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Introduction Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapters 6 to 8 Chapter 9 Chapters 10 and 11 Chapter 12 Chapters 13 and 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapters 20 and 21 Chapters 22 to 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapters 29 to 35 Chapter 36 Chapters 37 to 41 Chapters 42 to 47 Chapters 48 to 50 |
Man's fall: disobedience and failure
In chapter 3 we find — what, alas! has always happened, and
happened immediately when God has set up anything in the hands of
responsible man — disobedience and failure. So it was in Adam, so
in Noah, so in Israel with the golden calf, so in the priesthood
with strange fire, so in Solomon son of David, and
Nebuchadnezzar. So indeed in the church, 1 John 2:18-19 and
Jude. It was always the first thing when what was set up was
trusted to man. All is set up again in Christ, the Man of God's
purpose. The subtlety of the hidden enemy of our souls is now at
work. The first effect is the distrust of God which he inspires;
then lusts and disobedience; utter dishonour done to God, whether
as regards His truth or His love; the power of natural affections
over man; the consciousness of being naked and powerless; effort
to hide it from oneself*; terror of God — seeking to hide
from Him; self-justification, which seeks to cast upon another,
and even upon God, that of which we have been guilty. After that,
we have, not the blessing or restoration of man, or promises made
to him, but the judgment pronounced upon the serpent, and, in
that, the promise made to the second Adam, the victorious Man,
but who in grace has His birthplace where the weakness and the
fall were. It is the Seed of the woman who bruises the serpent's
head. Man trusts Satan rather than GodRemark too how complete was the fall and separation from God. God had fully blessed; Satan suggests that God keeps back the best gift out of envy, lest man should be like Him. Man trusts Satan for kindness rather than God, whom he judges according to Satan's lie. He believes Satan instead of God, when he tells him he should not die, as God said he should, and casts off the God who had blessed him, to gratify his lusts. Not trusting God, he uses his own will to seek happiness by, as a surer way, as men do now. Contrasts between the first Adam and the SecondWe see in Philippians 2 how completely the Lord Jesus glorified God in all these points, acting in a way exactly opposite to Adam. We may remark too that Adam did it to exalt himself, to be as God, as a robbery; while Christ, when He was in the divine glory, emptied Himself to be like man, and was obedient, not disobedient, unto death. Remark, too, how the hiding of sin from self is gone when God comes in. Adam, who had covered his nakedness, speaks of it when God is there as much as if he had done nothing to cover it. And so it is with all our efforts to make out what shall hide our sin, or make out righteousness. Moreover man flies from God before ever God drives him in righteousness from His presence and blessing. The knowledge of good and evil in a state of disobedience makes us afraid of God, and must have a divine work and righteousness to cover it. Remark farther, what is of great importance, Adam had no promise: there is none to the first Adam; no restoration of the first man, no way back to the tree of life; all is in the Second, the woman's Seed. In judging Satan He and His victory are promised. Death, and life through an accomplished work
What follows is the present result as to the government of God;
the temporal sentence pronounced on Adam and his wife, until
death, under the power of which he was fallen, seized him. There
was a sign however of deeper mercies. Life is recognised as still
there though death had come in: Eve is the mother of all living; a
faith, it would seem, real, though obscure, at any rate, ours. But
there is yet more. Before they are driven out, and shut out from
all return back to the tree of life according to nature, God
clothes them with a garment which covers their nakedness, a
garment which had its origin in death (the death of another),
which had come in, but which hid the effects of the sin that had
introduced it. Man was no longer naked. So, though out from God's
presence in nature, we have not yet indeed the serpent's head
bruised, though this is sure to be accomplished; the prince of
this world is judged (though he be it still), and we know it by
the Holy Ghost come down from heaven, when Christ, whom the world
led by Satan slew, was seated at God's right hand; but if that be
not yet accomplished, we are before God clothed with the clothing
which He has put upon us, that best robe. It is not now a promise
or a figure, but an accomplished work — a work of God. God has
made our coat; the world may mock at such a thought, we know what
it means. But he is justly driven out of the garden, an outcast
from paradise and God, and hindered from partaking of the tree of
life, that he may not perpetuate here below a life of disaster and
of misery. The way of the tree of life was henceforth inaccessible
to man*, according to nature, as the creature of God. There is
no return to the paradise of man in innocence. Adam, already in
sin and far from God, is the parent of a race in the same
condition as himself**. |
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