the first note of the gospel. The first promise of salvation! For the first time God speaks of His Son in whose redemptive act Satan's head will be crushed.
Thus God initiates what man is powerless to provide — his own salvation. All the moral powers of the individual and all the social forms of the community will be proved inadequate, for God's salvation in Christ is the only possible plan of man's redemption.
Man has tried desperately to recover his lost fellowship with God. He has tried a thousand ways but to no avail. Through various forms of religions, man has attempted to recover paradise. Western man has now turned to secularism and humanism, hoping that by his own efforts he can build a Utopia on earth. As all other plans have failed, so this one will fail, too.
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But there are those who say that the world has tried Christianity and that it, too, has failed. But the fact that the world has not improved morally is not the fault of Christianity. It is the lack of its application. When confronted with the world's problems, we Christians say automatically: "Christianity is the answer." But this is not true! It is the application of Christianity that is the answer. It was G.K. Chesterton who said a generation ago: "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult, and left untried."
God's Way versus Man's Way
From the very beginning, all attempts to recover man from his lost estate have been divided into two ways. Adam and Eve had two sons, Cain and Abel. One of them came God's way; he was obedient. The other one, Cain, came his own way; he was disobedient to the plain command of God. Abel was the representative of "the seed of the woman," while Cain was the representative of "the seed of the serpent."
Cain is the architect of modern civilization. He is the self-sufficient materialist and the religious humanist. While he was religious and appeared before God's altar, he denied the implied revelation of salvation given to Adam in the form of clothing provided through the life of another (Genesis 3:21). He brought to the altar an expression of his own labors and strength. He became the prototype of all who dare approach God without the shedding of blood.
From this point onward, two ways run through human history. On the one hand, there is the way of Cain with its religion of the flesh, with a human redemption that relies upon man only and rejects God's substitution. His way
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humanized God and deified man. His way was the way of the materialist, the secularist, the humanist.
On the other hand, there is the way of Abel, with its humble acknowledgment that sin demands death, that the guilty sinner must rely on the sacrifice appointed by God. His became a type of the death of Christ.
The Remedy of Redemption
From the time of Cain and Abel until today, man has sought to provide his own remedy for his disease, sin. It did not work for Cain, it has never worked for any man, and it will not work today. Only God can properly diagnose man's disease; only God can provide the remedy. And God chose blood as the means of man's redemption. The Apostle John wrote that Jesus Christ "washed us from our sins in his own blood" (Revelation 1:5).
Blood is the symbol of the life sacrificed for sin. "For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul" (Leviticus 17:11). Throughout the Old Testament it is recorded over and over again that God required the life of a perfect animal, with its blood poured out upon the altar, as a sacrifice for sin."Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins" (Hebrews 9:22). These sacrifices were made in anticipation of the day when a permanent sacrifice would be made. "In these sacrifices year after year sins are brought to mind, because sins can never be removed by the blood of bulls and goats" (Hebrews 10: 3-4).
When Jesus Christ, the perfect God-man, shed His blood on the cross, He was surrendering His pure and spotless life to death as an eternal sacrifice for man's sin. Once for all God
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made complete and perfect provision for the cure for man's sins; without the blood of Christ, it is indeed a fatal disease.
When Jesus sat down for the last supper with his disciples, He said: "This is my blood, the blood of the new covenant, shed for many for the forgiveness of sin" (Matthew 26:28).
The apostles affirmed this repeatedly:
Paul wrote: "In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins" (Ephesians 1:7).
Peter wrote: "Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold . . . but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot" (1 Peter 1:18-19).
John wrote: "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin" (1 John 1:7).
Every person must make his choice between the two ways — man's way or God's way. One is the way of self-effort and striving to cure one's self and to provide one's own redemption; the other way is justification through faith in the blood of Jesus Christ.
At our crusades we always sing this hymn, which illustrates man's need and God's answer to that need:
Just as I am, without one plea
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bidd'st me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come! I come!Just as I am, and waiting not,
To rid my soul of one dark blot,
To Thee whose blood can cleanse each spot,
O Lamb of God, I come! I come!
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1. Letters, 112.3
